I am currently reading Tom Friedman's new book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded", and, while I haven't finished it yet, it has already given me a couple flashes of insight. First, I was reading his description of an address he gave to the China "Green Car Congress" in 2007. In this address, he was talking about the production of clean energy, but that is not what I suddenly saw. What I saw was that Mr. Friedman was describing a form of warfare; a struggle between countries for dominance. In the past this type of struggle has routinely been carried out by those quaint military contests we call wars. In the future, while we maintain a military presence, it appears that the actual contest between countries will be moved to the stadium down the street where economies vie for primacy. In case you hadn't noticed, right now China is, as Mr. Friedman describes it, "cleaning our clocks."
As Friedman so aptly states, we do have the opportunity to reverse this trend over the next few years. If we jump aboard, in a big, big way, the "green energy" (for want of a better word) revolution, we could end up selling this technology and associated hardware/software to the rest of the world. This could very well reverse the flow of money from "out" to "in", and we could go from the world's biggest debtor to being a creditor. And that would constitute a win in the ongoing war between global economic players
No comments:
Post a Comment