peevish mama

So I’m reading a book and it’s rocking my world.  Not necessarily in a good way.  It’s making me stressed and anxious – it leaves me fretting and wringing my hands.  My mantra:  we are so fucked – so so so so fucked.

I’m reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman and if all of our problems were embodied by a wild boar erratically and voraciously wreaking havoc in our backyard, then Friedman deftly succeeds in cornering, subduing, slaughtering, trussing, dressing, and turning the beast into bite size pieces of wild boar sausage.  In short, he tackles the morass of issues our planet is facing right now and breaks it down in a really compelling, common sensical, and terrifying way.  Sometimes I turn to Dash, wild eyed with panic, my nails white from clutching the book so tightly and he calmly urges me to read on. “The second half is all about the solutions,” he intones, his eyes like slits – a Yoda in my bed.  Solutions?  SOLUTIONS? WHAT SOLUTIONS?  WE’RE SO FUCKED!  SO SO SO SO FUCKED!!!

Basically, Friedman posits that our planet is becoming hot(global warming), flat (because of globalization, technology and the internet, more and more people are able to rise out of poverty, see how “the other half” lives, strive for and attain a middle class lifestyle), and crowded (rising birthrates and life expectancies).  This trifecta of stressors is taking a huge, soon to be irreversible toll on our physical and political planet because of the paradigm that we Americans established for how to live and thrive on this earth: one that is based on the consumption of massive amounts of fossil fuels.  Friedman writes: “In particular, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorships, and accelerating climate change.”  Ay, mamasita!

As always, the devil is in the details and he is able to illustrate each of these problems with such life and color that one is left chilled to the bone.  The tentacles of this energy crisis not only wrap around issues of climate change, loss of biodiversity and global politics – but women’s rights, education, healthcare.  Friedman isn’t an alarmist, though.  This isn’t simply shrill hysteria and hyperbole.  His arguments wouldn’t resonate as much as they do if he wasn’t able to build his case, piece by piece, in the cool (for now) light of day.  I haven’t gotten to the solutions yet, but I suppose there is some small comfort in understanding the scope and details of the problem.  The way it is far better to know it’s a wild boar in your backyard than to just hear mysterious and grotesque squealing and grunting in the night, waking up to wreckage and destruction.  It doesn’t make it any better.  You still have a big problem.  But at least you know what it is.  

Friedman asserts that America needs to take the lead in creating the technologies, the ethics and the systems to mitigate the fact that our world is becoming hot, flat and crowded and lead the way to a cleaner and more sustainable way of living and growing.  It’s the least we can do, considering we are largely responsible for our current predicament.  It would hardly be fair for us to turn to China and India and tell them not to do what we just did.  And it would go a long way toward making us one of the popular kids again.

There is so much information in this book.  It is so important and I so want to understand and get it right.  Aside from: 1.we’re so fucked and 2. at least I know how and why we are so fucked, I am left with my hands clutched at my heart, praying for the one man whose slender shoulders will bear the brunt of this call for change.  It’s beyond words, and I wish it wasn’t so, but you are it, Barack.  It all depends on you.

I won’t even get into the missed opportunities for change and betterment that slipped by in the weeks and months after September 11.  It’s all part if the very intricate jigsaw puzzle set forth in this book.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.  It is horrifying and fascinating.  It should be required reading for high school seniors – and the rest of us.  Give it to someone for Christmas, then borrow it back.  You won’t be sorry.  Or maybe you will.