The Kicker

Tom Friedman, Oversimplifier

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On Sunday, New York Times columnist and centrist Democrat luminary Tom Friedman waxed poetic about all the wonderful energy-related things they do in Europe. Why ever can’t we do that stuff here? He wrote about motion-sensitive lights that turn on and off by themselves and toilets that have two different flush powers! Scandinavia is so energy efficient, isn’t it grand?

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

I’m sure the light bulbs are all very nice, but this sort of praise is along the lines of a report by a third grader about energy consumption. Saving energy is good. So sad we aren’t doing more of it. Gold star, Tommy.

But Tom Friedman is an adult and should look at this issue more critically. Friedman’s article addressed few substantive differences between Scandinavia and the U.S. His “Denmark-did-it, why-can’t-we?” take on energy policy is asinine. As if energy independence is just a matter of style and willpower.

There are, in fact, a number of significant structural differences at work between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States of America. One of these differences has to do with land development, about which one might expect Tom Friedman to know a little more.

Friedman, after all, is married to Ann Bucksbaum, the heiress to the $2.7 billion General Growth Properties fortune. Founded by Friedman’s father-in-law in 1954, GGP is America’s second largest real estate investment trust and owns, develops, and operates regional shopping malls in forty-one states.

That’s right, malls. Fat, energy-hogging, climate controlled, sprawl-inducing—many of the most palpable examples of American waste and ecological irresponsibility are owned and managed by Tom Friedman’s family.

This makes all this gee-why-don’t-you-write-your-congressman naiveté a little hard to take. Friedman actually has direct access to a company with some control over the level of waste the United States perpetuates on the world.

But I guess for some people the world really is flat; and the Starbucks is just next to the Nordstrom.

CJR

Comments

Dana Sullivan

Tue 12 Aug 2008 11:03 AM

Friedman, by marriage, loses purity as an advocate for energy reform. So that automatically means anything he says is wrong. Interesting twist on argumentum ad hominem. Argumentum ad uxorem (if I'm declining "wife" correctly)

Malik M

Tue 12 Aug 2008 11:55 AM

Well who says he wont try to persuade his wife's family to think green after his voyage of inspiration to Greenland?

Besides, how would we ever achieve any kind of changes in the world if we only listened to people whom we knew for a fact walked their talks?

TDC

Tue 12 Aug 2008 02:20 PM

Could Denmark’s ability to use so much wind energy have anything to do with the fact that they are tied into the much larger European Power grid and have don’t have to worry about bringing spare capacity online when the wind turbines, a non-dispatchable generation source, stops turning? You and Friedman probably didn’t know about all those minor technical details considering that your sourcing for an article on energy stops after a call or two to Earth First, Greenpeace and The Union of Concerned Scientist (instead of someone who know what they are talking about, what a novel concept).

And why are you so down on Friedman for being a hypocrite? After all, Al Gore is perhaps the biggest climate hypocrite on earth (did you guys check out his new million dollar houseboat) and you all treat him like some kind of freaking saint.