Tom Friedman's Head Does Not Explode

Regular readers know that we don't like Tom Friedman around here, mostly for reasons well-stated here. He has regularly criticized young people for not taking action on the issues of the day, typically defining action as "yelling and screaming on campus quads with witty signage." So I was surprised to read his column on climate change in this weekend's edition of the New York Times.

Last week, I also met with two groups of M.I.T. students who blew me away. One was the M.I.T. Energy Club, which was founded in 2004 by a few grad students discussing energy over beers at a campus bar. Today it has 600-plus members who have put on scores of events focused on building energy expertise among M.I.T. students and faculty, and “fact-based analysis,” including a trip to Saudi Arabia.

Then I got together with three engineering undergrads who helped launch the Vehicle Design Summit — a global, open-source, collaborative effort, managed by M.I.T. students, that has 25 college teams around the world, including in India and China, working together to build a plug-in electric hybrid within three years. Each team contributes a different set of parts or designs. I thought writing for my college newspaper was cool. These kids are building a hyper-efficient car, which, they hope, “will demonstrate a 95 percent reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to grave” and provide “200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better.” The Linux of cars!

They’re not waiting for G.M. Their goal, they explain on their Web site — vds.mit.edu — is “to identify the key characteristics of events like the race to the moon and then transpose this energy, passion, focus and urgency” on catalyzing a global team to build a clean car. I just love their tag line. It’s what gives me hope:

“We are the people we have been waiting for.”

Shocking as it is, Friedman is giving props to young people for organizing effectively around the issue of climate change on the campus of MIT. Not by waving signs, but by building shit that actually prevents global warming. Either Friedman is slowly learning two things that we all know already - that activism can be a cultural and social experience, and that young people today are pragmatic and working within and through institutions to accomplish change that his generation has thus far been unwilling to make - or he is somehow managing to keep his head from exploding from the cognitive dissonance of his two world views.