Hot, Flat and Crowded

"Thomas Friedman is an American commentator and a bit of a business guru. This book is lively, beautifully written, full of personal anecdotes. I should say that Friedman used to piss me off more than most other writers because he never talked about resources, climate change , population growth – these were invisible issues for him. Then, a few years ago, something changed and he started to address all this. So, ‘hot’ refers to accelerating climate change, ‘crowded’ to overpopulation, and ‘flat’ to how we might make globalisation work for the whole of humankind. It’s a wonderful book. He’s particularly good on how the United States might be made to take the issues more seriously – not by lecturing them about their carbon footprint but by telling them that if they don’t get going then China will beat them into the ground on the new sustainable technologies."