Latest Thomas Friedman Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Water is our next great environmental challenge. It is the new oil. How are we going to preserve this sport unless we are designing and maintaining golf courses that are energy net zero, carbon net zero and water net zero? Or ideally, energy positive, carbon positive and water positive, where they are taking out more than they are using.

  Thomas Friedman

  Sports, Golf, Water

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• What if we're wrong and there is no climate change? Well, by doing everything possible to address it, we will still use less water, stimulate new energy savings and, in time, money-saving technologies, enjoy cleaner air, and preserve more forests and trees and animals.

  Thomas Friedman

  Animal, Technology, Water

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• You always have to remember that Mother Nature is a lot like your body. If your temperature goes from 98.6 to 100.6, you don't feel so good. If it goes from 100.6 to 102.6, well, you call the doctor. If it goes from 102.6 to 104.6, you're in the emergency room at a hospital. The same with Mother Nature - small changes in global average temperatures have a huge climate effect.

  Thomas Friedman

  Mother, Remember, Like You

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• Remember, the difference between the world frozen over, in an ice ball, and the warming period we're in now is just 6 degrees centigrade. A change of just 1 degree can have a huge effect.

  Thomas Friedman

  World, Remember

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• Scientists tend to focus on what they don't know more than what they do know. And there are a lot of things we still don't know about the climate. But we know the difference between climate variability and climate change, and right now the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is well outside the variability pattern - and that's quite quantifiable.

  Thomas Friedman

  Focus, Atmosphere, Scientist

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• There is definitely global warming, and man is definitely contributing to it. Go out to, say, Montana and talk to some pretty conservative people, hunters and fishermen. They know that in the trout stream they fished when they were growing up, the trout are stressed because the water temperature is going up. They know the hunting season has been delayed because the snows are coming later, and therefore the elk aren't coming down from the mountains.

  Thomas Friedman

  Growing Up, Men, Hunting

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• Arnold Schwarzenegger said it best: "Your son is sick. Ninety-eight doctors give you one diagnosis, two doctors give you another. Who are you going to go with?" Well, why would it be the conservative position to go with the two? That's not conservative, that's crazy.

  Thomas Friedman

  Crazy, Son, Giving

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• Combating climate change requires government policy, and most conservatives hate the idea of more government regulation. Because they hate the prescription, they deny the diagnosis.

  Thomas Friedman

  Hate, Climate Change, Policy

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• Everyone needs to get together and say: "Our objective is to preserve and enhance the game and the planet on which it's played. To make golf a leader in greening the world."

  Thomas Friedman

  Golf, Leader, Together

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• Many of us who grew up playing golf know that our kids aren't doing it. A great way to enhance the game, make it cool again and bring back some of the interest among younger people is to make golf the greenest sport in an environmental sense. Every course's greenkeeper should think of himself or herself as the greenkeeper: responsible for preserving the green, not just the greens.

  Thomas Friedman

  Sports, Kids, Golf

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it's a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn't pave the world - it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water. And this is in a world where we know that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are toxic, and water is more and more scarce. Golf could do a lot more.

  Thomas Friedman

  Golf, Water, World

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• The thing you have to remember is, oil and gas are commodities, and the more we use them the more the price goes up, like any commodity. Solar, wind - they are technologies, so the more you use them, the more the price goes down.

  Thomas Friedman

  Technology, Remember, Commodity

  Source: www.golfdigest.com

• I'm pretty much an open book. I am a fanatic golfer and golf nut. If I have three free hours any day, my first choice is to run to the golf course if the weather is nice.

  Thomas Friedman

  Running, Nice, Book

  Source: theislamicmonthly.com

• I don't think a monarchy led by 75- and 80-year-old men [Saudi Arabia] in today's modern world is really sustainable.

  Thomas Friedman

  Men, Thinking, Years

• I think no country is going to be immune from the Arab awakening because the Arab awakening is driven by deep human longing for dignity, for justice and for freedom. I think that applies to young people in Saudi Arabia as much as to young people in Egypt, Tunisia, or Yemen, or Libya, or Syria. If I were in Saudi Arabia, I would be getting ahead of this and looking for ways to appreciate those aspirations and align my country with them.

  Thomas Friedman

  Country, Thinking, Egypt

  Source: theislamicmonthly.com

• I don't think we replaced the Soviet Union with Al Qaida. I think we replaced, we should have, Soviet Union with the merger of globalization and the IT revolution. I think it's that. That is the real challenge that we face today. Unlike the Soviet Union, it has no face, it has no missiles, but it is something that challenges every job, every city and every community.

  Thomas Friedman

  Jobs, Real, Thinking

• I think the Arab awakening has changed everything and I think a lot will depend on what people there ask of us, may be nothing, it may be a lot. I think that really depends how they find their voice and what they see as their real interest, and hopefully that would be for more schools and not more tanks.

  Thomas Friedman

  Real, School, Thinking

  Source: theislamicmonthly.com

• I am always a little skeptical on the water thing because I have been hearing that for 30 years, but one year it's going to be true. With the rising populations, Yemen could be the first country in the world, or Sana'a the first major city in the world, to run out of water, that's from Yemeni hydrological engineers and the United Nations. Sooner or later, all of these people, from 7 to 9 billion, all of them want to live like America, will be consuming so much more water that some of the societies will hit a wall without more sustainable environmental practices.

  Thomas Friedman

  Country, Running, Wall

• Syria is on the back end of basically a decade-long drought. Over the last decade, farmers and herders have been ravaged in Syria forcing them to give up and move to urban areas. This has put a huge strain on urban resources, and it's surely one of the reasons for the uprising there.

  Thomas Friedman

  Giving Up, Moving, Uprising

• There is a connection between energy, climate, food and political stability. That has played out in the Arab awakening and is not done playing out.

  Thomas Friedman

  Political, Energy, Climate

  Source: theislamicmonthly.com

• The Arab awakening has been, up to now, a lot about freedom from dictatorial regimes - Syria, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain and Egypt. But once you got freedom from, then you need freedom to. Freedom from is about destroying things. Freedom to is about constructing things, constructing the rule of law.

  Thomas Friedman

  Egypt, Law, Needs

• The Arab world had a big problem of frankly venal elites. That is why these revolutions happen, because people didn't think the opportunities were being shared fairly.

  Thomas Friedman

  Opportunity, Thinking, People

• My mother-in-law says if you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat. That if you are a part of the group that is doing well in this system, you owe it to yourself and to others to look out for them and make sure you are always building a ladder for others to join you.

  Thomas Friedman

  Mother, Law, Groups

  Source: theislamicmonthly.com

• Most jobs are outsourced to the past, they aren't outsourced to India or Mexico or Pakistan or anywhere else.

  Thomas Friedman

  Jobs, Past, India

• It's easy to kind of say it's the elite that's putting you down. Well, it wasn't really the elite, technology will do that.

  Thomas Friedman

  Technology, Kind, Easy