Thomas Friedman Urges Obama Swifter Action on Environment
Thomas Lauren Friedman, renowned New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist, presents world-wide issues in a simplified text. The 55-year old three-time Pulitzer Award winner wrote perspective-changing works on the Middle East, foreign business policies, September 11, and globalization. Among his prominent and award-winning books are The Lexus and The Olive Tree, The World Is Flat and most recently, Hot, Flat and Crowded.
Friedman is yet again proving his value as a visionary communicator whose insights and opinions are widely respected. Last December 9, 2008, in CNN’s segment “No Bias, No Bull,” he professed his confidence in President-elect Obama’s plans for America to become the leader in the environmental revolution. Both share the same vision of change, especially in creating green-collared jobs and green homes as depicted in his most recent book. Renewable Environmental Technologies (ET) is going to be the next great global industry according to the writer. This means a demand for clean water, clean power, and clean energy. “It simply has to be – otherwise, we’re not going to survive as a planet” Friedman emphatically concludes.
(December 10, 2008)
Friedman points out that it is now up to the president-elect to create the means to his ends through multi-sector reforms. There has to be a systemic change in how things are being run at present. Friedman goes on to illustrate this in how, for example, building environmental friendly homes with solar panels would require changing building codes across the country before implementation.
Tom Friedman graduated with an AB degree in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University. He received his Masters of Philosophy degree in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Oxford. His career took off when he was dispatched to Beirut as part of his work for United Press International. He was reassigned there when he got hired by The New York Times as a reporter. It was Friedman’s coverage of the Israeli war, most notably the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which gained him recognition for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His second Pulitzer in the same category was for his coverage of the First Palestinian Intifada in 1988. Friedman claimed his third Pulitzer in 2002 for Commentary on Foreign Policy and Economics.
Article Source: Newsbusters.com.
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