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My order was delivered within the time it was promised and was in excellent condition. I would order from this provider again and again.
Mr. I am only half way through and it is glaringly obvious Mr. Overall I am very disapointed by this book, especially compared to his earlier works. Friedman has the solution for everything. Friedman has gone beyond drinking the koolaid, he is now a high priest of the secular Green tyranny. He spares no digs any anything skeptical of the claims,consevative or George Bush, his science is cherry picked and unbalanced and his hysterical,desperate tone gets old quickly. All I have to do is give up another third of my income and my liberty, live according to the rulings of the green dictators and the planet can be saved. The book is anything but balanced or objective, it may play well with the choir, but will not engage or convert anyone, such as my self, who holds legitimate, fact based doubts about the contrived crisis he preaches.
Very informative and enlightening -- comprehensively covered a very complex set of contemporary problems. Offered some new insights and solutions -- I hope every politician in USA reads this book.
All in all, one has to accept his faulty premises in order for the rest of the book to have any gravity at all. Friedman says at several points that government has kept us from moving toward clean energy, only to later say that government should provide the incentive to move in that direction. What good, then, will a plan be that is too late to execute. This makes me believe that these "point of no return" dates are scare tactics to invoke panicked votes for policies that the public does not have time to consider; policies that will further empower government. Without the cry of emergency, there is no need to resort to such things.
while some aspects of the premise may be true, the attempt to make it alarming diminishes its credibility. Actually quite a few things. Crisis exists no more now than ever. Best 2) Mr. He uses entirely too many anecdotes, presents theory as fact, and in a somewhat pompous manner attempts to coin his own phrases.
This was all very disappointing since I really enjoyed and agreed with The World is Flat. The problems I had with the premise were:1) As far as I have heard, scientific consensus has not totally confirmed global warming, much less our role in it. This presented some trouble for me. Every generation has crises which, to it, hold the fate of humanity. 2) The earth getting more "flat" as Mr. I don't think the green revolution ought to be accomplished by, or for that matter compared to, any of Chairman Mao's definitions.
The problem with this work is that in order for it to be reasonable, one must accept Mr. Friedman seems to be conflicted or confused about a few things. It is obvious that some of his policies (i.e. In the Global Weirding chapter he quotes the comedy paper The Onion, which may be funny but does not strenthen his case. Friedman seems to have little understanding of economics as is evident in the polices he would implement.
The flattening of the earth has simply made us more aware of what has been going on this whole time. 2) The mixmatch of credible quotes, incredible quotes, humorous quotes, and anecdotes creates a situation in which potentially credible information is drown by hearsay and irrelavence. There is still a significant list of counter evidence to man made global warming. This makes me wonder if he knows what a free market actually is. These were just the main ones: 1) Is it the job of government or the job of the free market to make the push toward clean energy. Although I do agree with his stance on petrodictatorships, his economic policies for weaning off foreign oil are very faulty. Friedman points out.
Also, in the chapter proposing how to start the green revolution, he uses a quote by Mao Tse-tung on how to enact a revolution. Other than a few flaws with the premise Mr. 3) It is unclear if the new plan for clean energy is possible or impossible. He raises some good questions, then gives poor solutions.
This relatively new ability allows us to share and compare information about economy, weather, resources, population, and other important statistics in an unprecedented way. Friedman's premise: that the earth is getting hotter, flatter, and more crowded. 3) The combination of hot, flat, and crowded does not equal a state of emergency. 3) Some of the quotes in the beginning of chapters were subprime.
He often uses a single anecdote to attempt to convince the reader of some broad trend somewhere. I say good luck to that. Apart from the premise and the inconsistent logic, the book was disagreeable for other reasons: 1) The biased nature of the sources he sites. He uses the banner of emergency as justification for poor policy: "Some people say it will ruin our economy and is a project we can't afford to do. He at one point claims that "the people are ahead of the government in demand for clean energy" but then claims that "the market must be guided by government policies." He combines these ideas to say things like ".the only thing that can stimulate this much innovation in new technologies and the radical improvement of existing ones is the free market." paired with ".you have to intelligently design and fertilize them - with the right taxes, regulations, incentives, and disincentives." What I am hearing him say is that we need a free market which is regulated by the government. Friedman likes to put it contributes only to the appearance of global emergency by allowing previously isolated groups of people to communicate on a minute to minute level. He sites sources known to promote agenda, or at very least not promote American interests, to verify the need for his poor economics. Without the emergency he initially creates the rest of the book loses its steam.
This is obviously not possible as Mr. He says things such as lobbyists for coal and oil are buying policy protection from the government, and he now expects governent to act against those who have been paying them. The market will turn in that direction of its own accord, as it already has. Some sources he sites claim that if we are not off fossil fuels by as early as 2012 it will be to late. While it is not a stretch to believe these things, he presents them as an emergency. I do agree that effeciency is good, and competing to be greener than others is fine.
One wonders why he chose that particular quote. He seems hopeful, and talks at length about the government policies that would put us in the "right" direction, but also makes it quite evident that the world going green is an overwhelming task that will take generations. I'd say it's a project at which we can't afford to fail." Again, to Mr.
Friedman, the state of emergency justifies poor economics, but as I mentioned earlier about the premise, if you don't accept the emergency the plan is unnecessary. Our ability to know about all the goings on in the world simultaneously contributes only to the appearance that more is going on than ever in history, which is not the case. All in all, this book raises some awareness of energy efficiency and the direction we should think about heading, which is neither new information nor is it presented better than any other book on the subject.
He seems to think that big government will dig us out of the mess that big government created. price floors for energy)would wreak havoc on the economy (reference Henry Hazlitt for the best explaination of this)and he even makes mention that the policies may do so. However, I cannot concede to faulty economic plans and enhanced government control to enact it.
I hope people don't trust this book just because it has his name on it.
Using search on terms provides different results than the printed index. The Kindle edition of this work lacks a usable index. For example, in the printed version, the term appliance is qualified with four subcategories that include 15 separate page listings and three multi-page sections. The index is provided as a list of terms without section numbers that would correspond to pages. Selecting an index term defines it rather than linking to it. Querying "appliance" using Kindle search returns 9 pages of 53 instances of the term without differentiation or context other than the few words surrounding the search term. In a book presented in electronic format without standardized paging, index terms should be linked to their location inside the text.
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