New York Times columnist electrifies Stott Center

The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is “so” done with Earth Day and all the consciousness-raising around the need for green energy, he said Monday in the Peter W. Stott Center.

The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is “so” done with Earth Day and all the consciousness-raising around the need for green energy, he said Monday in the Peter W. Stott Center.

In fact, there’s no word he’d like to eliminate from the English language more than “green.”??

“Hopefully, someday there will be no such thing as a ‘green’ building because it won’t be possible to build one without using ‘green’ energy sources. I want the word ‘green’ to go the way of ‘civil rights’—a word we don’t use unless something has gone wrong,?” he said.

“Gathering around green symbols is a party, not a revolution,” Friedman said to audience cheers. “Green is the new red, white and blue.”??

Speaking to a sold-out crowd of 1,500, the prolific author and journalist advocated a kick-start to green innovation by reshaping the demand for alternative energy sources.??

“We have to make dirty fuels more expensive and alternative fuels—wind, solar and geothermal—cheaper. Create the demand and prices will eventually go down,” he said. “I want your city, state and county to put into place laws, standards, regulations and most of all price signals, a price on carbon, to stimulate green innovators.”

Specifically, Friedman thinks government can foster innovation—and make it revenue-neutral—by placing a tax on carbon while simultaneously lowering employment taxes.

Midway through the lecture, however, Friedman claimed that “we can’t regulate our way out of environmental crisis.”

He quickly reversed himself in part by qualifying why he’s not against regulation as such.

“Regulation is necessary but not sufficient to stimulate green engineering,” he said. Price signaling is also a matter of influencing our representatives and industry leaders, he said.

“Change your leaders, not your light bulbs,” he said to audience laughter. “The leaders write the rules, and rules shape the market. I address all the students in audience: Exxon Mobile doesn’t have a Facebook page, they don’t have a chat room. They’re in the cloakroom, where the rules get written. If you’re not in the cloakroom where the rules get shaped, you’re written out of the discussion. Get off Facebook and into somebody’s face about it.”

Friedman’s lecture was sponsored by Ecotrust, Portland State and 33 other local businesses and organizations. Nearly all the 1,300 free tickets to the event were spoken for within days of its announcement.??

Portland State President Wim Wiewel said after the lecture how pleased he was with the turnout.??

“It’s just great for PSU to host an event like this and to have someone like Thomas Friedman with us,” Wiewel said.??”I’m so touched how civically involved this community is and by their presence here this afternoon.”

Friedman’s latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America, calls for economic innovation in solving what he believes are the world’s five mega problems: energy and natural resource supply and demand, “petrodictatorship,” climate change, energy poverty and biodiversity loss.??

More than 50 people lined up after the lecture to meet and have Friedman sign their books.