>> host: if we continue to go like this, right, up and down with our support of renewable energy, and other countries either remain constant or go like this, or rise, will we ever get into the clean energy race? it's so interesting the whole china and japan and asia being ahead of us is that we are behind, it's very clear from your book, all the time. are we ever going to -- i don't think we're behind. i think we're at the forefront. we are at the forefront technologically. china has manufacturing, low-cost manufacturing and driving down the cost, so that's why they're moving so fast. it's not like they have some great insights that we don't. they also have some very important win sources, in the book i quoted an official document wins in the northwest.

we regard them as a precious resource. i don't think, whether china has x number of wind turbines, i don't think we are winning or losing in that race. i think the heart of it is what's happening in innovation, and i think we continue to be there. our great universities. i think, and we have something else. we have more players coming into the game, venture capitalist and others. so there is just more going on. i don't think we are going to lose. i do think that what's kind of on the horizon right now coming down the road would be a better way to put, is an electric car race, or race for the electric car. and that certainly hasn't strategic elements to it than 11 of the other things i was struck with and again, this is me, linking what you say in your book is a more current events,

during the kyoto protocol, working for the clinton administration at the time, pushed using markets just like we did for a so to come lead. by the way, a mission of trading and market, pricing, pollution if you want to say it. >> guest: exactly. another ronald reagan story. reagan at his campaign says when i was a young man, lead in gasoline was consider this great technological advance. now we're going to get rid of it. he said you'll remember and he looked around the cabinet room and he said, none of you are old enough to remember. >> host: right. what he was arguing against the europeans basically, he wanted to have a mandate. he said there are three issues cost, cost and cost. the cost of litigating climate

change would be far too change would be far too expensive for any economy to bear. do you agree with that? as you know, our attempt in u.s. to set up a market system, via legislation, prominently stalled when there was no hope. is the clean air act too expensive? >> guest: it is very -- i mean, the whole development of using market to solve environmental problems sort of the development of the 1980s and 1990s, has a much more efficient way, the command and control doing it cosmic a republican idea. >> guest: that's right. it goes back to george h. w. bush's administration. indeed, it goes back to ronald reagan's administration. it meant the cost reductions of reducing and so do from cold electric generation was much lower than anticipated. i think, what i find what is listening to people talk about cap-and-trade, in that narrative

always went back to what happened in the early 1990s, kind of the irish is fascinated. i wanted to get the story, how i wanted to get the story, how did that happen. and we just out cap-and-trade and for society is big and complex, much harder to do than something that is fairly focused on limited number of -- so i think, you know, and so i would say if you're saying what's climate policy today. i was a getting cars and 54 miles a gallon, renewable standards. one-third of california's electricity, that's climate policy. >> host: we can do this transition from a fossil fuel-based electricity without a price on carbon? >> guest: i think others would say you have to have some form of a price on carbon. that would change everything. that becomes a complex

political, very complex political question. in the united states. but i think that what i was trying, you know, and it's also i think we just have to realize that energy transitions take a long time. wind is a big business today, but it's still small compared to the overall energy picture but it's going to grow. >> host: a minute left, and i'm going to paraphrase it because, oh, no, here it is. i wanted to ask you about. it really struck me, a massive book when one quote kind of, you were talking about an indian scientist, the head of actually the environment. he offered an unusual perspective. he said the climate world is divided into three. the credit atheist, the climate agnostic, and the climate

evangelical. i think we probably put people that are in the public in this category. which one are you? >> guest: i think that i look on climate as, it's clear, the whole story about the measuring of carbon and carbon is going up in the atmosphere, and impacts on climate. what the time is, what the models are going to show, i mean, i'm not a climate scientist. that's not when doing, so what i try to do this kind of explain how the scientific is turned into a political consensus. into a political consensus. that's what i was trying to do in that storied. >> host: are you agnostic? you don't want to label yourself? >> guest: i wanted to tell the story and help people have a framework when all these issues, whether it's climate, energy, everything comes along, to these -- to see them in perspective. i wanted to do in a very narrow way. >> host: thank you very much.

>> coming up on booktv, charles mann discusses his book, "1493" about how the arrival of europeans changed the new world. tha the. >> now that the iowa caucuses are over, the presidential campaign moves to new hampshire which all the nations first primaries next tuesday. today at 4 p.m. eastern, jon huntsman holds a town hall meeting in manchester, new hampshire. at 7:30 p.m. rick santorum is in new hampshire. you can watch both of these events live on c-span and c-span.org. >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs weekdays feature live coverage

of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy defense, and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs into their schedules at our website, and you can join in on the conversation on social media sites. >> in his book, trenton, charles mann examines how the new world was changed by the arrival of europeans and the plants and animals they brought from your. he talked about the book at the los angeles public library. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. >> he will take how this great new book "1493" uncovering of the new world columbus created actually originated with a question about an heirloom tomato plant developed a 19th century ukraine which he encountered in a school green has become going to actually let him tell you that star himself, but his story and his book will

make you think anyway about summary things, about food, diseases, people, trade, and how events for centuries ago set a template for events we're living through today as the global network has become as he says the subject of the furious intellectual battle. i don't think anyone here would disagree with that. charles mann is a great interdisciplinary thinker, scholar and questioner. he sympathizes the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists and historians to uncover the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, all the things that we are roiling and talking about, and you see in the op-ed pages from immigration to trade policy to culture wars. and he always finds a great way to tell the story but in his new book you will find him and assorted and engaging guide from page one to page 410. you may already have read charles mann's other sweeping portrait of american history, the mind rocking of "1491" and

which won the national academies communications award for best book of the year. or you may have read him in half a dozen magazines like the atlantic, science or wired, or even seen two episodes he wrote of law and order. in a conversation with charles mann tonight we have another great interdisciplinary thinker and writer, richard rodriguez. richard is the author of an autobiographical trilogy that examines respectively fast ethnicity and race in america. richard's books are always close at hand. i keep them right above my desk. we have missed in your. the last two years we were very lucky to coax him down from san francisco where he is hard at work finishing a book on the ecology of the influence of the desert with experience of god for the jew, the christian and the muslim. i'm so pleased and honored to present these two writers in conversation with each other. please join me in welcoming

charles mann and richard rodriguez to los angeles public library. thank you. [applause] >> first of all of me just say how pleased i am to be here interviewing charles. i feel a little bit like a child interviewing a giant. so if i seem a little starstruck, forgive me. i was reading your book over several days, my partner, jim, and i tend to do a lot of reading on the weekend. but in separate rooms. and if i'm making a lot of noise mac, laughter, if i slam a book on the table, he will ask, what are you reading? and on occasion, vacation of this book, "1493" i would come

into his room and i would say what are you reading? he said i'm reading this book about the tomato. [laughter] the most extraordinary book about a t the most extraordinary book about a tomato, how it made its way up south america to mexico and then it ended up on a plate of pasta in italy. and then i'll go back to my reading. gym is under the impression as i grew older, i am completely mad. but the book was mad and it was not -- a few hours later he's what are you reading now? are you still on that book? i'm reading a book about malaria. the relationship of malaria to slavery. i never read this before. i've never heard such an idea. oh, he says. he's reading a book by an english novelist. the next day jim, are you going to read that book about malaria? i'm not into the muddy section

at all now. no, i'm reading about in manila, about chinatown in manila. there was a chinatown in the 17th century in manila where you could get stirfried chicken. and jim says, oh. and then he said, as i finish this book, this remarkable book, what was it about, finally? i said i think the thing i will take always with me in the end is this story about an african in florida whom the indians see, and confuse or maybe truly see, as a spiritual and blessed man, and they give him gifts, appropriate to his nation. never heard of him before. to my surprise reading this

book, charles, this book is about five centuries, not one year, 1493 seems a bit of a misnomer -- in a sort of a standing. >> tell us a little bit about the ambition of this book and what you refer to as the climate exchange. >> the ambition of the book is really to find out why the tomato was, that's how it starts but basically if you're a journalist, which is what i am, you get two kinds of stories. one is where the editor calls you up and says what you do something about x or y. which i am often happy to do. but the ever kind of things we know something and i think wait a minute, and so we lived in new york city for a long time, and then moved out to the country because we wanted something a little more fast-paced. [laughter] the thing about new york, you get on the subway for an hour,

if you're lucky, absolutely nothing happens. were as in this little town i mean, you passed there in two minutes, everything is there. we wanted something sort of the city in that way. and so my son, i'm trying to think of something do with local college students we saw in our exciting small town, they had grown 100 varieties of domestic i like tomatoes a lot. this is in the early 90s but i never heard of heirloom tomatoes. i never heard of all about, probably most of you have heard of. just great. and so they gave me sort of tomato pornography, this catalogue of waiting all these great tomato seeds. i was reading and thinking, these tomatoes are not from around here at all. they are all japanese or ukraine. i thought, i just had this picture of all these tomato nerds, like i kind of wanted to be. all over the world breeding and

taking their tomatoes. how weird that is that this could happen. site is idea that tomatoes came from mexico. actually that's not true. they came from the indies and mr. issa came to mexico be made where the taste improved in mexico. why did they bring this toxic, one of these historical mystery. i started thinking what he plans come from? which somehow my elementary school teacher neglected to tell me. and i thought, i looked at my garden, absolute f'ing i grew, i live in new england, wasn't from around there. and i realize my garden which i sort of hovering around, kind of homey and was this exotic cosmopolitan modern globalized object, like completely weird artificial construct. which was sort of strange to think if you are in moving around in there, and i thought how did that happen? largely that was -- >> it would've been if i were you, it would've been

satisfactory to write a book called the tomato, but this is only one chapter of this book about earthworms, and about malaria. there is something in this book, it's almost as though you credit the events of 1492 with opening a door in the imagination of the world, and the five centuries after, i think the book ends in the 1990s, the five centuries that you strive through, engage questions of politics, slavery, colonialism, botany, biology, chemistry, history. at what point do you stop? almost expect tiger woods, that this golfer who calls himself, is the end of the climate

exchange. what is the climate exchange in your imagination, and how do you keep it all from going off the pitch of the book? >> i'm from, and my family is from the pacific northwest even though i live in massachusetts now. and one of our great treats as kids was to go to portland, the bookstore there is unbelievable. still there. an amazing place. and so, as a young adult i still like to go there when i possibly could. my wife was a little bit less enthusiastic about this. as i was rummaging around the books i found this book with this title, ecological imperialism, which i thought, then it's like two words i'd

never imagined jammed together. i picked it up, and they have these awful badly chairs you could see him for like 10 minutes maximum. and i sat there for about two hours and read half the book. this is amazing. what he was talking about was the fact, the climate exchange which is why this is not -- where the idea is that when columbus came, what he was doing was re-creating the original, 250 million years ago there was a single giant continent, geological forces broke it up and the result is complete different plants and animals over here than over there. columbus in fact re-creates, and that's what is important or there's this ecological compulsion. >> the world meeting itself. >> and this is why we should observe columbus day. it's a big deal in history. i suppose is celebrating.

it's an enormous market, beginning of the modern world. >> i always celebrate it because someone who is part spanish, part -- it's my birthday. >> here i am, i'm a dissent from largely from, nina, scottish people into strange part of world married to a japanese woman. i couldn't happened, all this, without columbus. >> i'm going to say this publicly because i've been waiting to say this because i read your first book, you're of the book, "1491", which was to me so redemptive. i have never been able to accommodate my spanish have to buy indian have. i could identify my spanish have because spanish have spoke spanish, roman catholic and so forth. but was -- what was my indian have? which have given me in "1491" is

this idea that what the european discovered here was, in fact, that there was something here, that there were aqueducts. that they were damn's. that there was a civilization if. >> mini. >> and does not as always portrayed it to be a virgin land filled with people were merely passive. >> and acted like nowhere else in the world. because after all the america has been occupied for 15,000 years. implications of these people later for thousands and thousands of years and didn't do anything. boring. it doesn't fit. people are interesting but these are really -- and, of course, the answer you think about this, they can't possibly be the case, these people just sat there and were like tourists. look at the trees. look at the beach. that's all people do. and so they built stuff.

>> where did the idea? i can think of a number of writers who speak of america, the united states, virgin land for example. where did that idea come, that the europeans came upon place which was essentially empty? >> it's a really complicated question, and -- >> is that the arrogance of discovery? >> part that i think. one has, one has to play, every groupthink it's really important of people is pushing aside our sort of not so important. >> the puritans required the assistance of the indians to survive the that doesn't mean people who are not -- all the europeans first came require the indies to survive it does mean they can't think that they're not so important because it's kind of embarrassing. the real thing that happens is this wave of disease, one of the first parts of the columbian exchange is when these europeans accidentally inadvertently import all these diseases that

existed in europe and asia and africa. and didn't exist over your. so between 1500-1650 or so, somewhere between two-thirds and three quarters, or perhaps even as much as 90% of people in the americas died. and to meet -- >> that becomes a metaphor, doesn't it? the european becomes the actor and any becomes merely the victim of his actions. >> in this one case it's true. but the actual actor of course, the europeans don't understand. they don't have a germ theory of disease. the indians don't have a germ theory for disease. for both of them gets this unthinkable thing that happens and they don't know why. it has something to do with some celestial events. unit, misfortune, you've been bad or good or what have you. so these extensively cleared areas that were throughout the americas, lots and lots of people living from lots and lots of farms fill in with trees. so by the time my ancestors,

ancestors came in early 19th century the farms are gone and there's a force. they think would always think the world has been exact like what was on the first time. and so that's part of it. it's hard to credit when you're in a 19th century come here seeing the forest that it was once completely different. >> one of the wonderful things about rivera, who was quite mad, there will be these splendid murals of the dreaded can keep the door. but usually with syphilis. and so while he may have raped the indian, she brought him disease. what i took from her first book on the take from this book, too, is that the encounter between human beings is going to change both. and that seems to be so profound, that we don't even recognize the importance of that today, that we really do imagine that, for example, this is not a

political statement, we contract to iraq or afghanistan and that we will not, we will change them but we will not be change. and some white this is the oldest expectation of the traveler, that they can look at the world and that the world will not in some way to look back at them in such a way that they will be forever changed. >> i think is actually, maybe richly for our culture that we have this because one of the oddities of historiography is that if you read mexican history, or, you know, histories in brazil or peru of the encounter, you recognize this culture, joint creation. and if the assumption is that they had no impact at all, which if you live in new york as i did for a little while, how long did it take those korean immigrants in queens to start doing hip-hop moves? how long did it take, you know, young black kid in town of those

korean kids to start doing kung fu? people learn from each other incredibly quickly. so the assumption, often in our historiography here in north america, that this encounter was a two-way. it seemed to me, but it seems that doesn't seem this is how people really are. >> can i say that there is something in this book that is religious so full of male energy. i think -- >> thank you, i think. [laughter] >> i didn't want to put it to near my bed at night. [laughter] there is a testosterone in this book that is filled with these, this male energy and the world just hacking his way through the forest. brave. >> brave and exotic. >> yes. the astonishing, i was in, and

you know, alaska a few weeks ago and is asking a group of young men by so many colleges now, it's the young girls were traveling, not the boys are i think in two out of three of the six were traveling abroad part of college curriculum, they are gross. >> really? >> yes. barack obama's mother went from kansas to hawaii to indonesia, married twice and so forth. and the boys upstairs playing video games. last night and i said to these boys, what do you want from the video games? and they said come is the only place where they can feel mythic. and i think to myself, you know, these men that you're describing our mythic. they must have been aware of their importance, other self-importance that way, don't you think? >> it's interesting because i think it's true. and when the sordid things that happen after cortez, suddenly

there's all these spaniards thinking i can do this, i can go out and randomly and feingold. and they are able, it's a little bit like the dotcom boom. netscape goes up, everybody is willing to fund the most idiotic ideas and the random spaniards can go as they give me a boat, and they fly out in all directions. >> one critic frazier book by calling it, referring to your prose as being very muscular. there is something in the pros that matches the audacity of the explorers you're describing but in so far as there is some attempt to yoke of the comments and so the across the atlantic but across the pacific also. do you admire this habit within the mail that you describe? >> actually i haven't thought about it. i guess this is part of what people do. and of all cultures, you know, i described how the chinese are

pushing out west and body slamming into asian minorities. they are still doing this today. so there is, often when you history like this is an lot of handwritten. one of the most striking comments that is in the last book i quote an anthropologist who says if you read the mexico accounts, the account of the people that cortez conquered, in the most brutal way possible, they of course don't want to be conquered. they never blame the spanish. they think this is what people do. i think there's some truth in that, in fact if you want to stop people doing this, the best way is to accept that something is not particularly to be assigned to one group or another. this is what people do,