A New Idea: Green

By Derek Beres

While journalist Thomas Friedman may not have realized that numerous movements are already in motion to ensure what he offers in today’s NY Times article “The Power of Green” (Friedman has often been criticized as being a popularizer of political ideas more than saying anything particularly gorundbreaking), I can’t help but feel happy to read passages like this:

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.

As I sit stranded in Birmingham after giving workshops and lectures at the University of Alabama due to, according to the Times, a winter-type Noreaster in Spring, I can only hope Friedman’s words, like the many before him, will ring true. It’s supposed to be 31 degrees in Tuscaloosa tonight, something, according to my friend who has lived there since the late ’70s, never happens. Never becomes now, and the smokestacks of steel and fire I noticed on Route 20/59 last night continues to burn brightly…

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