David Roberts and Thomas Friedman talk green.Wednesday night, Grist hosted a party — nay, a soirée — at The Warehouse in Washington, D.C. Among those in attendance were EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley, Green Jobs Czar (don’t call him that to his face!) Van Jones, and a number of other fabulous folk from the green world.
For the night’s entertainment — or “nerdtainment,” as my brother said when I told him about it — New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and I chatted on stage about climate, energy, and efforts to build a greener world, then took questions from the audience. Friedman discussed the updates and rethinking he’s done for the paperback edition of his bestseller Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America, which comes out in September. As he says, “there’s a reason the ice banks of Antarctica and the banks of Iceland melted at the same time.” In our financial system and in our environmental policy, we use the same kind of fraudulent accounting — socializing risk, privatizing profit, and delaying responsibility. This generation, he says, will have to be the “regeneration,” which changes both systems with an “earth race” like the space race of the 1960s.
He also made a note of his disappointment at being left off our list of badass greens. I told him we’d do a list of green mustaches to make up for it. (Think about it: Friedman, Amory Lovins, Joel Makower, our own BioD … coincidence?)
Anyway, huge thanks to Friedman for being the star of our event, thanks to all who attended, and, what the hell, thanks to all the readers who have stuck with us for 10 long years. Here’s to another 10!
