It gave me a complete view of the sustainability issue. In the past 5 years, sustainability is a very popular topic in different areas, such as NGO, university, corporate, society, school, etc. Everyone is talking about sustainability, green, environment, global warming, etc. I always passionate about these topics but I realise I actually know nothing until I read this book. That is the reason why I love Thomas Friedman’s book. There are a lot of useful and important knowledge that I need to know.
The two important parts of the book are: the five key problems the earth is facing and the green revolution (why and how)
Remember from the last book he explained about “the world is flat”. It is one of the terms I really like. In this book, he explained how we’re entering the “Energy Climate Era”. It focuses on the five key problems that a hot, flat, and crowded world is dramatically intensifying. There are: the growing demand for ever scarcer energy supplies and natural resources (energy and resource supply and demand); a massive transfer of wealth to oil-rich countries and their petrodictators (petrolpolitics); disruptive climate change (climate change); energy poverty, which is sharply diving the world into electricity haves and electricity have-nots; and rapidly accelerating biodiversity loss, as plants and animals go extinct at record rates (biodiversity).
It explained in detail about each problem with many examples. Now I have a better understand what are the major problems we are facing and how we got here. Not simply only know the term or the surface of the global issue. Among all these problems, the energy poverty has given me the biggest shock. It is pretty hard to believe in this day, the World Bank estimates that roughly 1.6 million people – one out of every four people on the planet – don’t have regular access to an electricity grid. Especially in Africa 75% of household (550 million people) have no access to network electricity and 700 million people in South Asia.
We all know that Africa has very high HIV/AIDS, drinking water, and malaria issues. A lot of us have contributed to these issues and hopefully one day these problems can be solved. We donate money to HIV/AIDS, building water system or medical subsidies. There are lot of NGOs are trying very hard. However, many people have not realised the energy poverty problem as a fundamental problem in Africa. Without regularly access to electricity, it means that Africa would never able to solve other problem. It is because energy poverty means you can’t pump clean water regularly, there’s no communication, no way to have adult literacy classes, and certainly no way to run computers at school, no hospital can be functioned.
When the world is become hotter, the poor population will be the people suffer the most but they are the people who caused it the least because they heavily depend directly on soil, forests, and plants in their immediate vicinity for subsistence. Many people are trying to improve the quality of their life, on the other hand, our behaviour and attitude have made the world hotter (climate change). Hence, we actually take over their basic survival kits. If temperatures continue to rise, we can just close the windows and turning on an air conditioner, but what about them?
The other part of the book is discussing about why we need a green revolution. Now I can imagine how big is the impact of energy efficiency. Thomas F has emphasized what we need is a Clean Energy System - REEFIGDCPEERPC < TTCOBCOG – the renewable energy eco-system for innovating, generating, and deploying clean power, energy efficiency, resource productivity, and conservation < the true cost of burning coal, oil and gas. That is, we need clean energy that is cheaper than the true cost to society of fossil fuels, when you measure the climate change those fuels cause, the pollution they trigger, and the energy wars they engender. We are not going to regulate our way out of the problems of the Energy-Climate Era. We can only innovate our way out, and the only way to do that is to mobilize the most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation and commercialization of new products ever created on the face of the earth.
After reading this book, I just imagine how good if I can stay in a green building, driving a green car and using the green products. How long are we going to wait?
Read more...
