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une 17, 2005
Tom Friedman, Idiot.
The more I read of Tom Friedman the more convinced I am that the man is an idiot.
So I have a question: If I am rooting for General Motors to go bankrupt and be bought out by Toyota, does that make me a bad person?
No Tom, being a fool is not the same as being a bad person. The contention, the mere idea, that anyone at Toyota actually wants to take over GM is the acme of foolishness. But theres more!
Having Toyota take over General Motors - which based its business strategy on building gas-guzzling cars, including the idiot Hummer, scoffing at hybrid technology and fighting Congressional efforts to impose higher mileage standards on U.S. automakers - would not only be in America's economic interest, it would also be in America's geopolitical interest.
Does Tommy not know who is the largest investor in Ballard Power Systems? That company which already has a working fuel cell system? The ones that power the buses in my little town in Portugal? Err, Tom? Its GM.
The Bush team has been M.I.A. on energy since 9/11. Indeed, the utter indifference of the Bush team to developing a geo-green strategy - which would also strengthen the dollar, reduce our trade deficit, make America the world leader in combating climate change and stimulate U.S. companies to take the lead in producing the green technologies that the world will desperately need as China and India industrialize - is so irresponsible that it takes your breath away.
MIA? The very people who have been funding and pushing the hydrogen economy?
In short, we don't need to reinvent the wheel or wait for sci-fi hydrogen fuel cells. The technologies we need for a stronger, more energy independent America are already here. The only thing we have a shortage of now are leaders with the imagination and will to move the country onto a geo-green path.
Leave aside the fantasy numbers he gives for ethanol/gas mixtures and think about what his basic contention is. That he, Tom, has spotted the perfect technological solution to a complex problem. Never mind the billions invested in, the tens of thousands working on other possible solutions, he, a journalist, knows the correct technology to use. Therefore, we should all pay $5 k more for our cars. Now. Immediately. Never mind that this solution is only an interim one, that it does not, as he seems to think, solve any of the problems associated with fossil fuel use, merely reduce them and stave off the date at which we will have to really change.
Idiocy.
June 17, 2005
