At long last, after years of flirtatiously standing on the sidelines of the sustainability debate, he has now got properly stuck in with his new book “Hot, Flat & Crowded”. Great title: seriously good read.

Friedman has always been a seriously good author. Both “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”, and “The World is Flat” became best-sellers all around the world. But they drove me absolutely bonkers. Full of references to some of the problems associated with globalisation, including climate change, but zero understanding that this particular model of globalisation, in praise of which he has spilled millions of words, couldn’t possibly be sustained over time. Such persuasive advocacy so frustratingly missing the mark.

But “Hot, Flat & Crowded” is bang on the mark. Totally authoritative analysis as to why business-as-usual capitalism is dead in the water, coupled with a very upbeat account of the kind of “green industrial revolution” that is now available to us (Gordon Brown should love it!) and there is nothing like a guru-come-lately to go way over the top in terms of born-again enthusiasm.

I even managed to overcome my irritation at his constant references to “green” no longer being a “niche”, as if it is all suddenly mainstream because he is now attending to it. Actually, dear Thomas, Teddy Goldsmith’s “Blueprint for Survival” in 1968 was saying exactly what “Hot, Flat & Crowded” is saying now, just as seriously, just as penetratingly. Nothing “niche” about it. It was simply that an awful lot of apparently very intelligent people just didn’t get it forty years ago.

Friedman’s other, rather enduring blindspot is that he believes the United States will now step up to the plate and lead the rest of the world into an ultra-low-carbon, totally sustainable future. Really! No sign of that I’m afraid, in the campaign speeches of either John McCain or Barack Obama.

This splendid chauvinism leads him off in some strange directions. One of the best sections in the book is about China, and the way China is starting to address very seriously many of its environmental challenges, particularly in terms of massive new investments in environmental technologies. But even when he looks at that, Friedman still believes it won’t really come to anything unless the United States blinks first, and takes the lead. “If America decisively embarked on building a Clean Energy System and the technologies to drive it, China would have no choice but to move decisively in the same direction”.

I think that’s rubbish. In my opinion, it is far more likely that China will just get on and do it, regardless of what’s happening in the US – simply because the risks to China from climate change are far more serious. There’s an interesting thought: sustainability as another nail in the coffin of US ascendency!