Clif's Book World

Hot, Flat and Crowded can be translated as climate change, globalization, and population growth. This book is a followup to the author's best-selling The World Is Flat, a book about globalization of business. This book examines how globalization can continue in a way that doesn't doom the world due to climate change or population growth. It quickly explains that the problem with population isn't so much that there's too many people. But rather it is that in a flat world everyone aspires to gain access to an American level of consumption. The world simply doesn't have enough consumables to go around for the benefits of a flat world to spread to all of the world's population.

One of the good things about Friedman's book is that he doesn't dwell, as say, Gore's movie did, on describing the problem. But rather he spends most of the book describing possible solutions. The overall effect of the book is that of being a cheerleader for the green movement. He sees a day when the whole world will be served by electricity from renewable sources. With low cost energy from renewable sources the whole world can have access to the benefits of a flattened world. His vision for the future world is one that allows humans to live comfortably and at the same time allows the environment and biodiversity found in nature to be protected.

The book is long, and with so many words he's almost able to convince the reader that his vision for for the world's future is possible. I never cease to be amazed at Friedman's verbosity. The book is long and filled with numerous quotations from interviews with professors, experts, business leaders and activist from around the world. It reads much like a long newspaper feature article. He inserts his own terms into the narrative, such as "Energy-Climate Era." He keeps in touch with reality and trys to be practical in his suggestions for directions to take with future energy policies. Thus I think it's a book that business leaders can find to be acceptable reading. As least I hope so. After all, this is probably the most important issue of our time.