Green Day
The Hidden Columnists--Tom Friedman Edition (02 Nov)

Tom Friedman gets back to some welcome (IMHO) geo-green ranting (see a previous post on Friedman's geo-green label, from back in March), this time in regards to China (for Times Select subscribers, here's the link to the full column):

In China, conservation is not a "personal virtue," as Dick Cheney would say. Today it is a necessity. It was so polluted in Beijing the other day you could not make out buildings six blocks away. That's the bad news. Here's the good news: China's leaders and business community know it. They know that as China grows more prosperous, and more Chinese buy homes and cars, it must urgently adopt green technologies; otherwise, it will destroy its environment and its people. Green technology will decide whether China continues on its current growth path or chokes itself to death. So green innovation is starting to mushroom in China.

And what's the U.S. doing as green technology is emerging as the most important industry of the 21st century? Let's see: the Bush team is telling our manufacturers they don't have to improve auto mileage standards or appliance efficiency, is looking to ease regulations on oil refiners and is rejecting a gas tax that would help shift America to hybrid vehicles.

We should be doing just the opposite: creating more pressures and incentives so our companies will innovate and dominate the next great industry. You think China is cleaning our clock now with cheap clothing? Wait a decade, when we'll have to import our green technology from Beijing, just as we have to import hybrid motors today from Japan.
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Jack Perkowski, who runs Asimco Technologies, the huge China-based auto parts maker, told me where this is heading: "As China moves from the second-largest market to the first in autos ... the industry here will have to come up with transport that is more affordable, fuel-efficient and environmentally sound."

As green technologies get adopted here and gain scale - Mr. Perkowski cited a Chinese auto company now rushing to develop a green diesel engine for passenger cars - the Chinese will set the standards for the world.

"So they will become technology exporters rather than importers," he said. And because of the unique needs of China and the fact that it will become the biggest market for any product, the Chinese will "innovate at their affordability level." Once they come up with low-cost solutions that work inside China, they will take them global at China prices.

I'm in full agreement with Friedman on this issue (and I do dig the geo-green moniker): it's one thing to try to save the world by legislating emissions and efficiency (which we should be doing), but it should also go hand-in-hand with carrots to industry to move toward innovation. By simply pushing the problem of cleaning up the coal and oil industries off to a later date, the innovations for fuel efficiency and green products will not be made here in the States, and we'll be even more beholden to imports of green goods and technologies. I'm still stymied on why such a business-oriented angle on going green doesn't gain more of a foothold in Republican circles. But since it's not, it's ripe for the picking on the Left. I'll leave this with the final graf from the column, quotingRobert Watson from the Natural Resources Defense Council:

"We deserve to lose. We are clutching our past with these tremulous hands, and everyone else is vigorously grasping the future."