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Thomas Friedman on “Petropolitics”
Amy Goodman Democracy Now
We speak with Thomas Friedman, the Foreign Affairs columnist for the New York Times. A three-time Pulitzer prize winner, Thomas Friedman is one of this country’s most-widely read political commentators. His books include the award-winning “From Beirut to Jerusalem” and “The Lexus and the Olive Tree.” His latest book is “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.” Later this month, he will host “Addicted To Oil: Thomas Friedman Reporting”, a television special on the politics of this country’s reliance on oil, or what he calls “petropolitics.” “Addicted To Oil” airs on the Discovery Channel on June 24.
* Thomas Friedman. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist. His latest book is “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century.” His television news special, “Addicted To Oil: Thomas Friedman Reporting”, airs on the Discovery Channel on June 24.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the film, Thomas Friedman?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Thanks for having me. The basic thrust of the film is that this is not your parents’ energy crisis. Now we’re in a totally new world, for four basic reasons. The first is that we’re in a War on Terrorism today in which we’re funding both sides in the war with our energy purchases. We fund the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps with our tax dollars, we fund Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, the regimes that support them, and the charities that support them indirectly, with our energy purchases. So we’re funding both sides in the War on Terrorism, and that’s flat out nuts.
Second, the world is flat, I believe, and three billion new consumers just walked on to the playing field from India, China, Brazil, the Soviet Union, all with their own version of the American dream: a house, a car, a toaster, a microwave and a refrigerator. If we don’t find an alternative way to satisfy their energy needs and demands, we’re going to see this planet burned up, choked up, and smoked up so much faster than people realize. And that leads to the third reason this is not your parents’ energy crisis, which is green technology, clean power. This is going to be the growth industry of the 21st century to satisfy all of these new consumers. And we want America to be a dominant player in that industry. The way we get America to be a dominant player in that clean power industry is not by telling our automakers, our industrialists, “Oh, don’t toughen up your standards on energy and fuel efficiency, we don’t want you to do anything hard.” That’s precisely what will lead to China, Japan and Europe taking the lead in that industry.
Number four of the reasons this is not your parents energy crisis is that we thought the fall of the Berlin Wall was going to be unleashing an unstoppable tide of free markets and free people, and for about 10 years it did just that. But basically, that 10 years was coincident with oil at $20 to $40 a barrel. As oil moved to $40 to $70 a barrel of oil, we’ve seen the tide of free markets and free people unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall, meeting a counter-tide of what I would call petro-authoritarianism. These are authoritarian regimes, some of them elected authoritarians, like in Venezuela, who are using their huge oil windfalls to ensconce their authoritarianism and power. So what are we seeing in the world today? The wave of free markets and free people that was unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall is now meeting a counter-wave of petro-authoritarianism, by petrol estates called Russia, Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Equatorial Guinea, you can do gown the list. And they’re creating a very poisonous geo-politics.
(7 June 2006)
The rest of the interview is about the Middle East. It was rather brave of Thomas Friedman to venture onto Democracy Now, and face a grilling from Amy Goodman. Goodman continues with her tough, serious-minded broadcast journalism that’s largely missing from the U.S. airwaves. -BA
Not Your Parents’ Energy Crisis’
Thomas L. Friedman on his new movie, Big Oil, Zarqawi’s death and comparing General Motors to a crack dealer.
Brian Braiker, Newsweek
Thomas L. Friedman is known to most as a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter-turned-columnist and author of several best-selling books. But he’s also got a side gig hosting occasional documentaries for the Discovery Channel that explore topics ranging from the Israeli West Bank barrier, the roots of 9/11 and outsourcing. His latest, “Addicted to Oil,” will premier at the Silverdocs Film Festival in Silver Spring, Md., next week before airing on the cable channel later this summer.
“This is not your parents’ energy crisis,” Friedman says at the outset of the hourlong film
[Friedman repeats many of the points he made in the interview on Democracy Now, above]
NEWSWEEK: What do you hope to accomplish with this movie?
Thomas L. Friedman: Traditionally, what has happened around the issue of green is that very subtly its opponents named it—“liberal, tree-hugging, sissy, girlyman, unpatriotic, vaguely French.” Really what we’re trying to do in this film, and really with everything that I’ve been writing in my column, is to rename green as “geostrategic, geopolitical, capitalistic, patriotic.” Green is the new red, white and blue….Bringing it back home, though, how can being green save jobs in America?
…Q: Bringing it back home, though, how can being green save jobs in America?
First of all, being green is going to be a source of so much industry in the 21st century, whether it’s green appliances, green design, green manufacturing, green consulting. The example we try to give is with the Texas Instruments factory. By thinking green and green design—taking massive energy out of a building before you even build it—you’re able to potentially save so much money that you can keep a factory here rather than move it to China or Taiwan or Singapore.
Q: Speaking of China, you point out that they are doing quite a bit in terms of sustainable development.
My point on that is that China is going to have to go green. Not because they’ve been listening to Rachel Carson—it’s because they can’t breathe. What happened in China with telephones is that China went from no phones to cell phones. They skipped the whole landline phase in a lot of areas. I was just interviewing today Jeff Immelt, the head of GE. The point Jeff was making is that he thinks they’ll do the same on energy. The good news is that if China leaps ahead, they may provide the breakthrough for really cheap solar power, really cheap coal-gasification. The bad news is if we don’t keep up innovating, they’re going to dominate that industry in the 21st century.
(9 June 2006)
Energy in Latin America
toni solo, ZNet
Much attention has focused lately on the Bolivian government’s nationalization of the country’s hydrocarbon resources. Bolivia’s policy change follows up the Venezuelan government’s systematic renegotiation of contracts with foreign petroleum companies which dramatically increased revenue available to benefit Venezuela’s people. Ecuador has reinforced that regional trend by terminating agreements with the US oil multinational Occidental Petroleum in response to 43 alleged breaches of contract by that company. All these moves indicate a rethink by Latin American governments about how best to manage their energy resources.
Energy is a fundamental motif to examine in order to get some insight into the politics of the region and the wider international relations with which they interact. Energy relations perform inseparably from trade relations – something obscured in continuing arguments about “free trade”, “globalization” and the erosion of national sovereignty. A look at the sustainability of natural gas and oil production is important in order to be able to fathom those relations. When thinking about sustainability it is common to think primarily of oil. But natural gas plays a correspondingly essential role in areas from electricity generation to general industrial and domestic energy consumption.
[Chart of data from the EIA, showing oil and NG reserves, rates of production, etc. from major Latin American countries]
…Even on these simplified figures one can see that Venezuela, even without its vast newly-designated reserves,is by far the most significant producer of oil and gas in the region with reserves sufficient for over 75 years and 140 years respectively at current rates of production. Argentina is running out fast. Likewise one can see why Brazil and Argentina (as well as countries wholly dependent on imports like Paraguay and Uruguay) and, to a lesser extent, Chile seem determined to build a strategic alliance with Venezuela to ensure that they get secure supplies when faced with competition for energy resources from ruthless imperialist guzzlers like the United States and associated foreign multinational carpet-baggers.
The data helps make sense in strategic energy terms rather than ideological political terms of why the United States government has spent billlions of US tax dollars propping up just re-elected narco-terror President Uribe in Colombia. US and other foreign multinationals are leeching the country of its oil and gas resources as hard as they can go. Colombia is likely to use up its current oil reserves within a decade and its gas within a couple of decades, while the majority of its people remain mired in poverty and hunger. That fact also may explain the apparently paradoxical efforts President Uribe has made to maintain a good relationship with the Venezuelan government.
(10 June 2006)
This analysis is from the left, though the same ideas have been floated in publications of many different persuasions. -BA
Cyclists go naked in oil protest
BBC
Hundreds of naked cyclists and skaters have taken to British streets as part of a global protest over the dependence on oil. Up to 500 riders travelled routes in London and Brighton as part of the World Naked Bike Ride.
The event was first held in 2004 when more than 120 riders cycled naked through London and Edinburgh. Last year 250 people took part in the event, making it the UK’s biggest naked protest.
A spokesman for the event said the protest was over car culture and the vulnerability of cyclists using roads. He said it also recognised the “power and individuality of the human body”, and denied the mid-afternoon start time deterred some cyclists because it clashed with the England vs Paraguay World Cup game.
London rider Melissa Evans, 33, said: “The ride is fun, but has a serious side as well. By going naked, we show our vulnerability as cyclists in the traffic. I’d like to see London become a city for cyclists and not cars. Most of my friends would love to ride bikes here in London, but they’re afraid of the motor traffic. Ban cars within the M25, and most Londoners would choose to get around by bikes because they’re the safest, fastest, healthiest form of transport.”
…Other naked bike ride events took place elsewhere in the UK, including Bath, York and Edinburgh. Around the globe cyclists took off their clothes and hit the road in countries such as Poland, the US, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and South Africa.
(10 June 2006)
Related:
Cyclists strip gear as they turn the other cheek to cars (The Age)
Nude cyclists peel off around Spanish cities (Reuters)
