About "Green is the New: Red, White, & Blue."

A truly momentous event . . . "The Sustainable Shopper's Ball!" is proud to be celebrating America's new priorities: go green, shop local, & live sustainably.

The Sustainable Shopper's Ball is Austin's all-local, outdoor green living market. Inspiration for each of our festivals comes from renown leaders in the field of sustainable living. Our "Green is the New: Red, White & Blue" celebration (event #7) is inspired by the work of American writer Thomas Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

Mr. Friedman is Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times, his most recent book "The World Is Flat," a 566-page analysis of globalization, has sold millions of copies, winning the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Each of Mr. Friedman's previous books are also best sellers. Mr. Friedman is a frequent guest at conferences and talk shows, and was named one of America's best leaders by U.S. News & World Report.

Thomas Freidman, certainly one of the most influential thinkers in the American financial community, was an early champion of the green movement. His regular columns, popular interviews, and recent tome (World is Flat) passionately and deftly describe a "best path forward" for America.

That path, in short, proposes that: in an era of declining natural resources, weakened economies, endangered food chains, encroaching loss of seasonal regularity, spiraling-upward toxicities, continuing increases of waste and CO2 emissions, and crumbling integrity in media, politics, and business leadership, America will soon want to "get it's groove back" by taking the lead in energy & environmentalism.

Mr. Friedman casts "green" as America's new patriotic dream and economic opportunity. If in fact, the spirit of the American dream is to "make it" independently, creating wealth and prosperity for oneself and the community, and if in fact, America is a nation of cultural and financial leaders, and if in fact, America is a nation built by the people, for the people, and if in fact a patriot's duty is to protect the welfare of the Country -- then the global and local ecosystem challenges of today present new impetus to innovate technological, economic, and cultural solutions that affect us all positively.

We must, in effect, go green. We must build an environmentally sustainable economy. Just as the economy touches all aspects of modern human life, so does the environment act as the foundation upon which we stand ... and pursue happiness.

thomas friedman links
video: http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=46dd3d6fde496927d1d80e1120a79631b58bde60
article: http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/news/sbnews.cfm?id=8386
website: http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/
book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_is_Flat