Thomas Friedman got his start at The New York Times reporting on the civil war in Lebanon four decades ago and has won three Pulitzer Prizes writing about conflicts and the human condition across the globe.

But on Tuesday when Friedman, now a Times columnist and bestselling author, delivered the Kenner Lecture to a packed house at Lehigh's Zoellner Arts Center, he suggested that humanity's best hope may be found in lessons from the natural world.

Friedman has visited numerous pristine ecosystems with great biodiversity and sees them as models of connectivity that human societies need to emulate to thrive. The ecosystems that were surviving climate change "were those that build complex adaptive networks with healthy interdependencies where they network together to maximize their productivity, adaptability and resilience," he said. 

"And then I just started to morph that over to human communities I was visiting and realized that the towns, the communities that were thriving when the climate ... and technology changed were those that were building complex adaptive coalitions. All the elements of the community were coming together to maximize their resilience, productivity and adaptability."

Friedman's freewheeling talk, titled "The Big Trends Shaping the World Today: Economics, Technology and Geopolitics," touched on the war in Ukraine, artificial intelligence, authoritarianism, human rights, global trade, China, Russia and, perhaps surprisingly, optimism.

For a journalist who has covered some of the world's most intractable conflicts, Friedman displayed a buoyant positivity about what the future could be. His most recent book is "Thank you for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations."

But the longtime New York Times international affairs columnist tempered that optimism with warnings of the rise of autocratic governments near and far. Friedman called himself a "pro-business, pro-globalization Democrat. "

"I'm for a very high wall on the border with a very big gate," he said. "I'm for more police and better police. I'm for two states for two people. I'm for growing the pie and redividing the pie."

He faulted the Trump administration for calling Ukraine the aggressor in the war with Russia and for demanding Ukraine give the U.S. access to its mineral riches to continue receiving American support in the war.

"What's going on now is incredibly dangerous," Friedman said.

But he also took some Democrats in Congress to task for being such purists that they sunk legislation that would have accelerated Americans' transition toward more environmentally friendly vehicles.

"That bill also included incentives for natural gas production and Progressives in the Democratic party killed that bill because of the gas issue," he said. 

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Brian Creech, professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Communication, moderates campus discussion with award-winning journalist and author Thomas Friedman at the annual Kenner Lecture.

Asked by moderator Brian Creech, professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Communication at Lehigh, for examples of when he has changed his mind, Friedman said he had been "too optimistic about China."

After China began opening up trade and travel with the United States in the 1970s, Friedman thought the push toward freedom, democracy and free markets would endure as China lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Then came President Xi Jinping and the crackdown on the rights of individuals.

"I do believe the regime has taken a very dangerous and long step backwards," he said.

Friedman grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and credits his high school journalism teacher Hattie M. Steinberg for inspiring him and giving him a strong grounding in the fundamentals.

"Her introduction to journalism course is the only course in journalism I've ever taken," he said. "Not because I was that good but because she was that good."

Friedman started writing for money in 1975 when he got an idea for an op-ed piece while walking down a street in London where he was doing graduate work in Middle East studies on a Marshall Scholarship at Oxford University. The Des Moines Register ran his column and he was hooked.

"I thought that was the coolest thing in the whole world," he said. "I was walking down the street, I had an idea, I wrote it up and someone paid me $50. And I was smitten ever after."

Friedman said he writes to learn and to make complex subjects accessible to the public.

"I learned to survive by being a good listener," he said. "All the stories I got wrong is when I was talking when I should have been listening. So many people are just starved to be heard and respected."

"The third reason I write is I do believe in Martin Luther King's dictum that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. But it doesn't bend by itself."

His upbringing in a small town outside Minneapolis during the 1950s and 1960s informed his worldview and he grew up believing politics can work.

"I went from Minnesota to Beirut," he said. "I went from a place that worked to a place that completely broke down."

Friedman said he once asked an editor of a prominent newspaper in Israel why they ran his column and the editor replied:  "Tom, you're the only optimist we have."

But the current polarization in the U.S. and around the world have tested his optimism. His four-plus decades of reporting have taught him that humiliation and dignity are the two most powerful emotions.

"Nelson Mandela said there is no more dangerous person than a humiliated person and there's no more dangerous cohort in the world today, in all kinds of countries including ours, than young men who have never held a job, power or a girl's hand."

Friedman finds hope in the interdependence of nations, with innovation, materials and expertise coming from multiple countries. He quoted Oxford University economist Eric Beinhocker, saying that no single country in the world can make an iPhone because it's created with materials, designers and suppliers from around the globe.

That's true for other inventions and products, including the mRNA Covid vaccine, Friedman said. 

"Vaccines usually take 10 to 12 years," he said. "The mRNA was produced in 12 months, actually 10 months, because it was a global knowledge supply chain."

"These products are so complex," he said. "Complex products solve complex problems and raise our standard of living."

Friedman said that the best thing that happened in his lifetime was actually the creation of the European Union.

"They have built a second United States," he said.

He said Ukraine must be allowed to join the European Union.

"Because I want Vladimir Putin for the rest of his days to have to look across the border at Ukraine and see a Slavic free market, democratic capitalist Ukraine sitting next to a Slavic kleptocratic, thieving Russia."