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A former Mideast correspondent who put in stints as a White House and State Department reporter, Friedman has won three Pulitzer Prizes for his newspaper writing, and his books are critically acclaimed bestsellers. On the lecture circuit, he commands a $50,000 speaking fee.
Friedman, 55, is married to Ann Bucksbaum Friedman, a schoolteacher and an heiress to a $3 billion real estate fortune. But he won't be kicking back anytime soon. He recently updated The World Is Flat, his popular book examining globalization. His next book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America, is due out next month with the expectation that it will help shape the dialogue on conservation and climate change in the next election. We sat down with Friedman as he was putting the finishing touches on the book.
Q. You have written that the Bush Administration missed an opportunity after 9/11 to change U.S. policy on energy.
A. It could have been like our response to communism. Anticommunism got our parents' generation to build a national highway system and invest in infrastructure, defense, and education. We could do that again. To me, going green is the great challenge -- and opportunity -- of the 21st century. My criticism of President Bush is that he took us from red to code red rather than from red to green.
Q. Some people say that making radical changes in the very foundations of industry is an overreaction to a small rise in the earth's temperature. Your attitude seems to be, What do we lose?
A. Exactly. If climate change is a hoax, it's the greatest hoax ever perpetrated. Where's the downside? My book's title, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, is important. In our lifetime, the population of the earth will have tripled. The demand for resources, the demand for energy, the demand for goods and services, will be so enormous that having clean power, efficient power systems, and smart grids is going to be a huge advantage in the world we're going into -- even if global warming doesn't exist at all.
Q. Before the invasion of Iraq, you invoked what you called the Pottery Barn Rule: If you break it, you own it. Does it seem that the U.S. broke Iraq and now doesn't want to own it?
A. After George W. Bush leaves office, whomever we elect as President is going to own this war. It stops being Bush's policy that day and becomes the wholly owned problem of the next President and, indirectly, the American people because we'll have elected that person. I think the question people will ask is, Does this effort have a positive slope to it? Because the American people, I think, will still be ready to go along, ready to build a self-sustaining Iraq, if they feel it has a positive slope and isn't costing too many lives.
Q. Do you still believe the war in Iraq could turn out well?
A. That's a question I'm asking myself every day. The way I would put it is that with the surge, General Petraeus has given hope a heartbeat in Iraq -- but that's all he's done. At the bottom of your question is this, Is there a country there? Or is it just a collection of tribes and clans and militias?
Q. Despite all the dire world events you've covered, you've never become cynical in your writing. Why is that?
A. I'm just not a cynical person. A lot of journalists have lost the distinction between skepticism and cynicism. A skeptic says, "I don't know. I'm going to find out." A cynic says, "I already know. I don't need to find out." I once asked the editor of Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, why he ran my column. He said, "Tom, you're the only optimist we have."
Q. What's the source of your great optimism?
A. I had a very happy childhood, in an Ozzie & Harriet family in Minneapolis. I grew up in a community that worked. Government worked. Minnesota politicians like Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Gene McCarthy, and Wendell Anderson -- they believed there was a solution to every problem.
Q. And that sensibility carried over into your reporting?
A. Yes. I think I brought that community spirit to the larger world. When I went to Lebanon, I was shocked by things I saw. But if you asked others what they were witnessing, they'd say that they saw civil war, murder, mayhem, and massacre. I'd say I saw a community break apart. Community is a very strong word in my lexicon.
Q. Are you ever overly optimistic? In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, you wrote that no countries with McDonald's restaurants have ever waged war against each other. That book came out in 1999; within months, the United States was shelling Belgrade, and Serbs looted a McDonald's in anger over those air strikes.
A. In social science, if you're right 99 out of 100 times, that's actually pretty good. So Serbia was one exception. Show me one since.
Q. Are you still having fun?
A. It's a great time to be in the commentary business. You get more feedback, more people screaming at you, blogging with you, blogging against you. It's the most fun you can have legally that I know of.
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