In the book, Friedman addresses what he sees as America's loss of focus and national purpose since
9/11 and the global
environmental crisis. He advocates that
global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the global middle class are leading to a convergence of hot, flat, and crowded. He argues that the solution to the environmental threat and the best way for America to renew its purpose are linked: take the lead in a worldwide effort to replace wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for
sustainable energy,
energy efficiency, and conservation. This means that the big economic opportunities have shifted from IT (
Information Technology) in recent decades to ET (renewable
Environmental Technologies). Friedman frequently uses 2050 as a marker for when it will be too late for our world to reverse the harmful
effects of climate change. Friedman writes that the needed green revolution of the title would be more ambitious than any project so far undertaken: It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; and it will change everything from transportation to the utilities industry. This project is described in terms of nation-building. The book alleges we've gone from the "Cold War Era" to the "Energy-Climate Era", marked by five major problems: growing demand for scarcer supplies, massive transfer of wealth to dictators, disruptive
climate change, the lower class falling behind, and an accelerating
loss of biodiversity. He argues that a green strategy is not simply about generating electric power, it is a new way of generating national power. and the
Foreign Policy article, "The First Law of Petropolitics". The book has been criticized for ignoring
overpopulation as the root cause of the problems it analyzes, as Friedman writes extensively about
resource scarcity, but does not address excessive demand. == Editions ==