With all this recent controversy over Thomas Friedman getting his “just desserts” from some humorous environmental and global justice activists - it seems like some people have become a little misguided. The ensuing debate on the tactics used by the Greenwash Guerrillas is a healthy one for our movement to have.
Shockingly, some people have been jumping to Thomas Friedman’s defense, under the banner of human rights, Ghandi-esque moral posturing, and even holding him up as a “Clean Energy Hero”.
While sure, Friedman may have lots of things to say about “clean” energy (which to him, includes nuclear and coal) - but it’s important to understand his reasons for these views. He wants to see a scale-up of “clean” energy so that the US can maintain and expand its empire - politically, economically, and culturally. Not only will his “solutions” not solve the climate crisis - his positions will only perpetuate the same systems that created the problem in the first place.
If we want to beat the climate crisis, we need to understand that it is not simply a question of pollution, or emissions, or new technology. We must build a movement rooted in an understanding of global justice; that war, racism, imperialism, economic inequality, and many other forms of domination are the root causes of the ecological and social crisis we all face.
Does Friedman really want a world where ecological values replace systems of domination? Where global economic justice replaces colonialism and capitalist globalization? Where self-determination and cooperation replaces racism and xenophobia? Where communities can determine their own best interests, rather than US ideologues?
Unless our movement wants to support eco-fascism, we would be wise to be careful what bedfellows we make. Friedman is not our friend. But don’t take it from me! Here are the choice words from the Mustached Man himself.
CHAMPION OF CLEAN ENERGY?
“I would say that geo-green is the natural successor to neocon.”
(on dealing with nuclear waste) “We’re going to have to bury it in a mountain in Nevada, and Nevada is going to have to suck it up. That’s how I would deal with it.”
“All environmentalists have their favorite “green” energy source that they think will break our addiction to oil and slow down climate change. I’ve come out to Montana to see mine. It’s called coal.”
“The truth is, I’m not against drilling in ANWR.”
CHAMPION OF FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM:
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”
“The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism.“
“I wrote a column supporting CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement). I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.”
“No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s.”
CHAMPION OF WAR:
“Let’s all take a deep breath, and repeat after me: Give war a chance.”
(on Iraq)
“This is the most radical-liberal revolutionary war the U.S. has ever launched — a war of choice to install some democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world.”
“blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the lights will go off or who is in charge.”
“What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?” You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.”
“…I never believed or wrote that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could threaten us…….the right reason for the war was not W.M.D. It was to deal with the problem of P.M.D. — people of mass destruction.”
“This war is the most important liberal revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start but it’s one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad, and it’s a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot.”
“The next six months in Iraq… are the most important… ” November 2003
“Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months.” November 2004
“We’re in a six-month window here…” September 2005
“We’re going to know after six to nine months…” January 2006
“It’s going to be decided in the next weeks or months…” April 2006
“We’re going to find out… in the next year to six months.” May 2006
(on Afghanistan)
“It turns out many of those Afghan ‘civilians’ were praying for another dose of B-52s to liberate them from the Taliban, casualties or not.”
(on Yugoslavia)
“Let’s at least have a real air war. The idea that people are still holding rock concerts in Belgrade, or going out for Sunday merry-go-round rides, while their fellow Serbs are ‘cleansing’ Kosovo, is outrageous. It should be lights out in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted.”
“Let’s at least have a real war. It should be lights out in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted…Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.”
CHAMPION OF RACIST STEREOTYPES
“If you can’t explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don’t try to explain it at all - they won’t believe it.”
“After every major terrorist incident the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed.”
“We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind.”
CHAMPION OF DEMOCRACY
“Had we properly occupied the country, and begun political therapy, it is possible an American iron fist could have held Iraq together long enough to put it on a new course.
“this anti-globalization movement is largely the well intentioned but ill informed being led around by the ill intentioned and well informed (protectionist unions and anarchists)”
(on supporting Reagan’s breaking of the air controllers strike in 1981) “…helping break the hold of organized labor on the U.S. economy.”
(Answering the cry of the antiwar protests) No blood for oil!” (Friedman replied) “Why not?
