I am finally reading Thomas L. Friedman’s marvelous Hot, Flat, and Crowded, which was first released in 2008 but has been updated and reprinted, including sample audio, free chapters, and a study guide. The following is a brief video introduction from Friedman:
The “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” in Friedman’s title refers to the trends of global warming, globalization, and world population growth. According to the web site, in this top New York Times bestseller, “Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy—which he calls ‘Geo-Greenism’—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.”
This strategy cannot come too soon (indeed, many of us would argue that this strategy is decades late). The following Hot, Flat, and Crowded quote is from David Douglas, vice-president for eco-responsibility for Sun Microsystems. This quote is in reference to world population growth, currently at 6.7 billion but projected to top 9 billion people by 2050. Just facing our next billion folks, what if each person was given a single sixty-watt incandescent light bulb?
“Each bulb doesn’t weigh much—roughly 0.7 ounces with the packaging—but a billion of them together weigh around 20,000 metric tons, or about the same as 15,000 Priuses. Now let’s turn them on. If they’re all on at the same time, it’d be 60,000 megawatts. Luckily, [they] will only use their bulbs four hours per day, so we’re down to 10,000 megawatts at any moment. Yikes! Looks like we’ll still need twenty or so new 500-megawatt coal-burning power plants” – just so the next billion people can turn a light on!
Yikes indeed. What’s a present Hohm owner to do? Start offsetting those additional power plants now: It follows from the above quote that if a billion of us find enough energy efficiency to eliminate the equivalent of a single incandescent bulb burning for four hours, we’ve eliminated the need for twenty or so 500-megawatt coal-burning power plants. Microsoft Hohm is a good first step to becoming aware of our energy use today, so we can learn how to conserve tomorrow.
The world is getting hotter, flatter, and more crowded. So we’d better start making room now.
Blog post from - Kyle G. Crider He has a B.S. degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Alabama and a Master of Public Administration degree in Urban Planning & Policy Analysis from UAB, where he’s currently in the Interdisciplinary Engineering Ph.D. program.