Tom Friedman, do you take Malthus with your tea?

Lots of Daily Show this week. Tom Friedman's a fairly sensible guy and likes to push people in positive directions, though he's short on revelations.

They both hit the problem on the head: fossil fuels are cheap and dirty. They are also packed with huge amounts of chemical energy, which is a bit more technical.

Mr. Friedman wants to 'level the playing field' between green power and fossil fuels, inferring levying a pollution tax so great that the price difference is irrelevant. Fair enough, taxes should implement social change. Two problems that I see: one is the old yarn about the problem with the commons, which continues to show itself true. If the U.S. does its due diligence and cleans up its act, why should other nations do the same? Especially nations that are enjoying, despite a slowdown, annual growths of seven and nine percent. What's more, they have a much better argument not to participate in world enviornmental initiatives: the relative costs that would cut deep for us would cut even deeper for them.

The other problem is that there is no one good solution. Instead, we have several: the aforementioned green sources plus nuclear, natural gas, and 'clean coal,' a technology apparently years away. If we put these all together, will they add up approximately to what we had before? Or will we be left subsidizing these sources because they cost so much more to generate power?

In the new times of thrift and consumer fear, I think we should ask ourselves: how much does it cost? Not how much would it cost given a series of hypotheses, but how much does it cost now? From there, are all of these technologies and infrastructure proposals going to get cheaper? How would they? I'm not ruling anything out, but I will say one thing: to me, it takes less work to blow up a mountaintop in West Virginia than to maintain the moving parts for a million wind fans collecting wind energy.

While not advocating any more desecration of West Virginia, probably one of the most beautiful states in the Union, I want to point out that the ante keeps being raised on enviornmental causes. It used to be: walk when you can, keep your tires inflated, insulate your house better, and don't use the heater and air-conditioning when you're not at home. While you're at it, turn off appliances you're not using and turn off the sink when you brush your teeth. Now I feel like we're at permanent threat level orange. What's changed? The sea levels, a little. Some migratory patterns too. It seems very presumptuous, though, to say that these things are leading us to a cataclysm.

Tom Friedman tries to present himself as reasonable, but this energy movement is supposed to be the new economy, even though it will certainly cost more--much more. More money for energy means less money for universal health care and less money for social security for a larger aging population that will live longer than previous generations. There's only so much economy to go around!

The cracks in his reasonable facade started showing when he started talking about the world getting "crowded," a view routinely expounded by those who think that their fear-laden view is the objective view. It's simply not true-there are millions of square miles that people can live on, even if the world's population doubles. But, I'm biased too. I like people, I like babies, and I live in a metropolis that feels plenty crowded!