Making green the new red, white, and blue.

• Author: Friedman, Thomas L.
• Position: Energy efficiency

Focusing the nation on energy efficiency--on being green--is the most geostrategic, patriotic thing we can do. It is a national-security imperative. The biggest threat to America and its values today is "petrolism," my term for the corrupting, antidemocratic governing practices--m oil states from Russia to Nigeria and Iran--that result from a long run of $60-a-barrel oil. Our energy gluttony strengthens and fosters these regimes. We cannot dry up the swamps of authoritarianism and violent Islamism in the Mideast without drying up our consumption of oil, thereby bringing...