we have got to begin to understand and see how we undervalue women. so that's the psychological change we need to address, but there are policy changes that need to be made as well, and we have to put the right people in place to address those policy changes so that we can change some of the structures in our workplace. there's some legislation, some equal pay legislation that is being proposed now that would help us begin to do that. and, um, i won't embarrass you by asking you to raise your hand if you have called your congressperson to says, pass the equal pay act. ..

>> and the conflict of interest, and i wondered what you thought about that? [laughter] and i wondered what you thought about which, what was your reaction when she came out and demanded that you apologize? i can't help asking it. >> i would just tell you, results speak -- i didn't apologize. [applause] but i will go about your question in a roundabout way. you said you're going to go to history, and i will go to history. when i testified in 1991, it was because i cared about the integrity of the court, that's what was matter to me. the integrity of the individuals are going into lifetime

positions on the court. that is what mattered them. that is what matters now, and that hasn't changed. i will leave the rest for you. [applause] [inaudible] >> i can't speculate about that, but again, any other questions that go to the integrity of the justices on courts are concerned we all should have, absolutely. thank you. >> i'm going to close on one more question on your book, and then i hope we will have a book signing, and many of you will purchase this terrific book. i was really struck by the separation of the american dream from as you recently said, this idea of purchasing a home and moving up and moving up, to this notion of home and belonging and sort of an investment in what i partially translated to public space. meaning, that our personal space and our families are all part of

communities and the nation's. i wonder what you thought about the occupy wall street idea? [applause] and the idea of sort of wanting to the kitchens and community spaces on wall street, it wasn't just a process. it's like a neighborhood. >> you know, the part that really resonates with me is the fact that just a handful of people are really taking a stand. and they are raising their voices, and they are inspiring all of us to think differently. i mean, that to me is what's so important about what is going on in cities all over the country. now, with all of that there are so many efforts. i know there's a journalism class here. part of what i'm not hearing so much about is the media getting engaged with it.

and that is another thing that has to happen. i think there are some recipes for their success. it starts with a public -- their engagement, private engagement, private undertaking. but again, there has to be some momentum that is built up your immediate can help to do that. that's really what i'm hoping will happen when we talk about home. i just can't see that we are going to be satisfied with going back to where we were, which is a situation in the early 2000s, the first of the new century, where we which is putting so much at risk in terms of the housing market. we have come to a point of crisis. and for me it's a wakeup call. and if it requires us to go and

camp out in front of wells fargo bank, or to camp out in front of some of the financial institution, so be it. but i don't think that it does. i think what, my idea is that we come together, all of us who have an interest in resolving this crisis, and that's everybody in this room, we come together and really start grappling with the issues of how we're going to move forward. i hope you'll read the book with that in mind. i'm hoping that when he read the book that one, you will think differently about the importance of home. and that, too, with you by the whole idea, that you do something different in the way that you act. i had the woman is that i read the book, and what i did was i

went and volunteered in shelters to help people who are homeless. that may be what you do, but what i would say to you is usual voice, usurer talents, use your skills to do something. because a future generation really is depending on you. thank you. [applause] >> hiduring the spirit of the department of education by working relationship with judge thomas was positive. i had a good deal of responsibility and independence. i thought he respected my work and that he trusted my judgment. >> it's been 20 years since anita hill testified a legend that supreme court justice nominee clarence thomas sexually harassed her. this past week and she spoke about what that testimony meant in her life and a lasting effect

it's had on our culture. >> when you are returned from a testimony that has become this event that you really had no idea what is going to be what it was, and then i said i walk out on the street, and everybody did polling. so they did polling it immediately after the hearing, and the polling showed that 70% of the population thought i had perjured myself. so in addition to the pressures that i was having on the job, the threats to me personally, bomb threat, law school at my home, i had to go to the grocery store, and realize that, you know, seven out of 10 people that i would encounter at the supermarket thought that i perjured myself in my testimony.

>> watch her remarks as well as the complete 1991 senate judiciary hearing on line at the c-span video library. archived and searchable. it's washington your way. >> coming up next, book tv presents "after words," an hour-long program where we invite guest host to interview authors. this week daniel yergin and his new book, "the quest," the pulitzer prize-winning author of "the prize," continues the story of the oil industry, its impact on international politics and the possible energy forces -- sources of the future. he discusses his findings with "the associated press" energy writer dina cappiello. >> host: welcome, mr. juergen, to "after words" and thanks for doing this. first of all let me congratulate you on what is quite an

achievement look at yours to qwest. i wanted to ask you, what prompted this book? you betcha coach prize-winning book, "the prize" about the history of oil. so why this, why now? especially when one of your primary conclusions is that for a while things are not really going to change much when it comes to where we get our energy. >> guest: there were a couple of reasons. one, is that while big long trends are not going to change, a lot has changed in the world, the soviet union collapsed. china hardly appeared in "the prize." it only gets two chapters in this book. right up until it happened this year with fukushima nuclear accident in the arab spring, just big impact on energy. so much happened to the other thing is i wanted to do this book is more ambitious than "the prize."

because this race to cover the whole energy spectrum and see how these pieces all fit together. so there was a big topic to take on. as often happens you find out that you bitten off more than you expected. >> host: it's interesting you say fit together. because after reboot i think seven or plus pages, i'm not going to count the biography and the footnotes -- >> guest: thank you. it immediately makes the book shorter. >> host: a lot shorter. it's hard to see how they fit together, right? because if we continue, you know, find oil to unconventional sources, which has greatly expanded our proven reserves at least, then was going to prompt us to go to the renewable route, which as you know we don't get much bang for your buck in terms of the energy produced, has some

logistical hurdles to say the least. so i guess, how do you see these fitting together eventually? transit it's an evolution. technology, the stories a lot about how technologies if all. where did they come from, how did they get started. so you go back to when this great excitement about renewables in the 1970s and 1980s. he relies very, very immature technologies. they will continue to develop and i think wind, solar, the whole game is to bring cost down to bring -- to be competitive. what we're seeing is technological innovation also happen in the energy area. the energies but india is very different than when i started this book. >> host: you start in 2005? >> guest: 2005-2006. it only really burst on the scene in 2008.

not until 2011 have people woken up to the other thing happening which is what called tight oil. u.s. oil imports going down instead of going up which is what we have been in for so many years. >> host: you say in chapter two that the idea of the petrol estate, a lot of which book on is the rise of hugo chavez and his nationalization of the oil industry there. and she mentioned chavez, fidel castro in cuba. and that got me thinking because there's a lot of controversy right now about plans by cuba to drill offshore, especially after the gulf oil spill that we had last year. >> guest: such a very interesting chain of -- >> host: i'm trying to explain my logic. how does a cuba getting into the offshore oil game, how does that

affect the stability of energy? if at all. and is there a reason for us to be as concerned as we are, post this event in the u.s. gulf? >> guest: cube is very close to florida and some other waters, the cubans water -- cuban waters it would be going in would be close to florida. so certainly concerned about basically environmental safety and security and how it is managed in cuba. of course, for decades it was thought cuba might have hydrocarbon resources going back to the late 1950s actually. but not his turn to drill in those waters and oil is very key to the relationship between venezuela and cuba because venezuela has sort of stepped and play the role of the soviet union used to play in terms of propping up the cuban economy. my expectation would be at such point congress are drilling in those waters we'll see a real

intensification of concerns about florida and the united states about it. and put aside the politics which are complicated enough, about environmental security. >> host: you also talk on page 109 actually, it was something that struck me, and i think it's going to relate what you wrote here to events happening today, which is what i do for a living. so, you state oil can generate a great deal of revenue. it is a capital intensive industry. this means a great read have a few jobs adding further to the pressure on government has been a project and welfare and entitlement. in this country, as you know, the moratorium following the gulf oil spill was a job killer and a push to open up more public resources to drilling is being touted by certain people in politics as a job creator. so when i read that sentence, i question whether come is it a

really big job creator? >> guest: i was thinking that sentence occupies, let's say, a country with a big youth bulge population and it doesn't have a lot of other skill and other industries. and, therefore, there aren't that many jobs. a lot of people don't have jobs. what's interesting, people have looked at more carefully, the jobs themselves and there's the jobs and industries that support them and then there's jobs, people have more income, when you look at the entrance of what happened in domestic u.s. oil and gulf to overcome it turns out there's a lot of secondary jobs that have been created. people wouldn't think that there are jobs being created from the offshore gulf industry in ohio or california. and so, i think that it kind of depends on the country and the scale and the kind of, whether you have all of these other

things that support. so some countries it's a huge problem, but it turns out what we're learning out in the united states is with these developers, there are a lot of jobs, second-tier jobs. >> host: what about the concept of jobs from the renewable energy industry, which is the buzz term these days, green jobs? and there's a lot of discussion about that recently about whether, you know, the obama administration has been successful about creating the green jobs they've been sending out to create. do you see renewables, renewable energies, wind, solar, biofuels, as great job creators? >> guest: they create jobs, too. the question is the scale of them. it's interesting, if you take ethanol, if you live in an urban area as motor fuel and so forth, but, of course, ethanol is also very important to the economy of rural areas. it's kind of had a transformative effect on some of

that. i think what we've seen there's a lot of expectation and hope for green jobs. it's just the scale. these have to be bigger businesses and then there's the other question of course, where are the elements that go into a green economy going to be manufactured. >> host: and on the green jobs versus i guess fossil fuels jobs, i mean, is one better than the other d.c. as a job creator? >> guest: i think it's a skill so, therefore, you see, if you look at the numbers using in the last two years more jobs created from oil and gas than green jobs. i think green jobs are going to grow because the story i tell us how these industries have started to reach the scale. last year, about one the $20 billion in renewable electric generation. that's a big number. it does start to great more and more jobs but it just takes time because the whole energy system is a large. >> host: dimension ethanol, i

know that's towards the end of the book so i'm going to jump there because you mentioned it. i found that part of the book was really interesting. you seem to be a believer in biofuels. is that accurate? or at least be enthusiastic about it. >> guest: well, i was fascinated. so many of these things like biofuels, like ethanol, the electric car, you have to go back a century if i were picking up the story that sort ended in about 1910 or 1920, or there's a big move for ethanol during the great depression because farmers were so, having such difficult times. them it gasohol in the 1970s, a picture in the book of a u.s. senator pouring into a tractor engine on capitol hill to demonstrate the potential biofuel. i think ethanol, we have seen its limit in the united states. it's now about 6% on energy basis of our motor fuel. larger in terms of volume. but i think you sort of see

what's out there on the horizon, what are potential game changers. and one of them is what's called second generation biofuels where you're making biofuels not from foodstuff, but from agricultural waste and other things, or algae and things like that. that was kind about three or four, five years ago. it doesn't get as much attention but those efforts continue. so you can say, one of them could come from the second generation biofuels. one of the things, you know -- >> host: [inaudible] >> guest: you know, you see biologists now as part of the energy business, and 10 years ago biology wasn't really part of the energy business. it's just part of what i call in the book the great bubble lives of innovation. >> host: the other thing i found interesting about ethanol is that, and correct me if i'm

wrong, but he seems to be a success, right, it seems to be getting a foothold because of government policies. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: that it made it successful. i found that really interesting because there's a manipulation of the market going on to make ethanol a bigger share of what we fuel our cars with. that was excepted, were as today in washington, to be a push to let's just have the market do what the market wants to do and let's not tinker. so how is it that it was okay to think of when it came to ethanol, and we are encouraged not to really tinker when it comes to things like solar and wind reqs. >> guest: i think there's a lot of tinkering going on. if you're in the state of california, you say that 33% of your electricity by 2020 has to be from renewables, someone would call that a pretty big tinker. we do a lot in this country by mandates, by requirements, say

such and such a percentage of motor fuels has to be biofuels. such and such percentage of electricity has to be renewables. and kind of that's the way, if you just look at it and you say kind of once giving the boost to it and helping these industries, it is these mandates. most of the renewables is wind because when is another form of conventional energy. >> host: ethanol, i didn't see a lot about ethanol, about the environmental -- i'll come back to that unsure because as you know, the national academy of sciences did a report called the hidden cost of energy. one of the conclusions it made was that if you look at the life cycle of the 85 and ethanol, that its action more damaging environmentally and straight up the gasoline in cars.

how do we -- >> guest: you know, i didn't go in depth to the. i think i kind of discussed that i also the debate as to whether it takes more energy to make ethanol and you get out of it and you say, well, what energy input are you doing to do it. there are fears arguments about that. i think it would have to go back five years ago, kind of consensus, support around ethanol, probably stronger than it is today. but it is now part of the motor fuel. >> host: that was one of the environmental things that push is to ethanol. >> guest: one of the great triggers forward, but in terms of volume, biofuels and the united states is about 1 million barrels a day. that's kind of like small to medium-size oil-producing countries would be very happy to have that kind of volume. but i did, you know, in the

book, you know, former governor, now secretary of energy, secretary of agriculture, he, like others, has talked about ethanol also as a way of rural development. and so i think to those, some parts of the country, those issues are very large. >> host: energy is always regional. >> guest: you always get the question, why do we have big policy questions? we are a big country. is not a simple think of a single energy policy for a country our size. >> host: once again in reading your book so may times, all these posted notes are just thoughts that i thought of when i was reading it, but in the chapter that you titled aggregate destruction, you talk about a confluence of world events that have a huge impact on energy prices, the price of

oil, venezuela political overtaking of the oil industry there, hurricane katrina and rita. i covered those. yet we have republican presidential candidates, at least one, vowing to come into office and make gas prices $2 a barrel. and others who say the president obama's whole intent of president was to call the huge increase in the price of oil. are any of these arguments realistic given this global oil market that you so well described in this book? i mean, how much can you as president, let a u.s. come as a country, the with the price? >> guest: president after president have discovered that they have less control over energy markets. when you go back to richard nixon promising independence. and jimmy carter who came in and

was going to make energy his cornerstone and then as part of what destroyed his presidency. i mean, you just go president after president, there are not that many levers to pull. .. >> how did that happen? and one of the factors was the growth of demand sort of almost unexpectedly in the emerging markets, and it kind of just burst on the scene in 2004, 2005 and kind of woke up -- it was hard for americans to realize that what they were paying at the pump was partly affected by

what happened in provinces in china whose names they didn't even know because of energy demand there. >> host: right. >> guest: and so i think there's this kind of, this global market and the center of gravity has been shifting, reflecting the changes of a global economy. we still use twice as much oil as china, but in 20 years they could be even with us. >> host: right. and so, basically, the bottom line is we have really very little control. >> guest: well, yeah. i mean, what interesting things are happening, our oil imports are going down. we're going to have a lot more efficient automobiles, talk about another mandate that will have a big impact on the global market to go from 30 mile per gallon cars to 54 mile per gallon cars by 2025 which is not very far away, those kind of things have a big impact. you can sort of see the automobile makers are trying to figure out, well, how do we actually do this?

spare tires are starting to disappear because they want to bring down the weight to make those standards. >> host: now, you mentioned fuel efficiency, and you talk about president george w. bush who in his state of the union endorsed a fuel efficiency decrease, hence, decreasing our demand for oil. >> guest: right. >> host: so bush thought, hey, i'm going to reduce our demand, but what's interesting about that is that nowadays it seems members of the very same party, the republican party, are just drumming the supply side. we need more supply. we need to drill more at home. let's open up an war. >> guest: well, bush was saying that too. he was, you know, basically, there are two characters here. one's named supply, one's named demand. it's interesting, because bush

made that comment not in a state of the union address, that's what he kind of said privately, but there was a geopolitical context to all of this to reduce particularly during a time of a very tight oil market to reduce the influence of these two characters among others on not only the oil market, but on world affairs. >> can we drill our way to energy independence? is energy independence even possible? because i think -- why i'm asking you this, i'm asking for the lay people out there -- >> guest: right. >> host: that aren't dan -- daniel yergin, that aren't me who covers energy day in and day out, i mean, is that a total pipe dream when we hear politicians say energy independence, and how much if we could just say, okay, the gloves are off, let's go guys -- >> guest: we could, we could run a sequence of president after president after president after

president saying energy independence, and i think the reality is that, you know, we're part of a global economy. we trade a lot of things back ask forth. and so the real question is sort of vulnerability, energy security, that it's not a question that we have to be 100% independent. and that's kind of -- i asked one senator about that. he said, well, actually, energy independence really means energy security, but energy security sounds abstract, and energy independence is a very appealing term, so it gets evoked all the time. i think we these to be in a position where our economy is less vulnerable to disruptions, to shocks of one kind or another, and that american people can count on reliable, you know, reasonably-priced flows of energy. and so the answers, i think, are found on both sides of the equation. we've become more efficient. by the way, we are twice as energy efficient as we were in the 1970s. i mean, that's been a huge contribution to, i mean, just ma'am if that hadn't -- just

imagine if that hadn't happened the trouble we'd be in. at the same time, what's interesting now is seeing that you know, people thought the u.s. is finished as a producer and be find out, in fact, actually, the u.s. isn't finished as a peruer. >> host: to the drilling question. i've been dying to ask you this question. so republicans on the one hand on the campaign trail are saying drill, drill, drill, you know, we're kind of invoking sarah palin again in 2008, drill, baby, drill. and the democratic response has been a concept called use it or lose it, right? oil companies in this country have to sell a lot of acres and are just kind of sitting on them. >> guest: yeah. >> host: i wanted to ask you this because you do such a wonderful job in this book saying you can politics, policy this all day long, but what it comes down to is the technology to get the oil that you want to get in that parcel.

>> guest: right. >> host: so is use it or lose it -- >> guest: well, you're getting into a lot of summits. >> host: right. >> guest: i don't understand the use it the lose it concept, actually, because, i mean, companies don't have incentive to just sit on resources. it takes time. because on the other hand, you don't want them rushing into the gulf and drilling without having, you know, dotted every i and crossed every t. so i think there's long lead times in the energy business that you might begin a project today, and you won't see that producing in 15 years, and you have to make, allocate capital, and your allocation of capital depends on what happens to price and everything like that. so, you know, i think there's definitely a middle ground here to have, you know, a reasonable approach to continue to develop resources that, you know, are important to our economy and also to jobs and all the other things we're talking about and kind of do it on a reasonable basis. but, you know, right now we're in the middle of the political system so that the situation and

campaign, and so all the discussions about energy, like everything else, are going to tend to be more polarized. >> host: there's a lot of great characters in this book. and john rockefeller, obviously, with standard oil, t. boone pickens is mentioned, there's the guy in china, i'm going to murder his name, is it wang? >> guest: iron man wang. >> host: what is it about, you know, oil and natural gas and this whole arena that attracts these larger-than-life personalities? >> guest: yeah. t also true like the wind chapter -- >> host: all of them. throughout the book. >> guest: or solar, the first solar company -- [inaudible conversations] [laughter] >> guest: one of them is still around. they're using these things in the oven, i mean, they're supposedly spiking it with coca-cola, i mean, these guys

who know nothing about business say let's go into the solar business, we're helping the government putting up satellites. one of the things i love doing in these books is asking where things come from, where did solar come from, wind come from, the evolution of natural gas come from. and i think that the energy business, it does have a lot of people who are very strong-willed, who can take a lot of disappointment and maybe are somewhat obsessive in the sticking with things even when it look like people are saying, you know, you're crazy, why are you doing that? so i love finding these characters who carry the story along in a novelistic way but important impacts in terms of what -- >> host: you also pull up some interesting facts, too, like the effect of prohibition on ethanol and -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- these alcohol-based fuels or the robbery of solar panels off pipelines to feed, basically, hydroponic marijuana

growers in california. i mean, just really interesting tidbits that surprise even an energy writer like myself. >> guest: well, what i tried, you know, energy tends to be seen as a, you know, kind of abstract, big question that's out there, and people just experience it at the gasoline pumps and so forth. i really want to show it's a world of people, of people doing things. and, you know, solar manufacturers back in the '80s, i mean, they were really puzzled. why were people stealing these things? and, of course, because they wanted to be able to draw electricity without drawing it from the utility because the police could determine that there was this surge of electricity if somebody was in the marriage business. >> host: now, in the book -- >> guest: by the way -- >> host: go ahead. >> guest: let me also say one of my favorite characters in the book who's a man who was a professor at cal tech and walked out one day in 1948 and couldn't breathe the air in los angeles because it was so dirty, and he gave up what was his favorite

subject which was trying to understand why pineapples were sweet to work on the question of where did smog come from. [laughter] but he was also, i suddenly realize this was not a theme that runs through the whole book, but he was the man who identified the active ip ingredients in marijuana. >> host: really? the other irony, and i'm going to forget the name of the guy, but the guy that wrote one of the first papers on fracking was the same guy that cam ip with the concept of -- came up with the concept of peak oil. you would think that the guy -- >> guest: m. king hubbard. >> host: right. >> guest: yes. he's a figure whose shadow continues far beyond him to the print day. >> host: i thought that was very interesting because it begged the question for me as a reader, one of the things that comes up in the whole peak oil discussion is that he failed in his projections to incorporate technology.

>> guest: right. >> host: yet, he wrote a paper -- >> guest: about hydraulic -- >> host: which today has opened up a whole new world. >> guest: right. and when he was writing his paper, it was five or six years after the first wells had been fracked, so he he was right abot technology. but, you know, there is this theme that people kind of come to this view that technology is over and that, you know, we've gone as far, we know what we know, and you just look at our world that we live in, and you say, well, that's not true. i mean, technology's going to continue to happen. there's a character in the book who's a french scientist who in 1824 wrote a paper about the steam engine explaining it. but he wassal a soldier, his father had been minister of war under napoleon because he was convinced there was a geopolitical things, the british were masters of this technology. and he talked about this great

revolution that had kind of captured the world that for the first time it wasn't human labor, it wasn't animal labor, it was technological ingenuity capturing it. and he called this a great revolution. and i think in a way this book is a kind of story of this great revolution that's unfoldedded over two centuries, and i'm absolutely convinced the world we live in a lot of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, it's going to continue. >> host: that's a great entree into my next question. at times in the book you seem to oscillate between on the one hand government policies, mandates, what have you, subsidies are needed to kind of get this switch going and get away from fossil fuels which we're 08% dependent on -- 80% be dependent on, somewhere around there. and then at other points where you talk about the canadian oil sands and the california

blackout radiation debacle, you suggest that government intervention messed up. you know, was to blame in part for, you know the oil not being developed as fast as they should of, and in the case of california, they weren't great at tweaking the market and made some mistakes there. so i guess where do you come out at the end of the day? do we need government policies to make this transition? and if not, what's going to drive snit is it going to be -- drive it? is it going to be high prices because of demand, high prices because the cost to get where oil is, is it going to be carve-in, environmental controls? i guess i'm not seeing the bridge in terms of -- >> guest: well with, i think you have to look. there are 30 states that have requirements about using technology and regeneration. that's the force of law. governor jerry brown, the same governor jerry brown who in the

1970s helped kick start the original wind business has now just signed this legislation earlier in 2011, and, you know, that's a pretty -- it has the force of law. it is a law. so you have that going on. so i think that energy is o so tied, you know, so fundamental, it's so tied up in if government policies, legislation and regulation, you know, in fact be, when you look at energy in the united states, the notion of, you know, kind of the wild -- it's a very highly regulated activity. if you want to drill a well, it's very highly regulated. i think california, which, you know, people in california will remember the energy crisis. it was only a decade ago, and the state was in deep trouble. it was just a fundamental mistake in deregulation. they deregulated half the market, and they didn't deregulate the other half. and they assumed california would always be in recession,

and they didn't figure out, oh, maybe california's going to have an economic boom and just kind of run up against the wall, and that's what happened. >> host: what do you say to people who are just step aside politicians, policymakers just sort it out based on market dynamics and not mess with the markets? we don't have a federal rps. >> guest: no -- >> host: but many states. >> guest: many states, and, you know, we have the several -- 54 miles per gallon is a very powerful piece of energy regulation. so you go down the list, lots of things are happening and kind of will continue to happen and unfold. and you have the california air resources board, most viewers vice president heard of it, c.a.r.b.. it's the closest thing we have to a -- >> guest: right. >> host: they, also, because of the market they say this is going to happen in california. well, you can't build one car for california and another car

for nevada. so it has that impact. and then you find automobile manufacturers all over the world are paying anticipation to it. paying attention to it. there are lots of things happening that, actually, people don't see that are certainly part of this fabric of government and market. and as always, you know, there's no final fixed frontier to here's here, but it's kind of an ongoing interaction. >> host: so let me ask that in another way. you say we've come a really long way since you started writing this week -- this book if 2005, 2006. would we be where we are today without government intervention on the -- in energy? >> guest: well, if we hadn't had fuel efficiency standards, i think we would have a very different picture to give that. but it's government intervention, the whole electricity -- it's not a question of should we have the government, we've had -- i tell the story of samuel who was, i mean, he was, like, the greatest businessman of the 1920s, and people fawned on his words.

he said one thing he wanted to do was preserve his name, and he also presided over the most famous bankruptcy in the great depression and came this close to going to jail and died in the paris metro with just a few cents in his pock. but you go back to really at the beginning of the 20th century is when we started regulating the he can trick power business because you used to have 20 or 30 power companies all serving one city. so the whole electric power system, for instance, i mean, we have a regulatory bargain. that's the way the system works. so it's grown up with it. >> host: in your chapter on unconventional resources, um, you delve into the deepwater horizon incident and the chain of mistakes that led to the largest offshore oil spill in u.s. history. um, you talk about the missteps. i mean, how do you explain why these missteps occurred and why there were, as you say, no

established methods for stand. ing the flow of -- staunching the flaw of oil? and then also i was wondering, are you surprised that congress to date has not passed any legislation -- [laughter] reflecting the lessons we've learned from deepwater horizon? are you surprised? >> >> guest: well, i think a lot has happened. you've had the reorganization of the regulation of the offshore oil industry. that's a big deal. you've had the, a much deeper understanding and coordination of it. i mean, it was one -- it was an accident that, you know, it was kind of the unthinkable, just thought it couldn't happen because, you know, we know how to do it. well, it did happen. and as a result of that, there are a lot of consequences. we have a new regulatory regime, we have -- >> host: which can be change with the the new administration. >> guest: yeah. but i don't -- i think the emphasis on safety, you know, they'll argue about timing, does the agency have enough people, in fact, has the agency been

properly, does it need more funding? there are all those questions around it, but i think nobody's going to back away from the commitment of safety. i mean, no one would ever want to have that tragedy, anything like that happen again. and you also have the establishment of two consortia that, actually, if, you know, it should never happen again, but should it happen again, have the know-how to quickly staunch an accident like that so that it doesn't be turned into the kind of macon da accident that just went on and on with the oil pouring out. >> host: and there was an earlier accident you referenced '85 that happened somewhere else in the world that was even longer this terms of trying to kill the well. >> host: yeah. and this was at great depths. and, you know, i mean, you could see they had to kind of invent the technology along the way to deal with it. you know, now that capacity is there. but the purpose of the safety system that we have is that never has to be used again. but you need it in place, and

you need the resources committed so that if something does happen, you can do it because it would be unacceptable otherwise. >> host: right. you talked about the reorganization that's under way. the minerals management service was, as you know, renamed. now that's been further split to releasing -- the leading part and then the environmental and safety part. but in the book it seems to me, and maybe i'm misreading this, but that you kind of downplay the coziness that exists between the regulator and the offshore oil and gas industries. you write: safety officials now had to carry their own lunches when they flew a couple of hundred miles out to inspect platform, and they were ro hinted from -- [inaudible] once there, even a bottle of cold water on a hot day. doesn't this oversimplify a bit?

>> guest: well -- >> host: we had regulators, we have had people doing drugs well, partying -- >> guest: well, aren't you actually talking about what happened this denver? >> host: there was two inspector general or the roes off the gulf coast -- one in new orleans, i believe. the new orleans chief was fired for going to sporting events -- >> guest: well, i know about the one in denver. i don't know about the others. and denver is not the offshore industry. but there was -- >> host: right. it was a royalty-in-kind, program. >> guest: and what can be described as deep coziness. you know, i think who are your inspectors going to be? i mean, they're people who live in south louisiana, they live in the coastal area, they may, indeed, go to the same churches on sunday morning as the people who are also working on the platforms, but that doesn't mean they're not going to be rigorous and tough enforcers. we've now seen a couple of

presidential commissions, and i think that they're very important be lessons to be drawn and, clearly, part of the reorganization was to try and separate the different functions because the minerals management service had the job of both promoting offshore development and the responsibility of managing its safety. and i think other countries have learned such as britain did after it had a bad offshore accident, that you've got to separate those two functions. on the water and, you know, it was just -- the purpose of that was to just show how much things had gone 180 degrees. >> host: it seems like there's a little tongue in cheekness there. >> guest: i think it captured how it had changed. you know, the accident was a momentous accident. people's lives were lost. it affected the livelihood of so

many people, covered so much of the ocean. i think we're still in, actually, you don't just go from one way of doing things to another thing just overnight. i think we're still in a transition finding out the way, possibly, to regulate it. and, you know, the preeminent objective is safety. >> host: now, you mention when you go into nuclear energy, another one of my obsessions -- [laughter] >> guest: tell me about your obsessionsment. [laughter] >> host: you mention that government regulators, you know, in the wake of three mile island, right, there was an investigation just like with the gulf oil spill, right? a presidential-appointed panel. >> host: right. we've got to say who rickover was. it's interesting, he's one of the great characters in the book. people of a certain generation absolutely know who he is, and a younger generation have never heard of him. he was 62 years on active duty,

which was incredible,-also the father of nuclear power as much as any single person. and he was a very cantankerous person, drove the other admirals crazy. jimmy carter called him the greatest engineer of all times. >> host: and he put jimmy carter on the spot, right? in the an interview of some sort? >> guest: yeah. it's so rigorous to get into the nuclear navy that rickover would shorten one of the chair legs to make people uncomfortable, or he'd have blinds that would come into their eyes, so he was interviewing carter, and carter said i came 57th in my class at annapolis, and rickover says to him, why not the? why department you do better than -- why didn't you do better than that? and that became the title of carter's campaign autobiography.

>> host: that's great. >> guest: yeah. [inaudible conversations] >> guest: i was going to say something. after the three mile island accident in pennsylvania in 1979, carter appointed, asked rickover to evaluate it for him. and i included in the book the letter that rickover wrote to carter after the accident, and i was very struck by it. you could sort of apply it to -- >> host: deepwater horizon, i wrote in the margin, i said this is like you have cut and pasted it, and it was basically what the joint investigation with the coast forward -- >> guest: exactly. what you have is you have a series of cascading mistakes. if one of them hadn't happened, you wouldn't have had the disaster. and you may have had other circumstances where you had seven out of ten of them, and nothing happened. but if they all come together -- exactly. when i read that letter, i had the exact same reaction. >> host: so back to nuclear and rickover. so rickover was called to lead

the investigation into three mile island, and at the end he warned against a cops and robbers syndrome between government regulators and the nuclear industry, and he also said that government regulators would never be sufficient and could not adequately do the job, and that's how inpo was created. inpo is, basically, a body -- >> guest: yeah. it's self-regulation. >> host: right. >> guest: you have very tight government regulation, then you have the industry where they go out, ask can they critique each other, and they're very tough on each other. >> host: they put a very high bar, right. >> guest: because there's a recognition that if one of them makes a mistake, they're very vulnerable. >> host: i think of how it works, and i imagine it in my mind. it's kind of like the same consent when you're like, you know, at a school playground and playing a game, and one of the boys doesn't really do his job for the team, and you're like,

okay, you've got to clean up your act. they're working together to set standards. >> guest: right. >> host: the president called for an inpo-like entity for oil and gas drilling. do you think that's needed? i mean, our government regulators, why is it -- how can it be insufficient for nuclear and not conclude they were insufficient offshore in the wake of deepwater horizon? >> guest: well, this is still evolving. there are similarities, but there are also big differences. basically, the nuclear companies, they don't compete with each other. so once you start having multiple people regulating each other, strangely enough, you raise antitrust questions that have to be, you know, have to be managed and how would that work. and also in a sense it's simpler because you don't have that many

nuclear operators. so, certainly, there are going to be industry-wide associations that are going to both monitor and also push technology and so forth, but i think it's hard for an industry like the oil and gas industry to have that kind of self-regulation. again, partly just because antitrust immediately becomes an issue. >> host: you say in the book about page 524: more than any other president before be him, barack obama has invested his administration in remaking the energy system and driving it toward a renewable foundation. you say, quote: he has raised the stakes in renewable energy to the level of a national destiny. that destiny is looking gloomy with the bankruptcy of the solar company who received a loan guaranteed from department of -- guarantee from the department of energy, and today "the new york times" had a front page story about a geothermal plant in north dakota that's in -- in

nevada that's in financial trouble. after the failure of cap and trade in congress, and now it looks like renewable energy subsidies are questionable, if you're advising president obama, would you tell him to fold his bet on renewables or to double down? >> >> guest: well, i think he can't. he's made a big commitment to it. he believes it very strongly, his administration believes it. so i don't think he's going to fold. i don't think there's the wherewithal to double down at this point when the whole focus is on bringing down the federal deficit and spending. so i think it's going to be very tough to talk about any kind of stimulus, including a green stimulus. in the 1990s i ran a task force on energy r&d for the department of energy, and one of the things i was struck by, and i think it's in the book is the volatility of spending on r&d and not talk about the big loan guarantees and things like that.

it's been a basic function of the federal government to do, support basic r&d, to support young scientists, young engineers, and, you know, that's why we have an internet. i mean, the internet didn't come out of somebody's garage. some things do come out of people's garages. that was not one. it came out of, you know, the department of defense after the cuban missile crisis concerned about how do you communicate with your bases in a crisis, your military bases. so i think what i do believe is we need kind of consistent, reasonable level of r&d spending so that people can make careers and, you know, it's not a question of picking winners or losers, but it's supporting the creative people who are going to bring us the innovations and the changes that we're going to need for a growing world economy which is kind of one of the basic, underlying themes that ties this whole book together. >> host: but, i guess, how do you get that consistency? because, you know, it seems like

you mentioned carter, right? and carter was gung ho for it, and reagan came in, and he was like, i'm cutting all these subsidies. it seems when you talk about later in the book in the renewable section about japan and the amazing leaps and strides japan has made with solar and then china, a huge manufacturer of solar rays and solar things. >> guest: yes. >> host: seems that japan, basically, said, hey, we're going to stick with this. we're going to really, we're going to go full bore, we're not going to -- >> guest: back to your ore question about -- other question about prices because back in the '70s the conviction was that prices were going to go like that. instead they went like that. the urgency just disappeared. it's interesting, reagan appears in the book in a number of different places. his acting career -- >> host: i never knew that. one of those crazy relations that he was going around with, like, ge.

>> guest: yeah. but before that -- >> host: i'll show my age, by the way. [laughter] >> guest: before that he was doing his acting career, really got in a bad place, and he was doing stand-up comedy, introducing a singing group in las vegas. and then ge. and i want today use that as a story of -- i wanted to use that as a story of the electrification of our country because that's what happened after world war ii. we had growth rates in our electricity demand like you see in the china today. and these wonderful commercials that i talk about that ronald reagan and nancy reagan did where she has the camera and says, welcome to my house. let me show you my electricker is vents. it's like a vacuum cleaner, things people take for granted. i think there's a consensus on something that wasn't there before, and i remember one of them vividly, this whole question of energy efficiency and becoming more energy efficient is just, it just makes good economic sense, it just makes good sense to do it. and i don't find that there's a kind of political animosity, fighting about it that there used to be.

>> host: there's not, i think you're right. i think people are like, snore. [laughter] >> guest: that's the problem. >> host: it's not sexy. it's not -- you can't see it. >> guest: yeah. >> host: there's no, i mean -- >> guest: that is the challenge. i quote the former energy commissioner of the european union who said this is really important, great stuff, but he said, there's one big problem: there's no red ribbon to cut. you can't have an opening ceremony for it like you can with your beautiful new turbine or something else. >> host: well also, too, it goes to, i think, you know, one of the big challenges in this whole topic and one that takes a lot of political courage which is, basically, there's a personal responsibility. >> guest: right. >> host: right? i mean, you know, barack obama got into a lot of trouble when he candidly talked about cap and trade in an editorial order boan california where the whole point of cap and trade is to send a price signal, and the quote that

now every republican cites which is that they're going to necessarily skyrocket energy prices. that's the whole point of what cap and trade is. that's the whole point. and when you start manipulating it and, you know, waxman-markey at the end of the day by building in, by basically diminishing that price signal for the consumer, i mean, you talk about in this book over and over and over again -- >> guest: right. >> host: -- what changes people's habits is an increase in price. remember as a kid my mom saying to me, di that, we don't own psc and g, turn your light off. >> guest: yes, exactly. >> host: and that resonates. but that's a very hard political road to walk when people are -- >> guest: yeah. that's why, well, that's why if you sort of, i mean, that's right. i think right now the bad economy, jobs, you know, unemployment, these are the dominating questions, the concern about kind of the weakness of the global economy.