In Conversation With Tom Friedman's House, A Continuing Series ....

Ah, the imaginings of Thomas Malthus continue to drive the left - regardless of the fact that Malthus and his disciples predictions have continued to be wrong for two centuries. And there is this utopian dream that when the "reckoning" comes we will all suddenly solve all our problems.

Rising population has not led to mass death from starvation or poverty - in fact the percentage of the human population in poverty has been shrinking for over a century, and continues to shrink - largely because of capitalism and the consumer society.

Rising food prices will drive efficiency in farming and new technologies. The technology exists to make potable water from the sea. Yemen is a particularly bad example for "running out of water" because it's political situation is the root of the problem, not it's overpopulation or "consumerist" society...

Hey Tom - from which one of the countless rooms in your friggin big house did you think up the line - everybody else has an eco unsustainable big foot print !?

The hypocrisy of the leftist elite knows no bounds.

I'll bank on human ingenuity over Malthusian alarmists. Every time. Why do these people continue to get press? They've been wrong every time since the 1970s when it comes to these types of predictions.

It's not as bad as it seems. Paul Krugman and David Frum live in his basement.

“We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we’re not stupid.”
~Gilding

That new sustainable model should be free market capitalism, socialism is a proven failure.
Global warming, my ass.

Tom: '.. when food prices spiked ...'

Ya, because your fellow eco-fanatic friends forced the world to burn food in our vehicles (hello Al Gore country, where 40% of the US corn crop is commandeered to make ethanol).

Sent him an email, the bloodsucking parasitic overconsuming plutocrat!

Hey Tom, the reason for high gas prices - your idol president bans new drilling because the eco-fanatic elite wants the middle class to be forced back into the cave. Makes it easier to control the populace. The world is awash in undiscovered energy sources. We have only scratched the surface. (no pun)

Thomas Friedman is a perfect example of a modern-day King, ruling elite scum - complete with castle.
Purposely create hardships for the populace, scare them with crazy Armageddon predictions and lead them to believe they can seek salvation by giving up ... shopping ? (I already have, heh)

Can anyone explain to me the difference between the climate scientist dooms-dayers and that fellow last month that predicted an exact date for the end of the world based on the Bible? Apart from the fact that both waste far too much time attempting to interpret irrelevant minutia to know the future with perfect precision?

Unless you are a fide digna OT prophet (the qualifications of which are 100% accuracy), predicting cataclysmic events is an arrogant human endeavour based on the idea that all things are "knoweable" within the confines of our puny minds. So how come "dumb animals" are capable of sensing earthquakes before humans and before our best seismographic equipment if humans are so wise?

Homo Sapien Sapiens or sappy homos being sapped?

So how come "dumb animals" are capable of sensing earthquakes before humans and before our best seismographic equipment if humans are so wise?

Apparently humans are too busy shopping to notice.

Some of 'em sure act like they've been sapped, ricardo - stunned zombies who believe every piece of crap that pours from the word processors of elitist swine like Friedman.

I have my own index that I maintain. I call it the Human Stupidity Number, HSN, and it measures the relative stupidity of a person based on their spoken and written word. The index is measured in terms of people. By my own estimate (I don't have any "alliance" of like minded people yet) Thomas L. Friedman is running at 8.4. Which means it would take 8.4 average people spouting nonsense to generate the same level of stupidity as this man.

MarkD @12:54 - Threadwinnah!

(I've said before, the one thing you can say for Paul Krugman is at least he's not Tom Friedman. And vice versa.)

I don't mind environmentalists who walk the walk. I don't always agree with them, but if they live in small townhouses, bike everywhere, and never travel far then I must extend to them my grudging respect.

But this? The hypocrisy is staggering.

If you drained that pool, an Afican village could move there. You could run a smallish Chinese prisoner slave-labour operation from that thing.

I can understand how the earth looks full to him. Certainly there isn't enough nice greenspace for everyone of the world's billions of people to despoil with a mansion like his.

+1 to rabbit. I don't know any such people - the non-hypocritical kind - myself, but I know they exist. Back-to-the-landers, the real deal. This fellow went all the way, and I can't help but approve of the results.

Mamba, not sure if it's currently correct or not to support slave labor in China. I mean the people imposing the slavery are Commies, right, and Communism is an inherent good, right? Inquiring minds want to know - help me out here! ;)

And Malthus' isn't the only failed philosophy at work here. Somebody made an interesting observation on Talk Radio today that "Hegelian dialectics" (which was adopted by Marx in the political sphere) is at work as a process by which somebody manufactures a unique problem in order to present themselves as the only solution -- to put themselves in a position of absolute control.

Sorta like a mafia-owned home security company that hires professional B&E artists to break into homes in your neighbourhood, so that their salesmen can drop by and sell you their alarm systems the next day.

For an excellent summary of decades of Malthusian mischief read this:

Population Growth as Propaganda: The Greens and the Reds by Gary North

"Argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.”

Ah yes, the new Soviet man. Now, where have we heard that before?

@ricardo: I just had a quick look at your website. Thanks for exposing the curse that is socialism in Latin America. Awesome, brilliant site, I am feeling really choked up right now at some of the things I've learned there.

Con respeto y admiración -

Michael.

Michael,

Thanks, I don't post to the site very often (plenty of better ones like SDA). I'll be uploading some good photos in a week or so though -- old material but a good historical record what occurred in Latin America re: Communism. At least relevant today with the resurgence of the "Bolivarian Revolution", Hugo Chavez, etc.,

As to the topic at hand: I don't think any of us foresaw how Indigenous Peoples in places such as Bolivia would get sucked in to the radical environmentalist agenda a la Marx.

Saludos

Friedman: "While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana."

I saw that 35 years ago in Haiti and many other places since then. Pipelines are much more efficient. This is what you get when organizational skills are used for blowing things up rather than building.

If Friedman thinks the Earth is full, it's his moral responsibility to leave it.

Friedman doesn't think the earth is full, he just thinks there are too many of a certain kind of people.
I agree with him to a certain extent.
There are too many of the kind of people who read Thomas Friedman and think he has something worth saying.

Indigenous people are very handy useful idiots sometimes, Ricardo; check out how they align with leftists and greenies here in Canuckistan.

Except when they try to assert their ancient right to hunt whales though; that's when correctness disappears up its own ass, and green trumps brown.

"Friedman: "While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana."

MY frickin' water gets delivered. Its considerably cheaper than digging a pipeline down my road to service five houses.

Before anyone asks, yes, the well water 'round here is sour. Gas deposits, y'know.

If the Earth is full, Tommy boy should do his part and get the hell off.

From the link...."If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees,” writes Gilding. “If you put additional nitrogen into a water system, you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the Earth’s CO2 blanket, the Earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet Earth behaves, with social, economic, and life support impacts. This is not speculation; this is high school science.”

Or is it science done by high schoolers?

How long before these eco-terrorists are finally defeated? What will it take. I read a forum about kids sometimes and so many of these people have swallowed the eco-terror propaganda. There's actually people out there who are broke, can barely feed their family but feel guilty about buying non-local, non-organic food because it might hurt the planet or whatever. It's insane.

Isn't that the guest house on Al Gore's estate?

Don't Panic!
Friedman, Gore and Gilding will soon be leaving on the B-Ark.

Don't any of you think that Ms "Obama's gonna pay my mortgage" is living a lifestyle that far exceeds what her output would otherwise allow? How many others like her are there out there?

He's actually right, but for reasons that differ from what he thinks they are.

Nice house!
Ah, hmm no, I havn't read his collumn.
Same stuff as last time, I would guess.

I'll just enjoy the comments.

I'll learn a LOT more that way.

Mike Anderson:

Believing the Chinese are communists is like believing the Republicans are capitalists. They're both looters (Democrats too!) with no respect for ideology.

And just as a comment to you and rabbit:

A couple of months ago, I landed a contract with a US precious metals firm. I was on a plane every week, flying from Toronto to some US city and back. I stayed in big hotel rooms, took limos everywhere, and ate in fancy restaurants. Now, the contract's up. I'm back in my 1-bedroom apartment, riding my bike or taking the bus to my new job, eating at home, etc. I didn't think I was killing the earth at my old job, and I don't think I'm a hero for living as I do now. I think it's the height of arrogance to presume to lecture others on how to live their lives.

From time to time, I've argued here for more respect and accommodation for cyclists in urban traffic (and I'll do so in the future). I've suggested that hybrid or electric only vehicles make sense in certain applications. But I've never told anyone that they should get rid of their pickup, or that they must take transit instead of their car.

Friedman is a staggering, jaw-dropping hypocrite. I bet an African family of ten could live comfortably on his garbage, but he presumes to tell the rest of us we're living too large. Good thing he doesn't live near me; if he were to spout that nonsense in earshot, fist (mine) might meet jaw (his) to detrimental effect.

Solar panels? Wind turbine?
“If you don't visit the bad neighborhoods, the bad neighborhoods are going to visit you.”
Thomas Friedman

39.006764,-77.144913

"The Earth Is Full".... of bought and paid for, limousine riding, corrupt, evil, bloviating ChiCom errand boys selling their souls, families and friends down the river for THEIR bigger piece.

Hey Tommy, why not get some of your friends together and use the Chinese Ministry of the Environment's teachings and "new economic model" to start up your own party and run in the next election?