Poker games aren’t typically the source for intellectual capital but given my sloppy play last night I’m thrilled I came away with anything. One of my buddies mentioned Thomas Friedman’s article from last Sunday’s New York Times magazine called “The Power of Green” as a must read. Hearing about it again on NPR this morning provided further confirmation this was an important piece and alerted me to the upcoming (4/21/07, 9pm) documentary featuring Friedman’s reporting on green technology called “Green: The New Red, White and Blue” on the Discovery Channel.
Okay, so what could be so interesting that it would trump the usual trash talk at a poker game? Well, first of all, Friedman frames the green debate as the means “to reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad and restore America to its natural place in the global order — as the beacon of progress, hope and inspiration.” Wow, that’s lofty stuff and it gets better:
Well, I want to rename “green.†I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism.
Friedman’s suggests we need 50 green states to replace our divisive red and blue segmentation:
Because a new green ideology, properly defined, has the power to mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward. That’s why I say: We don’t just need the first black president. We need the first green president. We don’t just need the first woman president. We need the first environmental president. We don’t just need a president who has been toughened by years as a prisoner of war but a president who is tough enough to level with the American people about the profound economic, geopolitical and climate threats posed by our addiction to oil — and to offer a real plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
The article goes on to detail the history of petropolitics, the impact of China’s growing energy needs on the world, the rise of “green hawks” in the US military, how Wal-Mart among others is helping to reduce energy consumption and why the US needs a “Green New Deal” that supports clean power development. To wrap up this amazing piece, he concludes that this generation needs to step up:
An unusual situation like this calls for the ethic of stewardship. Stewardship is what parents do for their kids: think about the long term, so they can have a better future. It is much easier to get families to do that than whole societies, but that is our challenge. In many ways, our parents rose to such a challenge in World War II — when an entire generation mobilized to preserve our way of life. That is why they were called the Greatest Generation. Our kids will only call us the Greatest Generation if we rise to our challenge and become the Greenest Generation.
After reading such a profound and thorough piece, my commentary feels superficial at best. That said, I have no doubt that marketers can play a profound role to inspire the Greenest Generation with greener products, services and messaging. A modern-day Joshua, Friedman has blown the horn–now it’s time for action.