It’s an old joke in the blogosphere about Thomas Friedman and the way he can always find a taxi driver in the course of his world travels who just happens to provide quote-worthy material that reads like, well, Thomas Friedman with a foreign accent.
But this, now:
As a result, one has produced a fuel cell that can turn natural gas or natural grass into electricity; the other has a technology that might make coal the cleanest, cheapest energy source by turning its carbon-dioxide emissions into bricks to build your next house.
Given that Matt Taibbi already noticed how he based a chapter in a book on a bumper sticker he saw, I strongly suspect that he saw one of those truckers with a “Gas, Grass, or Ass: Nobody Rides for Free!” sticker and took it as inspiration for this column. It disappoints me that he only chose to consider two of the possibilities, though.