Shortly into my chat with Thomas Friedman, it becomes clear we have different agendas. Friedman wants to talk exclusively about his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded - a clarion call for a US-led global green revolution. I also want to discuss the Iraq war, which he cheered with breathless enthusiasm in his twice-weekly column in The New York Times. 'Iraq is a whole other interview,' the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner objects.
Sure, the book is an urgent primer on the need for a clean energy system, engagingly written in his usual folksy and anecdotal style. But as Iraq teeters on the brink of civil war and the US faces unprecedented hostility from the Arab world, it's hard not to feel that Friedman - perhaps the most prominent liberal columnist to have boosted the invasion - is trying to turn over a verdant new leaf.
He was never persuaded by President George W. Bush's argument that Saddam Hussein threatened US security with weapons of mass destruction. Nor did Friedman swallow the idea of links between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda. The security risk, as he saw it, was not WMDs but PMDs (people of mass destruction) - the culture of hate, nurtured by repressive Islamic states, that spawned Osama bin Laden.
So why attack secular Iraq rather than an Islamic country such as Saudi Arabia or Iran? Because, as Friedman bluntly argued, the US could. He construed the attack as an opportunity to export US-style democracy to the Arab world, imagining that the toppling of Saddam would unleash democratic movements throughout the region.
Pressed gently, Friedman answers all my questions. After all, the Minneapolis-born pundit is, in his own words, 'Minnesota nice': he never hits back at his critics. By phone, he has the relaxed bonhomie of a country club regular (allusions to golf, his favourite pastime, pepper his writing) and the upbeat temperament of an adman.
His writing is studded with company and brand names. With their glib metaphors and catchphrases, his columns can read like advertising copy. 'To name something is to own it,' he says.
The jingle 'hot, flat and crowded', for example, describes the convergence of climate change, globalisation and overpopulation that defines our 'energy-climate era', he says.