♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: joe nye is here. he is a university distinguished service professor and former dean of the harvard kennedy school of government. he served in the clinton administration as chairman of the national security council and assistant secretary of defense. his new book is called "is the american century over?" i'm pleased to have him back on the program. welcome. >> thinks, nice to be back. why did you decide to write this book when so many people are trying to figure out that very question? joe: well, there is a conventional wisdom that this is a chinese century.

there was a poll a year or so ago where half of americans believed china was soon going to be more powerful than the united states. i thought that was simply not true. i tried to write this book in short, accessible english to explain why it's not true. charlie: why is it not true? joe: first of all, the united states is not in decline, though people think it is. china, while it is doing well and will continue to do well it's not 10 feet tall. charlie: they are already going through the economic issues. joe: they used to have 10% growth. they now say 7% is the new normal. my colleague larry summers says it may be 4%. charlie: but what happens to china at 4%? joe: they are still relying on a pretty decent rate of growth but the concern is how to keep the legitimacy of the communist party. it's no longer communist.

it is really based on nationalism and a high rate of economic growth. if the economic growth goes down, the dangers to the nationalism goes up. charlie: and they are trying to turn the model from one to another. joe: that's right, they are afraid of running into the middle-income trap. where the model that got them up to middle income will not get to high income. charlie: so they are trying to shift to a demand economy? joe: right, with more emphasis on the domestic market. charlie: you have to be impressed by their leadership. joe: we are. they have probably the strongest leaders in terms of general secretaries and presidents. charlie: and the aggregating of power. joe: oh, yeah, he has pulled power together. quite aggressively. but they still have a problem. when a country reaches about

$10,000 per capita income, which is where china is now, there is a considerable demand for participation, and the chinese have not figured out how to deal with that. india, in contrast, inherited a constitution which allows for participation, which they got from britain. china does not have anything like that. charlie: and social media means that you know what other people are doing today, and the higher awareness of how i may not be doing as well as somebody in india or somewhere else. joe: that's right, and the chinese have a problem, which is social media, the internet also allowed a lot of participation that they don't want. they want a certain amount of the internet for economic growth, but they do not want it for political purposes, and they control it, but you can't control it perfectly. that adds to the political dilemma. charlie: for a long time, it was said by chinese leaders, we are just interested -- we are

not just interested in peace and prosperity. what we really want to do is get bigger and richer. do you think they have now, as they are approaching the largest economy, that they have different ambitions in terms of geopolitical aims? joe: they clearly have ambitions to restore china to what it once was before 1800, which was the largest economy and leading country. charlie: but they have not done that, haven't they echo -- haven't they? joe: not really. the chinese are not equal to the united states economically. the world bank did a calculation last year using what economists call purchasing power parity which is an adjustment for welfare, which showed that they are equal in size, but if you use exchange rates they are not. in fact, if you look at per capita income, they are only about a quarter of the u.s. the chinese emphasis has been on trying to raise up the economy.

they call it the china dream. they want more than just economics. they want the economics for restoring china's status. but the economics is still a key part of their big game. charlie: is there a benefit to spending a lot of money on war? joe: yes and no. they are increasing their defense budget by double digits over the last decade. we still spend four times the amount. but they are making efforts to catch up. charlie: don't we spend more than the top 25 nations? joe: i think we are 45% of the world's expenditure on defense. charlie: is that necessary? it depends what you want it for. -- joe: it depends on what you want it for. if you want it for invading iraq, absolutely not, big mistake. but if you want it for

maintaining a balance of power in the pacific and reassuring allies like japan, it is a good expenditure. charlie: aircraft carriers things like that? joe: it's mainly naval but we also have considerable air force components in japan. there are also marines on okinawa. charlie: what do you like about what we have? joe: the americans are in better shape than we realize. demographically, we are the only rich country that will keep its position in the world. you look at the population today, china is number one india number two, america number three. 2050, the u.n. demographers project india will be number one, china number two, the u.s. still number three. the interesting thing about that, we are the only rich country that will be able to maintain its standing. that is because we are a nation of immigrants. we accept immigration, and that will keep us essentially a country that instead of a small working population supporting a

large, old population, we will have a pretty balanced population. charlie: you've had to have heard this more than once, but bob gates repeated it with me last night, the biggest security threat to the united states is in washington and gridlock and our inability to maintain the growth and investment that has given us all the power we have. joe: i think gridlock is a problem, but it's also worth noticing there is a lot of dynamism outside of washington. for example, 10 years ago we said america was hopelessly dependent on oil from the middle east. today, with fracking, we are now looking at a north america which is -- charlie: that is not going to rebuild the infrastructure of america, silicon valley is not going to rebuild the infrastructure of america, is it? joe: no, but it provides a tremendous boost.

if you look at the key technologies of the point first -- of the 21st century biotechnology, nanotechnology, the u.s. is at the forefront of those. charlie: but those things got their seed 15 years ago, before we had the crisis we have now with the inability to even have a budget. joe: i think we went through a bad spell, particularly after 2008, with the great recession and we had a great political disagreement on how to get out of it. i think we are beginning to improve somewhat. what worries me more is not the economy but more what will happen with our ability to do things politically. charlie: isn't that what gridlock is about? joe: it is, but let me give you an example. in 2010, the u.s. and other countries in the group of 20

agreed to increase china, india, and other's shares of the imf quotas and world bank quotas. congress has not passed that in five years, which is crazy. it does not cost us much of anything. charlie: but that is the point we cannot continue to debate like that as a great nation and have the same kind of growth investment, innovation, and creativity. if there is no investment and if -- i mean, i say that in part. joe: i'm not disagreeing, but if you ask does the united states still have a lot of strength outside of the government -- charlie: are you for the trade deal? joe: yes, i'm for it. charlie: tell us why it is important, because it may not pass the house, as you know. joe: if you look at the capital we have invested in it, a lot of the countries in the region are counting on us to go through with it. if the congress turns this down,

it will be -- to add this to bob gates' line of things -- failure because of domestic politics. the economic -- vietnam is ready to go, japan is ready to go, 12 countries lined up, and if we pull out the rug, it is a major black eye to our leadership. charlie: do the arguments stand up to elizabeth warren and others? joe: i think the arguments are based on narrow logic, how they see these things. charlie: what do you think this campaign ought to be about? joe: i think the campaign domestically ought to be about improving education and doing things about inequality. if you look at what americans need, we need to up our game to an information economy. in 1950, you could get a high school degree, turn a wrench and have a middle-class income working for general motors.

today you graduate from high school, the wrench is no longer there, it is a numerically controlled machine tool, and unless you have a community college degree to work that machine tool, you will not have that middle-class income. that is what we should be doing. it's not that we are worse, but we are not going up to the next level. charlie: how do we do it? joe: by investing more money in education. charlie: and they are not doing that in washington because? joe: because there is a lack of political consensus and extreme partisanship. we have to overcome that. i also think the view that the united states is down to two parties -- charlie: it seems to me you want to be able to have a very frank discussion about what is in the best interests of america's future and continuing the qualities that have made it great. it's not an either/or, either you do this or you are down the tubes. it is recognizing if you do not

do this, you will be in a worse place. joe: i agree, and that is what the book says. that's why i wrote the book. the united states will have the most power resources, but that was true after world war i and we did not live up to it. we retreated inward to isolation and allowed hitler to take over the 1930's, a huge disaster. charlie: is $15 per hour an appropriate minimum wage? joe: i think it is. you've got five years to get there and other things. charlie: cities are taking the initiative. joe: i would support that. charlie: is america as relevant internationally? joe: well, it is. charlie: not the decline of america, but it's a different world. joe: right, it is because the largest country takes the

-- if the largest country does not take the leadership on monetary stability and climate change and antiterrorism and so forth, nobody else can take that lead. small countries cannot make a big difference, but if a big country doesn't make a difference, nobody does and everybody is worse off. the u.s. is still, in that sense, the largest country, and it makes a difference. charlie: is it a different world because to do it today, in 2015, as president obama has suggested, you have to do it with allies, you have to reach out to people and do it together. you cannot do a lot of the things we might want to do alone. joe: absolutely. the paradox of american power is that the world's leading power cannot solve problems by itself. we have to learn to play well with others. charlie: how long has that been true? joe: the last decade or more. historically, even earlier, you find we did not have quite the control of the world that we thought, let's say, in the 1950's.

we could not prevent the soviets from invading hungary. we could not prevent britain france, and israel from invading egypt, even under eisenhower. it's not as though we had total control in the past. alliances mattered. they matter even more now. charlie: we are looking at a very difficult circumstance in iraq today. isis taking over, with the real problem that iraq militia, shia, the anbar province, isis is sunni, and how do you do that and get rid of isis without angering the sunnis in the anbar province. there is a history of their own victimization. joe: it's a difficult situation, but you have to put it in a broad context.

israel is in a different generation of turmoil. you have three different revolutions going on, breaking the old state boundaries. you have the arrested development that is described in the arab human development report, and you have the sunni-shia schism that has been exacerbated by the post-iraq invasion, and those will go on for 20 years. charlie: what will be the model of government that will be most effective? joe: we have to let them solve that for themselves. we cannot go in there and turn iraq into a democracy. charlie: i was not asking if we should do it. i was asking what ought to be the most appropriate model. is there something you might suggest? joe: i would indulge my preference it would someday be democratic, but to get there i think you will have to go something more like a singapore model, with some degree of openness, but with some degree of central authority. but they will be lucky if they get that.

i think it's more likely they will have a problem of chaos coming out of these revolutions. the job for us is not to think that we can fix it. we can't, but we have to contain it. we will have to use various instruments, hard and soft powers, to protect our interests, which include nonproliferation, antiterrorism, protection of israel and so forth. but the idea that we will fix it, i don't think that will happen for 20 years. charlie: can we contain iran if it has a nuclear weapon? joe: i hope there will not be an iranian nuclear weapon. charlie: do you support the framework that exists today echo -- to that exists today? joe: i do. i think it is the best option. charlie: because the other option is almost nothing. more so confidence of both phasing out the sanctions rather than eliminating all the sanctions, because there may be questions about how invasive they will allow the inspections to be?

joe: i think if you ask, can we get a deal that gives us more security than no deal, the answer is yes. but is it a perfect deal and will we be absolutely secure? no. charlie: you know washington. tell me what is in the president's mind. does he believe this deal is not important -- that this deal is important because the alternative is not good and, because it's not perfect, somehow it may give us a chance to kick the ball down the road and hope the regime may change and hope that you can put a cap on where they are now and they will not be able to make the jump? joe: that sounds close to what i think is a reasonable way of looking at it. charlie: how would you change it? joe: i think you have to be able to have very tight monitoring from the international atomic energy agency, to make sure that you see what is happening so that you have enough warning period, the proverbial one year,

to mobilize action if something goes wrong. i think that question of when you reduce the sanctions and keep the monitoring, how you make sure there is an equation between those two will be crucial. charlie: what about syria? we have talked a lot about them at the table. things don't look good there. joe: i think the syrian situation is probably one that will have to be resolved by some sort of political deal. you are going to have to look at a situation where syria -- i don't think it will be solved just by battle alone. certainly not like it will be solved by americans going in. whether the troops we support make a difference or not, open question. charlie: is it to and open question? -- is it really an open

question? joe: in the time horizons we are talking about, the next 2, 3 years, it's not going to happen. charlie: so you hope for a political situation, the russians or the iranians will somehow prevail on assad to leave? joe: that's probably as good as you can get in the short 2, 3 years. charlie: i don't want to leave the conversation without this -- make the case for america's future outside of washington. whether it's silicon valley whether it's renewed -- from a renewed manufacturing base, whether it is from demographics what is the case , for our future? joe: let me give you the shortest case i have, which i talk about in the book. i was talking to lee kuan yew , he was pretty astute, and i said, do you think the chinese will pass the americans? he said, no, but they will give you a run for your money. he said they can they can draw on the talents of 1.3 billion people, but the united states can draw on the talents of 7 billion people and recombine

them with a diversity that produces greater creativity than nationalism ever will. charlie: is that still as true as it used to be? because of immigration policies that we have? joe: i think our immigration policies have to change. we have to open them up and keep the talent here. as bill. once said, when somebody gets a degree in science or technology from an american university, we ought to staple a green card to the diploma. we get enormous strength from immigration. we always like to complain about it and always have. charlie: have we -- bob gates agrees with you, i think -- we have not used the other levers of power that we have nearly as much. i think you defined soft power. we have not effectively used it not only in those places where we are in conflict -- iraq afghanistan -- but in other places. joe: that's true, we have to use a wider range of tools in the toolbox.

the american government is constructed in such a way, and i speak as a former assistant secretary of defense, where we have a giant base. the giant is the pentagon, but state aid and other branches of the government do not have the same kind of resources. charlie: on the subject of america and is america in retreat, there is also this question raised by the president inviting the arab leaders who did not come for whatever reason, but this notion because of gridlock and other things america is not trusted as much as it used to be and arab countries and allies have questions. joe: that is particularly true in the middle east. i think it reflects the problems that we have had, not just under this administration but over the last 15 years. we have been a disruptive force. we are not able to contain it. there will be revolutionary situations.

this leads to a lot of distrust. if we look at the situation in asia, we are probably better off. charlie: meaning they trust us more? joe: meaning if you look at the u.s.-japan alliance, which is crucial to keeping the balance of power in east asia, and i've watched it closely for 20 years, it is in better shape now. charlie: am i right in believing china no longer holds the most american debt somehow, someone else now has more than china? joe: i'm not sure of that, but japan has a lot. china does hold a lot. on the other hand, it does not give them a lot of power over us because there is an interdependence there that prevents them from dumping their dollars. charlie: "is the american century over?" joe: obviously not.

charlie: thank you for being here. stay with us. ♪

♪ charlie: jeffrey sachs is here. he will serve as chief advisor to secretary ban ki-moon when the u.n.'s general assembly adopts the sustainability goals this december. his new book says these goals aim to end extreme poverty. it is called "the age of sustainable development."

i'm pleased to have jeffrey sachs back at this table. let me start with a couple of things. first of all, the millennial goals, the millennium goals, did we reach half of the goals? jeffrey: we made a lot of progress. on the big picture of cutting poverty, that goal was achieved if you take the developing countries as a whole. there has been an amazing reduction in poverty overall china leading the way, extraordinary. they started from very high poverty rates, about 60% back in 1990. now they are well under 10%, maybe 5%, 6%. charlie: i once heard the number was 300 million. jeffrey: if you take the fraction, the share that was living in poverty, it went from 43% of the developing countries' population down to today maybe about 15%. much less than half of what was

the poverty rate in the 1990's. charlie: what was the stimulus for that? jeffrey: a lot of economic development, a lot of growth. china has really pushed things forward. even in africa, which was the epicenter of poverty for the world, a tremendous amount of progress. the millennium development goals helped. they helped get disease under control. they helped give these countries a fresh start. sometimes debt was canceled. they gave a new focus and impetus to education. india also, which has not had quite the achievement of china made a lot of progress. china has slowed down, india's doing pretty well. this has been a good period overall for reducing poverty. but the reason why we are facing the need for new goals right now is many other things are really

starting to shake, because while economic growth is going pretty well, the environmental crises definitely deepening -- are definitely deepening, and they are deepening at a global level with global warming and they are deepening regionally with water stress and deforestation and other major crises. so balancing the growth with the environment is one of the big, big themes for the new goals. the second big theme is the fact that while we have had growth within countries including china, including the united states, of course, and many others, the income inequality has widened considerably. there really is a sense that not everyone is being carried along by the growth even when we have the growth. charlie: someone told me if we can reduce income inequality one of the primary benefits is raising the level of growth. because it's in the hands of people at the lower end? jeffrey: i think for a lot of

, -- i think for a lot of reasons when societies are more , equal, poor kids have a better chance. instead of losing what they can contribute and not having them able to get the education, the skills, talent, more equal societies have more equal ability. this is a major reason why we find statistically pretty strongly now that less equal societies suffer a weakness of their growth compared with relatively more equal societies. charlie: the story today in "the new york times," a study finding a surprising amount of upward mobility. the worst odds were found in baltimore. but the interesting thing about it was kids were taken to a different kind of place, geographical address, basically, they did better, and there was a previous study that suggested that might not be the result. so this study says, thank god we know things can change if we improve the place where people grow up. jeffrey: that's right, and it's not a surprise, although it is an advance on understanding. kids are affected by their

family situation, by what their parents are able to contribute to a healthy environment, a healthy start, education. they are also affected by their neighborhoods. that's why you can sometimes have poverty traps, where places just get stuck. the communities are not functioning. in our country, with mass incarceration, that is another piece of the agony. and the u.s., which has prided itself through its history as being the land of opportunity, the country of high social mobility, because of our hugely wide income inequality over the last couple generations, it now has quite low social mobility, sad to say. charlie: meaning? jeffrey: kids who grow up in poor families are more likely to be poor when they grow up. and it's not like that in some other places. charlie: let me switch back to the environment. how bad is it? tell me where we are now.

jeffrey: i directed an institute of scientists at columbia university, and i think it's true every week, and sometimes within the week, every day someone would come up to me and says, jeff, it's worse than we thought. we just uncovered another trend, another feedback mechanism of how dangerous this is. we are on a path, starting with global warming, that will put earth outside of anything ever experienced by humanity. because of course our species is estimated to be about 200,000 years old, but we will have a climate that has not been seen on this planet for millions of years, perhaps, on the trajectory we are going. one of our great climate scientists at the institute has shown and found in all of his research that when the earth had the same kind of atmosphere, carbon dioxide, the temperatures

we are headed towards, sea levels were several meters higher than they are now. the risks to the world's great cities that are tremendously large. what we are finding is that of course comes from the disintegration of the ice sheets. antarctica, greenland. charlie: the melting. jeffrey: the melting or they are falling into the ocean because often they are kept on the land, these glaciers, by part of the ice being underwater. the water in which the glacier is sitting is warming up, so the buttress that keeps this massive ice sheet from falling into the ocean is itself disappearing. and then you get deep calving and massive breakup of the ice sheet. and it's not just a gradual melting. it is the disintegration of part of the ice sheet that we risk,

which means sudden, serious increases of the sea level. unpredictable. no one knows the year, certainly not the date, but the risk is very real. and looking at what the scientist call the paleo climate record, meaning the prehistoric record they can decipher using chemical signals, isotopic measurements and so forth, it is a bad sign that we are heading towards a kind of climate that is so different from the climate that humanity has evolved and developed civilization in. the risks are profound. charlie: what can we do? jeffrey: the governments defined six years ago a threshold, a guardrail sometimes it's called they said we must not let global warming go above two degrees celsius, or 3.6 degrees fahrenheit. we are about halfway there. what the number refers to is the temperature compared to before industrialization started, say around 1800. we have increased the

temperature of the planet almost one degree celsius, and that means about 1.8 degrees fahrenheit already. not quite, but just about. so we are halfway there, charlie. and the trajectory we are on according to what the climate models and forecasts say is we will not only reach two degrees celsius, 3, 4, 5, 6 degrees is possible by the end of this century on our current trajectory. it's an extraordinarily short time we have left to make the change to a safe energy system. this is all about getting out of the carbon-based energy -- coal, oil, and gas -- and getting to the wind, solar, the other safe kinds of energy that could stabilize the climate. charlie: carbon is the story? jeffrey: carbon is the story and de-carbonization is the operative phrase.

we need to de-carbonize the world energy system. we grew up as a world economy, as a modern era, with fossil fuel-based energy systems. charlie: a lot of people seem in favor of taxing carbon. jeffrey: that is one of the tools that needs to be used. charlie: am i wrong about that? i think people are in favor of it. jeffrey: i think people would be surprised to know that even the oil companies, many of them are saying let's get this underway, let's make it predictable. so shell and other companies are saying, we need carbon tax. it's really something. it's quite striking. because everyone who looks at this scientifically knows this is an incredibly dangerous path, and we have been basically spinning our wheels for more than 20 years since we signed the climate treaty.

we have not implemented it, so the time is really running out to keep some measure of safety. ♪

charlie: you have said that the united nations meeting is the last chance to keep the temperature two degrees below celsius. stay below two degrees is what i meant.

jeffrey: we have three big negotiations coming up in the next few months. it just so happens this is the diplomatic overload. paris is the last chance to stay below this limit that has been set, this threshold, the guardrail. a few weeks before paris, in september, we are supposed to adopt sustainable development goals. then a few weeks before that there is -- charlie: "we" being the united states? jeffrey: the 193 member states of the u.n., the whole world basically. charlie: all eyes are on china? jeffrey: well, china's eyes are on the u.s., basically. china is saying, look, you do it, we will do it. and for a long time the united states has said to china, you do it, we will do it. i think we are finally coming together. last november was a major event,

when president obama and president xi made an agreement that basically said for the first time we are going through the door together. and the rest of the world sighed a huge sigh of relief saying thank goodness the two biggest economies in the world are finally working together on this. china and the u.s. have also agreed to work on the technologies that we need to get to, the advances in de-carbonization that are so essential. charlie: are they ahead of us in that? they do have a higher penetration of wind and solar, do they not? jeffrey: they have a massive solar industry, and by promoting it so much in the last 15 years, they have driven down the price of solar cells, solar photovoltaic so much that it becomes attainable all over the world. so we give china a lot of credit

for taking on that early production, dramatically scaling it up, and now making it available for africa or new york city or elsewhere. charlie: that has always been the challenge, to keep it price competitive. jeffrey: the price has come down by a factor of 100 since the 1970's. it used to cost $70 per watt of solar power. now it is about $.70. it's an incredible breakthrough. charlie: is storage capacity the big problem? jeffrey: when you have any kind of intermittent energy, like wind or solar, not blowing all the time, that makes it hard to run a power grid on that unless there is storage. and of course the other place we need storage is under the hood. if we are going to have electric vehicles that really perform the way people would like their automobiles to perform, and we have some great new electric vehicles of course on the market, the batteries are key. storage, faster recharging of

the batteries, longer range. all that is very important. charlie: hasn't elon musk announced battery-powered homes? jeffrey: elon may be the premier entrepreneur right now in the united states. he is doing spacex, he is doing tesla, and he announced last week, because of their expertise in batteries, he will be moving into the home market for storage. so if people are living off-grid, they can rely on wind or solar where they are and store the energy. he is also saying that if people are worried about backup energy sources in case of grid failure and so forth, he is moving in that direction. i spoke with him recently. he said, when i asked him, what do you need for the breakthrough in electric vehicles, just to finally sweep the market?

he said, the answer is batteries. he gave me all the specs and said we are on the case, we are on the direction. we are going to make it. there are also scientific investments being made. this would of course speed the breakthroughs, but he was confident we will get there. charlie: would that be an appropriate area to be part of the federal budget? jeffrey: absolutely. charlie: encouragement of battery technology? jeffrey: absolutely. charlie: a national priority. jeffrey: absolutely. we spend about $30 billion per year on biomedical research through the national institutes of health. when it comes to clean energy, de-carbonized energy, it is about 1/10th of that, $3 billion per year, yet we have a $100 trillion economy that depends on de-carbonization. we have not meshed the high

stakes we have in the energy transition with the r&d that goes with it. what we know from our experience in this country is when the government has been determined to make a breakthrough -- for instance the human genome project or the mission to space or promoting computers and the internet -- of course it has not done it by itself, but it has been fundamental in working together with the private sector to make the huge breakthroughs. charlie: beyond the tax on carbon, which can be done in a number of ways, you are also calling on raising the federal tax on gasoline. jeffrey: we are stuck, of course. we have an 18.4 cent per gallon tax on gasoline, which is the same as it has been, at the nominal level, not adjusted for inflation, since 1993. in the u.s., we have an added problem, which is that we use that gasoline tax to repair our roads, for the federal highway trust fund, which is broke this

spring. so we have basically bankrupted our capacity to manage our modern infrastructure in this country. it's mind-boggling. we have by far the lowest gasoline taxes of any country in the world, but we have not even kept pace with inflation, much less raised the revenues to help keep the infrastructure intact. charlie: is it the case that republicans and democrats can agree on the need to repair the infrastructure, especially things that are glaring like major highways and the electric grid and bridges, for example, but they cannot agree on the way to finance it? the goals are the same, but the financing -- jeffrey: sure, it's true. but you don't know. if they are opposing a practical measure, which is the way that we have been financing infrastructure, i don't know if

one can say they share the goal. i would say to congress right now, now is the moment. the trust fund is empty. world oil prices have come down so far just in the last few months that if we raised the gasoline tax -- charlie: and then it went back up. jeffrey: yeah, it started here fell down here, came back a little bit, but if we raised the gasoline price we would be so much better off than where we were 8, 9 months ago, consumers would still enjoy the scene right now, yet we would be able to fund our infrastructure once again. it's a kind of paralysis, which we are getting used to. charlie: what is the impact of shale gas on this? jeffrey: on the one hand, shale gas has lowered the prices of oil and gas, especially in the u.s. -- charlie: makes us the largest producer in the world, does it not?

jeffrey: we became not only the most successful in this new technology, and, by some measures, the largest overall, but because of this we have driven down world prices tremendously, with an added huge benefit to consumers. all good, one would say, except for two things. gas is not the end stop for solving the climate crisis at all. people point out, rightly, gas is cleaner than coal, but gas is nowhere good enough in terms of low-carbon. charlie: do we need a kind of man on the moon project? jeffrey: i grew up with the man on the moon project, watching every space shot, listening to every space shot, it was brilliant. president kennedy said in early 1961 we will put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade. that spirit absolutely we need.

but this time it's more complicated because we have several different types of technology and we have a private sector alongside the public sector, and it's not just the u.s., it's the world. but the spirit of the moonshot absolutely, we need that. we need to say for our safety, we need to move to low-carbon energy, and we can get there. charlie: china is building a lot of coal-powered plants? jeffrey: china is peaking in coal and moving to renewable. the chinese leadership, probably because the air is so dirty, has said we are moving away from coal and they are promising to limit coal. they probably could have peak coal, that is reach the maximum and start down, just in the next few years. this is a huge step forward. it's why china and the u.s. can work together to find a real solution. charlie: what scientific link is

there between climate change global warming, and what we are seeing in terms of hurricanes and storms? remember when hurricane sandy hit, the question was raised, is this a consequence? people said you cannot say it was a one-to-one consequence but it reflects something. jeffrey: so i would try to summarize in the following way. first, when hurricane sandy, superstorm sandy hit the east coast of the u.s., that storm, for whatever reason, was made much worse by the fact the sea level on the eastern seaboard is one foot higher than a century ago. that extra foot higher caused massive flooding, and that definitely is from climate change. that is from warming, in many different ways. we will have more of that. on the question of whether we are getting more extreme events

overall, more droughts, yes. more extreme precipitation, yes. more heat waves, yes. and most likely, in most of the ocean basins around the world, more category five typhoons and hurricanes. there seems to be an increase in ferocity at the very top of the distribution of these tropical cyclones. charlie: some provide a link between global warming and some of the political wars around the world. jeffrey: my colleagues did a study of syria, which had between 2006 and 2010 the worst drought in its modern history. what happened in syria was the rains failed. that is a region that is prone to drought, but where global warming is expected to greatly reduce overall rainfall, and that is the trend we see. in 2006 through 2010, failure after failure of crops.

by 2010, food prices had soared. populations had moved from desperately failed farms on the countryside to cities. there was a lot of unrest with higher food prices. demonstrations against the government in early 2011, a brutal crackdown, then the insurrection in response to the crackdown. then there was an influx of arms, and now there is a full-fledged bloodletting, of course a terrible disaster. can you say the drought was the cause of everything? of course not. but can you say it was one of the provoking elements? absolutely. charlie: can you say the drought in california is linked, too? jeffrey: the drought in california and the drought in the american southwest -- i was just in arizona -- is the kind of signal that we would expect from the trends that we are on right now.

again, whether this particular experience in california proves that or not, it's pretty devastating and shows how fragile we are. again, i would refer to my own colleague's research. they have shown that we will be in a century, towards the latter part of the century with mega-droughts, meaning decades-long droughts coming from climate change, unless we get off this dangerous path. charlie: president obama. one measure says he is intent on goals. two, action and deeds. jeffrey: intent, very strong to get climate change under control. he wants to leave a legacy. he knows how important this is no doubt about it. he worked hard for that u.s.-china joint initiative. he has worked very hard for a number of years now to get regulations that would stop the building of new coal-fired power plants.

he was under a lot of attack from the fossil fuel industry for this. so he is standing up. so far, the courts are backing every step of the epa, but this is america. that means lawsuits. but president obama, i believe will go forward and sign a strong agreement in paris at the end of this year. charlie: there are a lot of deniers around. what there numbers are, i don't know, but you see them from congress to academics, the academy as well. is their argument that they make, do you think it raises questions, any of their arguments? jeffrey: first, just to say about two-thirds of americans in a recent survey say that climate change is happening and should be controlled. so there is a strong majority. charlie: that it is man-made. jeffrey: yes. there is a strong majority in favor of moving in the direction of safety.

charlie: what is the essence of the argument that climate deniers make? jeffrey: i think there are different groups. i have identified, in my own experience, three different groups. there are real free marketeers who take the logic, we don't want government to regulate anything, therefore climate change cannot be true because it would be desperately dangerous if it were true. they go from their politics to science doubt or denial. not very convincing. of course, there are some religious fundamentalists who say the earth, all this science, we don't believe in it. it's small, but it is real. and then there is the confusion that i think is caused by a third group, a very powerful lobby -- the oil, gas, and coal industry -- and that is the

merchants of doubt. i think there is just a lot of truth to that. there has been a lot of confusion in the media. the core thing i think for people to understand is that climate science is well over 100 years old, and it was in 1896 that the first detailed calculations were made about what higher co2 would mean for the atmosphere and the temperature of the planet, and that scientist just about nailed it. he got it brilliantly right more than 100 years ago. charlie: i heard you say about deed and commitment. what about action and success on the part of the president? jeffrey: i think the successes have been very modest. we have not passed legislation. we do not have a full legal

framework, other than that regulatory initiatives are being taken. we need more. one thing i would really like to see from the u.s. government is what we call a pathway -- how should the u.s. de-carbonize the economy up to mid-century. not just small steps, but where are we going and how do we get there. charlie: is there a model for that? jeffrey: there is, and i've been working with teams on deep de-carbonization pathways. you need to think ahead. how are we going to tap solar, how are we going to tap wind what are we going to do about electrical vehicles. we need to think about those issues. charlie: thank you for coming. "the age of sustainable development," with a forward by ban ki-moon. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

rishaad: i am wrist shot and this is trending business. -- i am rishaad salamat. we are going to be heading to tokyo and do a little bit of whale watching. the developer is returning. pricing the offer below the range. the theory of mining magnet -- corrupt officials got australia in the 20 20 world cup.

one of the richest women was defeated. the eldest daughter is better suited to the role. top stories -- do follow me on twitter. let's have a look at what is going on market wise. yvonne has the news. yvonne: we are seeing that slump continue. a little bit of a loss -- in the last half hour. it was that about 3% earlier but now it is at about 2.4% in the shanghai composite. the hang seng is just fractionally lower. close to 10% in the last two days. the most in six years. in 20 oh nine, we saw similar losses and two days of trading. we are showing a magnifying glass to climate shares. what is going