'Meet the Press' transcript for Sept. 7, 2008

MR. BROKAW: We're back live in Wilmington, Delaware. And with us now, having traveled from Washington all that way, author of the new book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America," Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist from The New York Times, Tom Friedman.

Here's the book. Let me read the lead, if I can, from the back cover: "America has a problem and the world has a problem. America's problem is that it has lost its way in recent years, partly because of 9/11 and partly because of bad habits that we have let build up over the last three decades. Bad habits that have weakened our society's ability and willingness to take on big challenges." Putting it simply, we've been talking about lately carrying a small stick.

MR. TOM FRIEDMAN: It's true, Tom. Basically, the--what this book is about is that America does have a problem. I think we've lost our way since 9/11. And the world has a problem, it's getting hot, flat and crowded. And I think we solve our problem by taking the lead in solving the world's problem. Because the argument of this book is that in a world that is--global warming, hot, flat, rise of middle classes from India to China to Brazil; and getting crowded in terms of population, what I call ET, energy technology, is going to be the next IT, the next great industrial revolution. And I'm a big believer that which country dominates that economic revolution, that industry, is going to have the most security, the most respect, the most competitive industries and the most healthy population. I want that to be our country.

MR. BROKAW: What's the best approach, a Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb, or 1,000 garages?

MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, I'm against Manhattan Project because this problem is so large in terms of scale. I think it's got to be like IT. We need 100,000 people experimenting in 100,000 garages coming up with 100,000 ideas, 100 of which might be promising, 10 might work, and two might be the next green guru.

MR. BROKAW: It's hard to get the kind of focus that we need on this kind of a challenge in the midst of a political season. Last week they were chanting "drill, baby, drill," at the Republican convention. Senator Obama, speaker Nancy Pelosi have said recently, well they'd be willing to take a look at offshore drilling, even though we know that there wouldn't be any real productivity for 10 more years. Both parties, it seems to me, share a responsibility here and blame at the same time.

MR. FRIEDMAN: No, there's no question this has been a bipartisan effort to get us into this alley, dead end, that we're in right now, Tom. But when I hear, drill, drill, drill, or drill, baby, drill, I try to imagine--Tom, you were at the convention, I wasn't, what would happen if the Saudi, Venezuelan, Russian and Nigeria observers were up in a sky box in that Xcel Center listening to the crowd chant, "drill, drill, drill"? What would they be doing? They'd be up there leading the chant. They'd be saying this is great. America isn't sitting there saying, "Invent, invent, invent new, renewable energy," they're saying, "drill, drill, drill." And you know, for me, yes, we do need to exploit our domestic resource. I'm actually not against drilling. What I'm against is making that the center of our focus, because we are on the eve of a new revolution, the energy technology revolution. It would be, Tom, as if on the eve of the IT revolution, the revolution of PCs and the Internet, someone was up there standing and demanding, "IBM Selectric typewriters, IBM Selectric typewriters." That's what drill, drill, drill, is the equivalent of today.

MR. BROKAW: You have an intriguing proposition in this book. You'd like to be China for a day, just one day.

MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, it comes from actually a dialogue I had with Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, and Jeff was making the point that, you know, really almost out of exasperation of a company that's been trying to be an energy innovative leader, saying, "Look, Tom, we need is"--what Jeff said is we need a president who's going to set the right price for carbon. Set the right standard, set the right regulation. Shape the market so it will be innovative. Everyone will kind of whine and moan for a month and then the whole ecosystem will take off. And I thought about that afterwards and I said to him, "You know, Jeff, what you're really saying is, `If only we could be China for a day. Just one day.'" So I wrote a chapter called "China for a day, but not for two." Really, about what we would do if for one day we could impose, cut through all the lobbyists, all the amendments, all the earmarks, and actually impose the right conditions to get our market to take off.

MR. BROKAW: But the fact is, it's not just the United States leading. It's the objective conditions that exist in places like China and in India. China has now become a familiar mantra, "one coal-fired power plant a week. Twenty--80,000 cars a day." No one knows what the number is for sure. It's a curve that we're chasing. Can we every catch it?

MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, you know, I think we can. But we're going to have to go about this much differently. We're really going to have to go about this in a strategic way. And the next president is going to have to have a plan. You know, I was just in China a week or 10 days ago, Tom, and you know, young Chinese, you know, whenever I got here, they say to me, you know, "Mr. Friedman, you guys got to grow dirty for 150 years, now it's our turn." To which I always say to them, "You know what, you're right. It is your turn. Take your time. Grow as dirty as you want. Because I think we just need five years to invent all the clean power technologies you're going to need before you choke to death and then we're going to come over and we're going to sell them to you and we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry." That's when I see the headsets of the translators adjusting, "What is he saying?"

You know, what we need today, Tom--we had a space race with the Russians, who could be the first to put a man on the moon. What we need today is an Earth race with China, with Europe, with Japan, to see who can create the technologies to make the Earth livable for man.

MR. BROKAW: We've been in a political--in a lot of political turmoil this summer, and economic turmoil as well, as a result of $4 a gallon gasoline. Was that pain a good thing in the final analysis for the American public? Did it get their attention in the way that it should have, or were they succumbing to the pandering of those who were suggesting we have a gas holiday of some kind, a tax holiday of some kind?

MR. FRIEDMAN: What we've seen this summer, Tom, is that price works. The consumers reacted to that price signal, they've gone out and been searching for different cars. In Washington, D.C., where I live, 100,000 more commuters have been using the subway. The price signal works. But what industry needs, Tom, is it needs a long-term price signal, that the big companies need to know if they go all in, Texas Hold 'em, on clean power, that the price isn't going to collapse as it's doing now, go back to 70, and all those investments don't work. Again, something Jeff Immelt said to me from GE, he said, "Look, Tom, I'm not going to make a $40 billion, multiyear bet on a 15-minute price signal." That's why having a price signal, a carbon tax that companies can bet on is hugely important.

MR. BROKAW: Carbon tax as opposed to cap and trade where you can cap what you're doing, but you can trade with some other company and continue to do it.

MR. FRIEDMAN: You know, I'm really indifferent to--because there's arguments for both. What we do need is a durable, long-term price signal. So if I want to be an investor in wind and solar--and I'm not T. Boone Pickens and I don't have $4 billion to, to risk, but I'm a small start-up company, I know that the market's going to be there. Because Tom, this is going to be the next great revolution. ET, energy technology, is out there and we want to make sure our country is at the lead of it. That's what this book is a clarion call for. This is in a--you know, John Gardner said this is a series of incredible opportunities disguised as insoluble problems. I really believe that.

MR. BROKAW: Al Gore has suggested that when it comes to generating electricity in this country, that we take over the course of 10 years off the carbon-based grid and replace it with solar--keep nuclear in place, use solar and wind. Is that possible?

MR. FRIEDMAN: You know, I don't know if it's possible in five years or 10 years, but I like the idea of an aspirational goal. I like the idea of setting an objective out there. But we need to back that up with legislation, legislation that would say to every utility in the country, by the year 2020, 2025, you have to produce so much from wind, so much from solar.

MR. BROKAW: Here's one of my favorite quotes from the book, "You've heard the acronym NIMBY - `not in my backyard,' as in: `I love wind turbines, but just not in my backyard'? Well, BANANA is a broader variant of that. It stands for `build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.'" It seems to me that one of the hopes that we have is generational. Young people are pushing from younger ages up toward their parents and saying, "You've got to change. It's my future, not yours."

MR. FRIEDMAN: I feel that everywhere I go talking to people about--you know, if I were to describe--draw a picture of America today, Tom, it would be of the space shuttle taking off. And you've seen all those launches. Incredible thrust from below. We've got so much energy in this country, innovative power. But you know what? The booster rocket, our government, is leaking. It's cracked. And the pilots in the cockpit are fighting over the flight plan. So we can't achieve escape velocity to get into that next orbit, to get to that next revolution, the ET revolution. And I think the candidate, or certainly the administration that harnesses that energy in the right way not only is going to answer, you know, those kids, but bring us to where we need to be. We, we, we've been living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes, Tom. We need to get back to work on our country and our planet. The hour's late--the, the project couldn't be more important, the payoff couldn't be greater.

MR. BROKAW: In three seconds, which is all we have left, what do you say to those skeptics who say, "You know, I just don't believe climate change is real." There are even some scientists who say it's based too much on computer models, not enough on empirical evidence.

MR. FRIEDMAN: What I say is if climate change is a hoax, it's the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the United States of America. Because everything we would do to get ready for climate change, to build this new green industry, would make us more respected, more entrepreneurial, more competitive, more healthy as a country.

MR. BROKAW: Tom Friedman. Book is called "Hot, Flat and Crowded." It really is a textbook study of what's going on in the world today and some real possibilities of dealing with it. Thanks for being with us, Tom.

MR. FRIEDMAN: Pleasure. Thank you, Tom.

MR. BROKAW: We'll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. BROKAW: That's all for today. We'll be back next week, when our guests will include Bob Woodward and his new book "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006 to 2008." If it's Sunday, it's MEET THE PRESS.

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