In the cover story of this week’s Times Magazine, foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that the U.S. doesn’t just need the first black president, it needs the first green president; it doesn’t merely need the first woman president, it needs the first environmental president.

In advocating “a redefined, broader and more muscular” green strategy, Friedman said the struggle is so titanic in scale it can only be addressed effectively by an America with 50 green states, not one divided between red and blue states.

Above all, it calls for a president tough enough to level with the American people about the profound economic, geopolitical and climate threats posed by addiction to oil — and to offer a real plan to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.