in Friedman’s view is, of course, that they have exacerbated the lack of “moral authority” on the part of the Bush-Cheney team, which is nonetheless still described in 2007 as possessing “moral clarity.”220
It is important to emphasize that Friedman is often critical of the United States. However, criticism is levied solely to discourage behavior Friedman sees as jeopardizing U.S. power, the maintenance of which remains his supreme goal. For example, his berating of U.S. administrations for failing to launch a green revolution is a result of his conviction that “making America the world’s greenest country is not a selfless act of charity or naïve moral indulgence. It is now a core national security and economic interest,” necessary for restoring the United States to global preeminence.221
As one might expect, Friedman’s view of what qualifies as proper environmentalism is in constant flux. He alternately: demands a Manhattan Project for renewable energy;222 advocates for the import of Brazilian sugar ethanol;223 demands that Europe abandon its opposition to GMOs, “which will be critically important if we want to grow more of our fuel—à la corn ethanol or soy biodiesel”;224 warns against “end[ing] up in a very bad place, like in a crazy rush into corn ethanol, and palm oil for biodiesel”;225 declares that he is “wary of biofuels” and that “what makes sense in Brazil does not make sense in the United States”;226 announces that “all environmentalists have their favorite ‘green’ energy source” and that his is “called coal”;227 cautions: “Let’s make sure that we aren’t just chasing the fantasy that we can ‘clean up’ coal”;228 resurrects the “heretofore specious notion of ‘clean coal’”;229 characterizes a Manhattan Project for clean energy as an “easy sound bite” for politicians and a “cop-out”;230 and advises the Tea Party to improve its image by becoming the Green Tea Party (“I’d be happy to design the T-shirt logo and write the manifesto”).231 Additionally, he goes from harping on Bush for Kyoto Protocol–related unilateralism, “selfishness and hubris”232 to deciding that Kyoto is unfeasible and that if the United States simply unilaterally stages a green revolution, the world will forget its resentment and follow.
In Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman proposes, “with tongue only slightly in cheek,” the following bumper sticker formula to express the goal of a Clean Energy System: “REEFIGDCPEERPC < TTCOBCOG.”233 This stands for “a renewable energy ecosystem for innovating, generating, and deploying clean power, energy efficiency, resource productivity, and conservation < the true cost of burning coal, oil, and gas.”234 A response to Google’s proposed formula of “RE < C—renewable energy cheaper than coal,” it is a rare example of an instance in which Friedman’s normal tendency toward reductionism might have proved more effective.235
As for the Friedman formula according to which “the only engine big enough to impact Mother Nature is Father Greed: the Market,” the idea that a system that runs on greed and the exploitation of resources and humans in the interest of profit can somehow provide a solution to the very ills it creates is fanciful, to say the least. In 2006 Friedman reasons that “there is nothing wrong about” China’s (not Mother-Nature-friendly) extraction of natural resources from Latin America because “America and Spain did the same for years—and often rapaciously” and because China’s “voracious appetite … is helping to fuel a worldwide boom in commodity prices that is enabling a poor, low-industrialized country like Peru to grow at 5 percent.”236 For an example of what can happen when commodity booms do not benefit poor people who also possess appetites, see the Arab uprisings of 2011.
Friedman applies the logic of greed in his tirade against the “ridiculous” World Trade Organization protests of 1999, entitled “Senseless in Seattle.”237 Praising the conditions of a particular Victoria’s Secret underwear factory in Sri Lanka that “I would let my own daughters work in,” Friedman lectures the opponents of globalization:
You make a difference today by using globalization—by mobilizing the power of trade, the power of the Internet and the power of consumers to persuade, or embarrass, global corporations and nations to upgrade their standards. You change the world when you get the big players to do the right things for the wrong reasons.238
This particular strategy has already been test-driven in Brazil, where Friedman discovers in 1998 a “global triple threat” to the Pantanal region from “external forces of globalization,” such as international energy companies.239 Ford Motors’ financing of various initiatives in the region by Conservation International is cast as being based on the calculation that “they can sell a lot more Jaguar cars if they are seen as saving the jaguars of the Pantanal,” and Friedman concludes that “if that’s what it takes to save this incredibly beautiful ecosystem and way of life, then God bless Henry Ford and the Internet.”240 There is no detectable concern for the fact that the initiatives do not reverse any of the listed threats or Ford’s contributions to global pollution.241
“Senseless in Seattle II” is meanwhile penned as a follow-up to the original article, which elicits a response from his “environmentalist allies” regarding its depiction of the WTO protests as wholly unserious.242 In the sequel, Friedman permits that “there were some serious groups there raising serious points” but still maintains that it is wrong to oppose the WTO when serious activism can be accomplished by simply ignoring the organization in order to save Flipper and make the Mexicans save him too:
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