replaced by the afghan communist who began trying to remodel society according to their own design. they very quickly ran aground with that. the country rose up against him. that's why the soviets have to come in. what is amazing in a way that innovation and the war that followed come paneledded by the u.s. intervention in 2001 and after has completely wiped out that old afghanistan that we saw in the '60s and '70s that was different. ..

the. >> host: i think that is so important. one of the most popular things we have ever done on our website , a terrific photo essay called once upon a time in afghanistan. and people just cannot get enough of pictures of women in pencil skirts. snazzy magnum-era. >> guest: film students. >> host: absolutely. development projects, groovy record hang out kind of clubs. there was a sense of afghanistan on a trajectory of development and actually in that time before it all started to go down the u.s. was competing for influence both of them building these big projects.

the tunnel that connected afghanistan north with the capital. these are incredible. there were moving society forward in very significant ways . the poor, landlocked country. people are astonished to learn that it is such a bad experiment, there was an alternate trajectory that was possible for afghanistan, and i do think we all become sort of historical determinist. after the fact relic, that was inevitable. like about your book is it actually forces us to get away from bad lazy habit. it just always was this way. at think that the cord that people strike with that once upon a time in afghanistan fatah i say. so a quick question, and it will move on to the next example. uni both lived in russia. how did you come away from your study of the soviets to

engagement in afghanistan thinking in terms of what that did in hastening? you one of those people that think it actually just had to do with the 1980's are do you think that afghanistan hasten to soviet demise? >> guest: i am one of those people that think that the soviet demise at a lot of causes. and i think you can focus on one. i think it was a confluence of several big things. but i think afghanistan was, indeed, one of the busiest and most important. it made life very difficult for the soviet military. consumed enormous resources, just enormous resources. and not any less importantly, and also change the way the soviet citizens saw their own government. the government was forced to lie about a lot of things it was doing.

now widely publicized. people move was happening. the authority of the government itself. quite a portly, and also made the central asian republics of the soviet union very restive and very turbulent in a way that they had not been before. 1979, by the way, is the year when the muslim population of the old soviet union really began to overtake the european population of the old soviet union. very interesting moments of the history. certainly high oil prices and the arms race with the united states, a lot of these other things, i think, conspired to make life very hard for the soviet regime. i certainly do think the war in afghanistan was a major, major character. >> host: let's go to the other end of that. in 1979 you have this really

amazing spectacle of a polish pope. not only was he the first nine italian in western european centuries, but it is your view that he started the series of earthquakes rulings that became the solidarity movement, the unraveling, if you will, of soviet dominance in eastern europe. what strikes u.s. fresh in the story of pope john paul the second? >> guest: i think the thing that strikes me as particularly fresh is the way it polls have talked, describes the impact that he had. it was not just the pride in the polish pope. he became pope in 1978. polls were extremely happy about that, needless say. in the kremlin was extremely worried about it. but i think it has a great deal

to do with the special qualities john paul the second. he was one of the most brilliant man ever to become pope, and amazingly brilliant guy who spoke many languages. he knew 55 he had to doctorates. he was an incredible figure. he combined that intellect with a very easy, charismatic way of dealing with ordinary folks. he was a very fine parish priest because the did things with his parishioners. he went out and didst ports with them. he attended their confirmations for the children. he was very much involved in their lives. he was a remarkable, unique, individual. at the template a big role. the other big thing, the most interesting thing to me when i came back and looked at the story again was the role that the pope's played in getting them to think running their own country.

when the pope arrived, the communist state basically said, all right. this is your show. brad going to get involved in this. provide security. they organize the trip. the man as the crowds. it was of revelation. suddenly you're their work organizing nine days. they went to the streets and travel to different parts of the country. a very important precondition for solidarity. came up the very next year. i don't think they're related. >> host: religion as a crash course in practical politics

involved in opposition politics. but can you really make -- de think there is a linkage between the kind of religious opposition to communist that the pope offered. the religious opposition to the shop. >> guest: they are different because for all of this conservative, obsess with human rights. john paul the second wrote quite extensively. suffered under nazi occupation and the stalinist. entire personal philosophical direction based on the human primacy of the individual. he had the view that islam was

everything an individual rights very often had a superstition. there were very, very fundamentally different. there's a striking parallels. but the these men were mistakes. in some ways there were very unusual in their religious beliefs. he was not your ordinary priest i told he was also practitioner, sort of things along the lines of what went seeing in sydney islam. was very interesting is the way

that mysticism can lead to political activism. the perfectibility of man. if you think you have a direct line, you might think the you have a greater ability to my greater power to shape against the human world. that's something that i find to be a very interesting parallel. >> host: the story of poland and the catholic church. in many ways people of perhaps move don, at least in these in europe. we have a new pope today. a story that is very much moving out of europe where the churches on the decline. but this chapter of your book have relevance today? >> guest: i think it does. the striking thing when you look at the history of the catholic church in politics in the 1970's

and 80's is the way that the church is very, very effective when it is -- how can i put it, when it is in the opposition, when it is not aligned with the force of the state. so in the philippines, even south korea the churches play an incredibly powerful and mobilizing opposition, organizing opposition. and then when you have a regular democracy, regular a secular state, for example, poland, after the fall of communism the church became very cozy with the state in poland. pols suddenly realize that did not like this a much. it like to church and opposition . we see very interesting phenomenon where the church has become the state. you will see many opinion polls, many studies that suggest that this was going to undermine the position. in people grow up seeing as long

as part of the establishment. power to defend the powerless. and so what i think it's fascinating is the way that in these cases we have seen the power of the church to marshal opposition. when it becomes part of the power structure, it loses that ability and becomes part of the establishment. people don't think about it in the same way. that's something that i find very, very relevant from the store which continues today. >> host: it's interesting because of the other part of your book which is really one of the major themes community incredible transformation in china, the opposition comes from within the upper echelons of the communist party. and so you have an insurgency from on high.

unleashing one of the greatest transformations of all my time. the base toward the telling. how do you crack in that? >> guest: that's a good question. a fantastic story that a lot of people for gun. again, just like political islam the take china as a capitalist countries so for granted. we seem to have forgotten that it was are wrenching and very, very difficult and unlikely change. >> guest: was exactly like number three except that the billion people making a transformation, and transforming itself to something complete a different. at the time it started rather small. the chinese certainly interested. one of the things i enjoy is the

people did not compare china's economic reforms to the united states or western europe. people compare the economic reforms to hungry or yugoslavia or even east germany. it's just as to undermine hell on likely endows uprising these changes were. i agree with tell a story china is by going back and looking of what people were looking at the time. have the story where an american investor is brought to a place until the ship invest. the population of new york city, your ipad was made there.

there are lot of great ways to tell the story. some people told them at the time very visibly there have been some great books. nowadays i think people i forgot my story. >> host: that begs the question. this how rare wrong were weak? the instant history, did we understand the historical import of these events at the moment or really at the mark? >> guest: we missed a lot of the story. in know, the big story in 1979 for americans and chinese was the visit to the united states.

and mark the beginning of diplomatic relations and it was a huge event. move probably now regard as much more consequential, was largely best. but in understand how significant they were. when the soviets invaded afghanistan you can look it the memo. deasy will people were thinking. even before the invasion he was giving covert aid to the islamic rebels against the afghan communist party government. much is really interesting when you go back and look at this is the people in the white house thought that this was part of some larger soviet plan. the thought it was like the soviets invading czechoslovakia or hungary. this was an extension. they're going back for their

authority. they kind of felt there were forced into it by the rapid deterioration. when they made the decision, they didn't even have a proper paper that they all signed. this very vague memorandum that did not even say what they were going to do. just like vietnam. this led into a. to understand what an improvisation. >> host: really interesting when you think about the extent to which the united states was involved in these stories. you've done something commendable. the have not put the u.s. from the center.

the province but to american history and also to decisionmakers. >> guest: i don't know. if the -- will see how the book does. is not the only catcher in the world. the united states as part of all the stores, but is not at the center. in many ways is reacting to events more than it is shaping them. we thought it was important to capture. i was trying to write a truly global book. >> host: you know, ronald reagan is not on the cover. many people say 1989 was a crucial year, about to be

elected president. the beginning of the republican revolution here in the united states. deasy reagan as fitting into the story? >> guest: i would contend that he was not really a player. he was starting to campaign against carter. a very important domestic american politician, but his moment came a little bit later. that's why did include him in this book. some very import insurance. 1979 was the year the moral majority. crucial to the victory. this moment of trying to capture, a slightly earlier moment. and just felt that we really --

it belongs to us. >> host: tell me about where you think 1979 fits in on those years that are kind of the dangers of history, 17809 in 1917. where is 1979? one for the long term? >> guest: i would make the case that we should. such an important turning point. it marks a really important moment when the domination of these ideas from the left which really really played a huge role in most of the toy is century, even if you were to come as a socialist, you invariably found

yourself reacting to these ideologies. the rise of canal when i put it, very viable alternative ideologies. suddenly markets are no longer your. their ideology. these things compete quite well. just talking to somebody get a day have read the book. feld himself to be much more of a leftist. a very good question. up the gas. the leftists of trying to find a response to these things. the changes that this year initiated.

when we -- i think this may be drawing to a close. the ideological viewpoint the people have to be very different >> host: such an interesting point. most of our conversations about the death of ideology has revolved around the collapse of communism later. that conventionally speaking has come to be seen as the moment when ideology died. that's actually wrong. we need to move the clock back. the death of leftist ideology was really in 1979 that's a really interesting argument.

it's a very interesting new take on things. it's true, today's left is a very different one. people love to come barack obama socialist and talk about him as a european left winger. reality given the european left as accepted what came to be known as the washington consensus. even laughed except the basic principles of the market's trend think that the financial crash of 2008 in the ongoing trauma associated with that in europe especially if finally spell the

end of that market oriented? >> guest: as in many ways. so without a dozen boston college debt, wonder if you're going to believe in capitalism the way somebody did the went to college in the 1980's. what happened with the financial crisis is that it deeply undermined a lot of our faith in capitalist institutions. again, though the -- no one is found the language to bring the opposition to that together. no one is found a coherent ideological alternative to that. citing barack obama is a great example. i agree he really does not fit the definition of the 1970's and 1980's socialist by any stretch of the imagination. he is simply very different.

you mentioned the united kingdom. of course it was one of tony blair's associates. members of the labor party. was the coherent alternative. i don't think it's being a marxist-leninist there's still a few out there. >> host: but basically everyone as a pragmatic marketeer. speeches some big problems with the system. we have not figured out 91 to the alternative. >> host: it's a history of ideas as well as the events.

it does get back to the question , is it relevant to the time when living in? if you captured a moment in time? you said earlier, 30 years has already passed. really if you think about it like this in 1979 there were as close to war were to as their word us. in the way uc in 1979 the end of that post world war ii era of the ideology and politics and governing consensus. a good example, directly came to the throne is bias bill seeded and ill-advised reliance with enosis. you have these arrangements that came about at the end of world

war ii, finally reaching the end point. our reaching the end point? the life cycle. speech to a lot depends on what works and what doesn't. people need to put themselves back in that historical context. and deliver unprecedented prosperity after world war ii. people live better. the working class is in europe and the united states the better than ever before. unprecedented. that word for about 30 years. the left to the wall. so i do see some very

interesting parallels to that. spray when up to sing. we do need some sorts of alternatives some patches of tried to put in place corrections are somehow reform the market structures, but can't help but think that might not be enough to satisfy voters in this country in europe are now having a very hard time with that. the employer rate might be increasing, but there are still enormous segments of the population there are not benefiting from the growth. you can't help but wonder whether at some point it will turn into a fundamental discontent. and not know. perhaps lucia. >> host: it's been a long

journey. >> guest: the extent to which a lot of people to million this tamil was going on in china. the ticket face value. the put on a big state dinner. and is sitting down at the table with shirley maclaine. she's just been to china. could 70's, leftist. she begins to gush about how there were a out of this farm and that this professor. part of the cultural revolution. the scent of the intellectuals of to the countryside. ..

didn't quite get the story. they didn't understand what they were seeing. a lot were still whetted to these old images of mall las china. in some cases they were -- i think that's striking. >> host: it's an argument for on-the-ground journalism. it's a smart british diplomat who just went out there and, you know, beat the movement as if he were a journalist and in effect

interviewed people and wrote down what he saw. > guest: exactly. roger is still alive. i'm happy to say. an absolutely magnificent test -- book that withstood the test of time. he went out and on the ground, he got the story. he saws things praymatically without an ideological lens. he caught at love things that other observers missed. >> host: that's interesting. ideology can be the enemy of history. >> guest: i think very much so. and i'm kind of struck when i look at the period again by how the ideological people didn't understand what they were seeing. i had a good conversation with -- whom you might remember a man who wrote a book about th saddam hussein reg

s a convinced leftist. his wife was iranian. he described to me how completely bewildering the iranian revolution was. if you believe the theory of class struggle and dictatorship and all the things so much invoked at the time. you didn't understand it. it was completely nonsensical. they tried to write article in the journal explaining why the masses were temporarily being disus -- seduced. and in the end they were flum mozz.ed. he basically said it was the end of a lot of communists and socialists believers in the middle east. it seized to be a viable alternative. people didn't the president. >> host: i think that's almost an important note for us end on. we are almost out of time. not entirely. i want to throw out the question

we were debating before we came on. what is not in the book one of the most disight things we're talking about. there's a great book for somebody in the rise of the personal computer. which happens right in the 1979, 1980 time period. do you see technology as playing a role even in backstage in the hint of this new order that would come in the stories? >> guest: absolutely. the rise of tell commune cailings is usually important. he communicated with the state-of-the-art telephone switching system installed by the americans for the shaw. he called up anybody in iran at the moment to's notice. it was hugely important. with the help of satellite, of course, which were come down and satellite communication were important. i think you see at love different level which the technology was influencing this. pc were not yet there. but i think they >> host: if

you were to do a followup where is your next? does go 1979, 1989, is that going to be the next part? >> guest: that's a good question. i don't think i'm going write a year again. it's going to be something dotely dpircht -- totally different. >> host: in term of the response you have got son far. what have you made of what the critics had to say? >> guest: i'm happy with it. i feel a lot of people got the book. when you write a book like this you're sitting alone in the little room and wondering am i just a nut case or are people going understand some of the points? somehow i was frat guy by the response. a lot of people understand what was trying to say.

i am making an argument to a certain disagree. if you want to read the story and exam the live of the character incharacter and the story they're going through. i think you can enjoy as a historical narrative, i hope but i try to write a book that would have different levels, you know, something for everyone. >> host: congratulations, christian, on the book. thank you, again, for this interesting conversation. there's a lot to chew over. good luck with the book tour. >> guest: thank you very much. our special booktv programming continue tomorrow night.

what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> well, i have just read jonathan d. "thousand pardons" which i thought was magnificent. he wrote a book called the privileges which i like. this one is even better. i'm in about to start writing a bock, and old book called the pity of it all. the history of jews in germany. there's a gally in the book coming out this fall. the tight of which is -- i'm sorry, greg it escape me. forgive me.

i love him. i think he's a fabulous writer. i can't wait to dig in to that. the book just came out by a really smart psychology at the university of pennsylvania. about biological crime and i'm dying to read as well. that's my summer reading list. let us know what you're reading this summer. tweet us @booktv. or send us an e-mail at c-span.org. in a few moments how businesses are implementing the new health care law. in a little more than forty minutes in the first major policy speech he discusses climate change. after that susan crawford talk about her book "captive audience." about economic's future and how it will be affected by other

countries whose internet capabilities are faster and cheaper. up next another in the continuing series of washington journal segment focusing on the new health care law. over the next forty minutes a look how companies are trying to control health care costs.inues. >> this morning we're continuing the periodic series on the health care law with the healtht of kaiser news today. we are joined by jay hancock toy talk about how the law is to impacting employers and how how l health care costs. you had an edge is a story about a recent action taken by ups, one of the country's largest employers. what did ups announce? put out a notice to its many employees telling them

that if they had spouses on the health plan and they had access to coverage, if they were working spouses, they would no longer be eligible for coverage at ups. it is called spousal exclusion. widespread at large employers like ups, but it is growing. the analyst indicated this may be part of a trend as companies look to control their health care costs. this is one way that will save ups ups millions of dollars. the affordable care act puts the responsibility on employers to cover their employees. primarilyour spouse's

employer should fill that and we will no longer offer coverage. host: we will show our viewers the language that was used. host: how many folks are we talking about being impacted by this decision? guest: it would affect about 15,000 families. 15,000 spouses. these are white-collar, managerial jobs only. workingnot excluded

spouses from the majority of its jobs. 3/4 of its jobs are unionized. their spouses are still covered. the company is still offering spousal coverage to those employers. these are managerial employees. host: which is about 20% of their employees enrolled in the flex plan at ups which could potentially be impacted. we will be going through this story and other stories. we want to take your comments and questions as we talk with jay hancock of kaiser health news. our phone lines are open. at 202-s can call us 585-3880. .mployees, 202-585-3881 if you're a family member of an

employee, 202-585-3882. we would love to hear from ups employees who may have been impacted, whether you are and employee or a family member. memoeemed to say in their the health care act several times. finding thatyou this decision was attributed to the new health-care law and how much two other factors as a: ups rasied it factor. they mentioned it four or five times in the memo. the noted it was part of sum total in the decision- making. projectionsd some for what they expect their health care costs to be next year. they were expecting about an 11%

increase in the total health costs and the attributed about .% to the affordable care act we talk to independent experts who suggest there are cost for large employers like ups built into the health law. there are taxes and increased health coverage. in the large scheme of things, those are relatively minor components compared to the big picture in health care, which is the overall increase in health care costs. defenders of the law pointed out that if the law works the way it , in the long run

that will cost companies like ups far less money. the money they save will far outweigh their initial startup costs for the aca, which kicks in in full gear in 2014. host: we are talking with jay hancock of kaiser health news. we want to hear your thoughts and how you are being impacted. our phone lines are open and the numbers are on the screen. kaiser health news is independent from the kaiser family foundation. they are a research and communications corporation and not affiliated with kaiser preventing. some numbers were put out on inflation of health care plans.

talk us through some of those numbers. guest: the foundation does a rigorous survey of what employers'health costs experience is. the survey this year showed what it is shown in the last couple of years. slowdown inket health care cost inflation. employers,rage for the cost is going up at about an rate of 4%. five percent for single employee coverage increase. those are down from increases of as much as 10% before the recession. the recession was the borderline for the cost slowed down. those are still far above the inflation rate. health care is still

increasing more than the economy is growing but it is slowing down to a preshow degree. caused opponents of the health-care law to take credit. there is still pretty striking argument about whether this is sustainable. we have seen health care costs slow down before and everybody said we have it fixed. it did not turn out to be true. the question now is whether this is permanent. host: here is how the editorial board of the new york times put .t

host: that is in today's "the new york times." waiting. few callers you are on with jay hancock of kaiser health news. caller: hi. points.sically two

it seemed america would make the correlation between employers and health insurance. i question whether that correlation should exist. anmight be a benefit employer might want to provide. there should be no correlation there. the items are separate. and a lot of times the premiums are dictated not by the persons lifestyle but by the size of the company, which should have no bearing on the price. if a construction cubby has 50 people and another has 10,000 people, the second construction company would get a much better deal in america. but the whole point is to aggregate risks. is like they are cheating with the numbers. guest: thank you.

two good points. a lot of people share your opinion. they asked why health insurance is tied to employers in america. legacy an historical that grew up by accident in world war ii. there were price controls and employers were not allowed to give employees raises but they could offer health insurance. depend dynamic where it has been associated with employers. the idea behind the affordable care act was to work with the system that we had. it was impossible to overhaul the system. the act took the insurance companies that we have and try to work around that. a lot of people share your

opinion that that is not an ideal way. raised the point about more --paying more per employee for smaller employers. one of the ideas behind the affordable care act is to narrow poolsap by having risk for small employers. this is what the small employer exchanges that are opening in 2014 are supposed to accomplish. host: these are the ones that will be pushed off by a year. guest: they are still going to open next year. the choice that you have when employeesoffer your will not be as extensive. the idea was to have a look like the individual obamacare

exchange in which you will have four or five different plans to choose from. onerimarily going to be insurance company that you see for the first year. the idea is to throw them all in thatool and try to get price under control. austin,y in texas. good morning. caller: it is probably good for the employees that they are not going to cover their spouses. i worked for the state and i had insurance. my husband has me on his insurance. i got sick. my insurance was the primary insurance. his insurance would not pay for me anyway. it doesn't make sense to have your spouse on your insurance

when the insurance is not going to pay anyway. only my insurance paid because mine was primary. guest: thanks, joy. that is a good illustration of what employees and employers have been wrestling with for a few years. the way the system grew up had a lot of overlapping coverage in two-income families. there would be overlapping benefits. one of the things that has been happening over the last five years is you have companies like ups trying to sort that out and decide we are going to cover this but if a spouse is covered, we will only cover that secondarily or we might not

cover it at all. what you are seeing is a separation of the overlapping coverage. it sounds like your employer's had impose the policies. extreme stepa more of this benefit coordination. said president obama often in talking about the affordable care act that if you like your current insurance, the act would not change your current plan. ups was blaming the affordable care act. what has been the white house reaction? guest: the white house is basically saying -- they are not responding directly to what ups did. they are saying that in scenarios like this, there are other options available for spouses. the spouses that are no longer eligible forps are

coverage at their employers. saying therese is are these other options available now in the exchanges, the online marketplaces that open in 2014. if you do not like the insurance and your employer, this is another option. host: chris from texas. good morning. you are on with jay hancock. i think we lost chris. allan from maine, a family anber of somebody -- of employee with health insurance. good morning. caller: i guess i want to make a statement. carethe cost of health seems to be the most important issue. my wife retired with disability

and we were able to continue our health care plan by purchasing it ourselves. we are aware of what the costs are. we started paying and the cost was about $4000 a year for a family. $16,000. is this does not seem to be brought up enough. some way to reduce the cost. i am just making that statement because i would like to see the statistics point out more often about these high costs and how much they have increase in a relatively short point of time. at affordable care act least attempts to adjust this issue. guest: no argument here. health care is really expensive.

it has increased the on the rate of growth and beyond the overall inflation rate for nearly three decades now. it is putting real pressure on budgets everywhere. government. a lot of the reason we are seeing the government deficits is attributable to health care costs. great point. it doesn't get brought up enough. let me add something. i do not know your individual situation. let's assume you are buying an individual insurance policy for your wife through a broker or directly from the insurance company. 50's orprobably in your early 60's and not eligible for medicare yet.

one of the things that the affordable care act is intended to do is to bring down the premiums that you are paying now for the policy for your wife. sts, brings to pool co down costs with older folks with perhaps chronic conditions and bring down the price difference between someone like your wife and somebody younger in their 30's who is healthy. if that is your case, you'll almost see if you can go shopping on the main health exchange starting in october. you should see a pretty substantial price reduction. thatubsidies to be pay for depending on your income. $94,000income is below

for a family with a few up toence or $46,000 -- $46,000 for a single person, you may get some tax credit help. good luck to you. you may see some changes. are talking about some changes that some companies have made. you bring up a few parts of the health-care law. if you could bring up what they are. you bring up a temporary fee to stabilize online occupies his and a catalogued tax -- cadillac tax. guest: there are a lot of taxes associated with the affordable care act to pay for this new coverage. we are paying for this coverage now outside the health care system.

you mentioned the research tax. temporary tax to subsidize the online marketplaces we have been talking about that are probably going to be unstable for the first few years because the first customers they get are probably going to be disproportionately have chronic conditions, and so there is a tax that employers all employers are to pay whether they're in the exchange or not that will help pay for the costs. on very generous health plans. it does not kick in until 2018. are lookingke ups at it already. it is quite a stiff tax. if it is over a certain amount, you have to pay a tax of 40% of the value of the plan over that threshold. that is a pretty stiff bit

e. companies are looking how to reduce the value of their plans. beyond companies now are looking at how to the value of the plan spared. just do for the rich requirements. you mentioned the aspect of the plan that is maybe best known which his adult children can stay on their parents planned plan up to age 26 read grade the cap on lifetime benefit limits is removed. that raises costs and so forth and so this is why ups mentioned the affordable care act as part of one of the factors among others including just overall raising health cost the costa to exclude working spouses. >> host: in your story you cite a towers watson survey that asked employers how they planned to change their health offerings for employees in light of what

is going on with the affordable care act. i'm sorry the current situation on how employers charge their employees. about 20% of employers that were surveyed charged working spouses an extra 20% and 13% plan on adding a surcharge for working spouses. about 8% of employers that were surveyed plan to exclude working spouses and currently about 4% of the employers currently exclude working spouses. is that correct? >>guest:yeah so this is clearly a trend. this is in one frame, this is a continuing adjustment in reduction of health care coverage that employers have been doing for quite a few years now. looking out working spouses in particular is something that companies are looking at more

closely. >> host: with ups being such a big company making this move have you seen reports of other companies looking to what ups is doing and starting this process? >> the day our ups story came out the university of virginia announced that it too would have a similar policy. it would not cover in the future working spouses of the va employees but as you mentioned something that is more prevalent among companies is instead of excluding working spouses entirely they are living a surcharge so if your spouse has access at his or her workplace you might pay a thousand dollars a month. we talked to xerox which starting next year will charge employees who have working spouses on its plan $1500 a month which is a different incentive and a different way,

it's not a nudge and not a push to take working spouses off plan but i suspect it's going to have the same effect ultimately. we talk to other employers who go the opposite route. they will pay you a bonus if you are a working spouse or if your spouse seeks coverage elsewhere. so that's another way the companies are doing it. ups took sort of illogical and to say we are just not going to do it. >> host: chris is up next from springhill florida on our employees line. good morning you are on with jay hancock of kaiser health news. >> caller: thank you, good morning. i am just curious, do i understand a single person as individual subsidies available to employees around $46,000 a year.

but from what i understand the subsidy if you are close to that mark and not much but if you are down to 35,000 or something like that, they are more substantial. i really don't know what the difference is but i work on commission and i fluctuate between those two and if it's enough of a difference to where i'm going to come out the same then i'm not going to work too hard to get close to the 46. i will go closer to the 35 do you know what i'm saying? that's kind of scary because there are probably a lot of people that are like that or you and something should be done about health care. i am really concerned about that because we are all connected. if there is not as much money coming in for a lot of people

then they won't have enough money to come in and you know purchase my services. so the economy, we are all part of the economy and that's kind of scary to me. and then combine that with the small business exemption. the businesses with 49 employees. those employees would have a serious problem with the 50th employee and it's going to cost them a lot of money. >> host: jay hancock and you want to talk about the hiring practices of, unease in the wake of the affordable care act and also there have been stories about ours. limiting hours to get under certain parts of the affordable care act if he can take us through those. >> guest: chris your first is correct. it's a sliding scale and the amount of subsidies decreases the amount of your income goes up.

and the point you mentioned about your incented's to work the marginal our, the incentives of employers to hire the extra employee are affected by the affordable care act. it's one of the mar s that republicans have of the law republicans in general are against incentives by the government to decrease the propensity of people who work and produce. there are a lot of reports out there about businesses. the affordable care act requires coverage for an employee only if he or she is over the 30 hour threshold. you are seeing a lot of part-time jobs being created when the job creation numbers come out every month. all a lot of those jobs are part-time. people that are contributing

that to the affordable care act with employers trying to stay under and prepared to stay under 30 hours even though the administration has postponed the enforcement of the so-called employer mandate. if you have over 15 employees you have to offer coverage and put off to 2016. people who are opposed to the affordable care act and think on balance it's bad for the economy employ these incentive effects as was pointed out and to see how it really, what the effect is on everything come to on the economy and how the aca is implemented is going to take several years. >> host: a story about that exact subject on hours being cut back from nbc news on friday talking about subway franchises interviewing one owner who is cutting workers hours below to 30 hours a week because they

can't afford to offer the health insurance mandated by the affordable care at pier quote to tell so many have to decrease their hours is very frustrating to me said loren goodrich who has 21 subway franchises including a restaurant in kennebunk. i know the impact i'm having on some of my employees. he said he is cutting the hours of 50 workers tomorrow know more than 29 hours a week so he won't trigger the provision that requires employees to offer employers to offer coverage to employees who work 30 hours or more per week. it takes effect in 16 months as we said. let's go to polin alexandria virginia on our employees line. good morning. >> caller: i am self-employed and i am a sole practitioner. i grew up in new york city and

my mother had a health insurance plan. the blues were mutual insurance companies. some time about 15 or 20 years ago virginia d. dean neutralized and i got a windfall having been part of the mutual plan. why have these been allowed to dean mutualize? one, is it supposed to achieve? what has happened -- and what are sundhage of the inflated cost of medicine can be a chippy to the to the demutualization? >> host: a great question. >> guest: you bring up a little noticed aspect of the insurance system. blue cross traditionally where not-for-profit were mutuals.

virginia's blue cross plan was bought by anthem. it's now part of the wellpoint health insurance company today. maryland's insurance, marilyn's blue cross plan wellpoint attempted to buy that plan and the maryland legislature blocked it on the grounds that presumably you bring up. and not for-profit plan would be better for the state's interest than a for-profit plan. i am not familiar with any specific studies that look at the point that you are bringing up which is how much of health care costs can we blame on the for-profit insurance companies but i feel fairly safe in saying that the structure of the insurance company and even the administrative costs behind the

insurance company is not the main factor in the expensive health care that we have today. any economist would tell you that the main factor for the high cost of health costs are the prices we are paying for health procedures in this country which are twice as high as they are in most other developed countries and the number of procedures that we perform which are again well beyond what similar nations do. that is what's really driving health costs. >> host: we talked about the issue of subsidies this morning and some of the concerns about subsidies and making sure that those people actually need them. here's a question from james. he asked does mr. hancock expect people to be honest in reporting their income? is there any way to know that we aren't giving subsidies to liars? >> guest: no. the short answer is no great from what i can tell least in the short-term, it sounds like

the state and federal governments will be fairly lenient on taking people's word for what they say their income is. eventually, after a year or two they are going to be what most people hope it stringent -- you'll go to the exchange in january or february or whenever you get there. you're going to log on. you are going to verify your past income through the internal revenue service which if everything goes right the irs computers will link to the exchange computers which will talk to the insurance company computers. you will go on and buy a plan and you will be credited a subsidy right on the spot when you sign up against your future income taxed. what they are measuring, what will dictate the size of your subsidy and is not your past

income but your income in that year and they will ask ask you to protect your estimated income for that year. and for people who aren't commission like one of our previous colors that may be a little iffy. the idea is to true that up over time and if you overestimate your income when you file your tax return you will be adjusted when you get your turbotax. however in the short-term there aren't a lot of controls as i understand it to really verify that what you say your income is really her income. >> host: on the question of cutting hours to avoid some provisions of the health care law l. wants to know or bill says if an employer cuts in employee's hours to avoid providing health care why are they not find? >> guest: because there is no measure in the love that says they have to be fined. that is something that is up to

the discretion of the employer. there are penalties that employers pay for not covering full-time employees that the company regulations do not penalize an employer for increasing the component of its workforce, that is a part-time employee that is part-time is not subject to health coverage. it should he said the people who wrote this law knew that was not always a smart tactic for employers anyway. employers like to have full-time employees and employees that understand a job and are fully engaged so it's a balancing act that the employer has to go through when it makes that decision. >> host: we have a few minutes left with kaiser health care senior correspondents double in. you can talk to them and twitter adds jay hancock one and the

kaiser health news.org. we are going to go to doug from staten island new york on our employees line. good morning, you are on the jay hancock. >> caller: good morning and thank you very much for c-span. mr. hancock with walmart being the largest employer u.s.-canada mexico the largest private employer in the service industry this country -- will have to be looked into. my question is two quick points. on the ups story just to clarify its spouses are not working are they still covered and what about the family's? on my own point i have special catastrophic policy that i-5 which gives me $10 million in coverage in case god forbid i would get something terminal confident not terminal but a terrible accident that would expand my medical costs.

if the obamacare at the aca would not get rid of the lifetime cost this additional policy which cost me $70 a month extra -- [inaudible] >> guest: the first question on ups the answer is yes. if the spouse is not working he or she still covered by ups. if you have kids they are still covered in any case even if the spouse is working. your other question is a great one and i will give you two answers. answers. when it's a copout which is talk to your insurance agent because one of the reasons and one of the rationales behind the affordable care act is to keep people from having catastrophic

out-of-pocket costs that lead them into bankruptcy court. that has been going on because of the health care those for a long time. one of the key reasons the proponents of the health act moved forward was let's not have this happen. i don't know what kind of policy you have. i suspect it's what the insurance agents colin indemnity policy which is not really major ethical policy but it kicks in and the offense of certain that adverse events such as hospitalization. they can have various triggers and a lot of people see them as a good tac-op policy in case something really terrible happens. those will still be legal and allowed after the health act kicks in. whether or not they are needed or not you should talk to the guy himself. >> host: from austin texas on arm please line. laura good morning you were on

with jay hancock with kaiser health. >> caller: yes sir, thank you for taking my call. i have a commented that i have a question to ask and i'll try to keep it short. first first of all the same social contracts have been shredded by every single u.s. system. they are mistreating their employees by shoving them into part-time hours -- jobs and cutting their hours. it seems to me the u.s. has no interest in taking care of their employees and no interest in offering health care so why doesn't the government go to a single-payer plan and cut out the middleman and? right now none of the medical health care costs coming down until we address the fragmentation in the medical health care system. i mean i am fixing to have surgery and i'm going to be dealing with four or five different medical corporations to conduct one surgery.

even though i am covered there is no telling how much extra cost i'm going to have to pay out-of-pocket that won't be covered by insurance. i know the majority people get hit with these overages and you know it makes health insurance kind of a joke. so i was hoping you would address that. >> in the last minutes we have or so. >> guest: thanks for your comment. i don't know of anybody republican or democrat, who would argue with your assertion, your general assertion that the medical system in the united states are really complicated and hard to navigate. there is a minority support out there for the single-payer health system. it has zero political mojo right now. it's not going to happen unless

the affordable care at is a dismal failure. if that happens, the there may be sort of renewed support for single-payer plan which is basically medicare for everybody in terms we can understand. but right now it is not on the radar screen. everybody is watching the affordable care act. it's not going to be simple either. the people who passed the law basically approved we have. >> host: jay hancock is a senior correspondent with kaiser health news and we appreciate you coming on in talking about the affordable care act. >> guest: thanks for having me.

's being in his major policy speech energy secretary ernest moniz said climate change is undeniable and the u.s. should improve its infrastructure to decrease incidence of destructive weather. he was speaking on global energy policy and to set the chart climate change plan is not singling out color oil. this is a little more than an hour. >> today i want to say a few words starting out with an area in which this region this institution and maybe all of you can help provide some leadership

fortunately a leadership opportunity that partly has its genesis in the tragedy of hurricane sandy and we will come back to some of the specifics there. we obviously saw the devastation of many of the region's critical infrastructures energy infrastructure, that the effects on the energy infrastructure and amplified by the interdependencies of those in structures such as electricity goes out and it turns out getting fuel was kind of tough and frankly that's an example of something that was not fully appreciated until the experience occurred. so, in that event, to which is hard to remember. it was less than a year ago but it seems like a long time.

the president certainly started a strong response with a no red tape edicts that went to the full force of the federal government behind the region's response. critical was strong collaboration with the states, the governors and other leaders. he put together a multiagency task force working together under the leadership of the hud secretary donovan and i think since that time did administration has maintained its strong commitment to respond but i want to come back to that response certainly has a strong focus in terms of helping individual citizens rebuild their homes and their lives etc. but something that we can come

back to a very important component is that we have to help rebuilding in a smart way, that in a way that repairs the energy infrastructures for the next storm and for the next possible major disruptions rate i think that is where there is a real chance for leadership here in the northeast corridor as one starts that rebuilding from sandy's impact. of course these events, these extreme weather events obviously are not unique to this part of the country. whether it's hurricanes in the golf for the southeast. in atlantic greasing cases in point and in fact in the last 10 years weaver hit by nine of the 10 most expensive hurricanes in our history costing well up to

$300 million of this idea for spotting to decreased resilience i think it's critical since these recent events unfortunately are likely harbingers of things to come. scenes that will likely be repeated as carbon emissions involved in the global climate with the long-standing expectations of the client -- climate science community. clearly we understand that we cannot label the specific events to warming that statistically we also know that the pattern is unmistakably along the lines of those anticipated for quite some time. today i am going to talk about the president's climate action plan. what we are doing to prepare for changing climate, how we are working to try to mitigate its effects and after talking about

that i will return to this issue of the infrastructure and the resilience that we need in building for a low-carbon future but nevertheless a low-carbon future in which we have to expect we will be suffering some of the consequences of climate change. on my first day as secretary i was quoted as saying and i would say that quote is accurate. the evidence is overwhelming. science is clear and certainly clear for the level that one needs for policymaking. in terms of the real urgent threat of climate change. it is inherently conservative about its statements and open to data and analysis. the overwhelming conclusion

certainly from the policy world is demand common sense near-term policy actions to minimize the risk of global warming and that's what the president's climate action plan does in the absence of legislative revenues. last week as we know the draft findings of the most recent analysis by the ipcc is whether it was officially released or not, it talked about again major issues coming up including issues like 3 feet of sea level rise in this century and a 95% probability that human activity is a principle driver of these issues. empirical evidence is clear rising temperatures fires droughts intense storms posing serious threats to our

communities but also to our energy infrastructure. case in point being the recent california declaration state of emergency for san francisco. as far as 100 pounds a away effecting powerlines have provided power to that city. as most of you know it 84% of carbon emissions are energy related. mother nature seems to be returning the favor exacting a climate related toll on the health and liability of our energy infrastructure. in july we released a report telling these impacts and here's just a short list of the threats of climate to our energy into structure. the gulf of mexico produces half of the u.s. crude and natural gas contains half the total u.s. refining capacity. because these industries up to $8 million here. power generation unit are at

risk of partial or full shutdowns. last summer the plant in illinois had to get special permission from the nrc to continue operating after the temperature of the water and its cooling pond rose to 102 degrees. unconventional island gas production vulnerable to decreasing water vulnerability at the same time the u.s. is relying more and more heavily on these energy sources. renewable energy is not exempt e-rate hydropower bioenergy concentrating solar power share similar vulnerabilities to water availability. fuel transport by rail and barge and growing for unconventional energy susceptible to interactions from storms and floods in as we have seen along the eastern seaboard in the gulf

of mexico energy infrastructures located along the coast are at risk to sea level rises and storms and flooding. in an effort to adapt to these climate related impacts on june 25 president obama laid out a broad plan to cut carbon emissions increase the production of clean energy and double down on energy efficiency. because the need to act as urgent the president's climate action plan utilizes the substantial authorities and resources of the executive branch engaging all of its agencies in meeting this imperative. again the president express the continuing desire to work with congress on legislative solutions but in the meantime we will focus on doing all that we can with current administrative authorities. i'm not going to go into detail in terms of all the specifics of the plan but not the d.o.e. does play a lead role in a number of the actions called for and as a member of the n. r. h. team and

others and let me talk a.a few of these. one is the need to improve and enhance opportunities for energy efficiencies which to my way of thinking is absolutely an essential element for any credible response to climate change. risk mitigation to the kinds of lowering of carbon emissions that we will need not just this decade but the decades ahead trade in fact the first official event i attended after being confirmed as energy secretary two hours after he was sworn in was -- i did so to underscore my commitment as a way to achieve two critical agendas the critical avenue for near-term reduction of carbon emissions with compounding benefits over time and a way to significantly reduce energy to american consumers and businesses. this commitment included working with him working with omb to expedite agency review of the

range of appliance efficiency rules that were in many cases long overdue. this more activist dialogue between d.o.e. and omb has produced a final rule for standby efficiency of microwave ovens in two weeks ago a proposed rule for lamp fixtures. the microwave oven rule was the first template the updated social cost of carbon analysis developed by an interagency task force estimating kind of the central value of $36 per ton of co2 well within the spectrum of other analyses and perhaps even on the low end. we have published a schedule and i think this is a new way to approach d.o.e. and omb and we are on track. we said we would have two more

rules issued this august. we are pretty much on track for commercial walk-in coolers and freezers and commercial refrigeration and we committed to an important rule for electric motors this november and we intend to finalize all four of these rules by may of 2014 even as we continue to work through a now defined schedule for many more efficiency rules. now the efficiency savings for many individuals may sound small given the magnitude of the climate problem. typically it may be a few that lends dollars and tens of megatons of carbon dioxide over 30 years but the cumulative impact is considered which is exact a wide if we stay on this course of putting through these technology grounded efficiency rules for a whole range of appliances. it in fact on an analogous point

i would raise a 2001 report of the national academy of sciences that examined d.o.e.'s fossil and efficiency portfolios in their first 20 years. and it concluded that the 22 programs analyzed which cost about your team billion dollars total from 78 82 to 2001 yielded economic effects of about $40 billion so a substantial return on investment but i think another part of the stories the study attributing three-quarters of the benefits $30 billion to three efficiency programs that cost a million -- $11,000,000,000.11 billion so small efficiency programs can yield huge resorts in economic and if it's in reductions in carbon emissions. again we are going to be very strongly focused on advancing energy efficiency agenda in multiple domains and certainly it's as our sponsor building for rulemaking. i will assure you we will

maintain strong pressure in this direction. another key provision of the president's climate plan directs epa to issue rules for cutting carbon emissions for both new and existing power plants. the power sector the single largest -- applauded by many as the most significant to reduce carbon emissions absent legislative action. it's also -- this directive has also been derided by some as tantamount to a war on cold. the former is certainly true that it is the most significant step for president can take right now with executive action and that the charges of war on coal i argue demonstrate misunderstanding or a misstatement of what is being called in all-of-the-above

approach to u.s. energy policy. the reason is that in the view of the administration the way we are approaching this is we must reduce the co2 emissions through the president has said near-term target of a 17% reduction from 2005 and by 2020 and we are about halfway there. but confident the idea is that although the above above means we will and thus in the technology research development and demonstration so that all of our energy sources can be enabled as marketplace competitors and a low-carbon energy world. that is what we mean by all of the above. it doesn't start by taking co2 emissions off the table. it starts with reductions on the table and a boundary condition if you like for going forward. but then if you look at what we

are doing about it in terms of the fossil and energy sources so in the president's climate action plan there was a directive to issue a solicitation or up-to-date lien dollars in loan guarantees for fossil energy projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. there could be a whole bunch of them and going back to my technology days one of my favorites for example something like chemical looping. this is a new technology for utilizing coal in a way that if successful will dramatically reduce carbon capture costs. that is just one accessible. we have advanced combining power very flexible but saying come forward with good ideas to stretch the technology in

fossil-based, with fossil-based sources reducing co2 emissions. of course the big one for coal and a low-carbon world has to be carbon capture and sequestration possibly the utilization of the co2 and what's again to be blunt there was a lot of talking of the talk for many many years because the reality is to demonstrate large scale which will be needed for large-scale sequestration deep-sea line aquifers for example, these are not inexpensive projects. they are big projects of this administration is walking the talk. $6 billion that this administration put on the table for demonstrating these technologies so this is what we mean. we are committed to a climate

world that we advanced the technology development for all of our sources to be competitive. obviously renewables by definition is low-carb and nuclear power as well. i can discuss those later on but you wanted to take head on this issue that this is not a war on coal. quite the contrary. it is preparing the way for coal to have intentionally a place in the low-carbon world that we believe is essential as we go forward. now i will take another one on that it's been popular. loan guarantee. this tends to reflexively encourage use of the word solyndra and obviously no one wants the project to fail and to come under taxpayers tab but

since becoming secretary three months ago i have had the opportunity to do an extensive review of the loan program and what i have found is this program is supporting a large and diverse $34.4 billion portfolio of the projects putting one of the world's largest wind farms and solar generation thermal energy storage systems first and commercial nuclear power plant and a dozen new or retooled auto manufacturing plants across the country. i might mention here being in new york that we have strong new york reach for this program which have played a key role in advising this program and are relatively new director peter davidson is coming from new york. let me give you an example of the program working the way it is supposed to. utility scale photovoltaic

projects. in 209,100 megawatts of photovoltaic plants in this country were nonexistent and commercial financing particularly debt financing was simply unavailable so using recovery act funds the departments loan program office finance the first six utility scale pv projects in the united states. since those investments were made 10 utility scale projects have been funded by the private precisely the outcome the president vision of this program. you just have to get a kickstart another great example tesla motors you have probably been reading about. the loan to tesla of nearly half a billion dollars in june 2009 that was originated, but it was viewed as very risky and that was the low point of the american auto industry. it was the same month gm

declared bankruptcy in the lowest number of jobs in the auto industry we had in a long time. and it was risky. the poor folio was supposed to take some risks and push it and had. now of course as we all know the tesla is certainly looking today like a great success. they repay their loan nine years earlier, earlier than do. they provided a premium for the taxpayer. they have been called by consumer reports the best test is not the best electric vehicle tested. the best car they have tested. it's a little bit dicey for some of the people in this room but it's a business model that is introducing this new technology. you probably also saw that it was essentially graded the safest vehicle tested recently and the architecture of it as a vehicle was part and parcel of

that safety success. and then in 20143000 jobs right now in california and in 2014 starting an export business. and that's when i was in paris about a month and a half ago the american ambassador said that he interested they were 25,000 orders in paris alone for the tesla for next year. so this is what this program is about to do but of course not every investment is going to succeed and frankly i think you would worry about the program if everyone did. the track record is quite remarkable. the current and projected losses to the taxpayer on certain of the project investments in our view is very unlikely to exceed 10% of the loan loss reserve fund that congress voted in.

2% of the overall portfolio and less than 10% of the low loss reserve fund. i think most wall street performers might be pretty pleased with that performance. so, another key part of course the department of energy has been very engaged in is driving down the cost of low-carbon solutions. department has been certainly at the forefront of the administrations attempts to stimulate the science and technology and vision required in this administration. new approaches to innovation and energy technology innovation have put in place. energy frontier research centers , innovation hub so they are innovating in how we stimulate innovation and i think that these are extremely promising programs.

we have seen renewable energy generation from wind and solar double and we have seen what is important point to make which is critical of reductions in the price of several clean energy technologies and i want to take a moment just to look at those in a bit more detail. i can't see the slides. so that is for wind. what you're going to to see are for slides of four different areas for technologies showing costs over time. the blue bars and the deployment to the basic message in all cases is going to be dramatic cost reduction and dramatic deployment increases. this is just since 2008.

wind capacity is nearly tripled in its the fastest-growing source of capacity last year. 44% of new generator capacity of 2012 was wind. as you can see going back sometime dramatic reductions to where one is talking about cost of 6 cents per kilowatt hour. photovoltaics. tv modules. again dramatic reduction. this is only since 2008. deployment has increased by a factor of 10 and tv modules cost about 1%. we can argue whether this a true costs are chinese costs or whatever but the fact is pv modules available for about 80 cents a lot and a reminder the long-standing holy grail has

spent about 50 cents per watt. i mean this is tremendous progress. in fact now it's the soft costs that we have to work on more to get those down. and again you see the cost of deployment. i will pause here just to say that a harbinger of what is coming is when energy start to examine their business models in the face of what is happening. many of you have seen today for example there are some shall we call them discussions going on between the solar industry and utilities for example in terms of how the distributed pv systems paid for electricity back to the grid and how are things like the distribution

system costs shared etc. etc.? you know is only a few years ago when nobody cared. but the message is in all of these and i have two more of those, the future may not be always 10 years away. i believe will a lot of these technologies are beginning to establish their positions and certainly with policy actions on the climate front will only be helped further. another example l.e.d. lights. the last five years the cost of super efficient l.e.d.'s have fallen more than 85% in sales, a big surprise come for our taking off. today we are up to about 20 million fixtures and there are many attractions of the

l.e.d.. of course the problem is let's say if you have a 60-watt incandescent lightbulb equivalent we are talking now of about $20 for that fixture. 25,000 years of life, 25 times that of an incandescent bulb so other than having this upfront capital costs the economics are clear especially with using only 20% of the power. in fact the estimate is the lifetime savings of that one, 60-watt incandescent bulb over its 25,000-dollar lifetime are well north of $100 for one bulb. but this is coming and in fact as an aside i will say this does not even count the hidden costs of what you may need to do to replace the bulb 25 times

particularly if you have a hotel let's say it lights way up. you have the maintenance person and the latter's etc. etc. the osha violations, who knows? so anyway there also hidden savings which can be very substantial. finally for electric vehicles and batteries again this shows a factor of two reductions in batteries and just a relatively short time. that can go back to our tesla discussion where the costs are much more affordable but the real message is that if we come down another factor of four we are getting into the range where electric vehicles of significant range and much more mass appeal become possible.

this deployment the green curve to give you reference point we may be talking about 100,000 electric vehicles this year much more than a short time ago and this rate of increase in the early stages is substantially greater than that we saw for hybrid vehicles. these are inherently simple or vehicles. high-performance etc. so that is just kind of the sampling of these four different technology areas where i think there still is often a persistent idea that these are somehow decades away. well i think a lot of energy incumbents are beginning to think in a different way. how am i doing on time? i am going to switch to our last

topic and that is going back now to how i started when i discuss sandy and climate preparedness. again the president's climate action plan basically reflected a major i would call step change in recognizing adaptation as one of the highest policy goals while favoring mitigation but recognizing you cannot turn away from adaptation. we are now bringing a suite of technology policies to meet this challenge. this morning i was in new jersey in secaucus signing in mou with governor christie at new jersey transit corp. trade with this is is i think a perfect model of rebuilding in ways that are going to be reserved in the future. the project which will be designed by our sandia national

laboratory. i should say sandia has already design 25 micrograms for military installations but now this will be adapting their tools to a civilian environment in critical infrastructure environment, basically the transit in the northeast corridor between trenton and new york -- newark on a much bigger scale. we are talking about distributed generation assets within the microcredit clearly exceeding 50 megawatts. the idea is again that this will take a key part of the infrastructure including by the way from manhattan. that is an important evacuation quarter from manhattan if there is a major problem. it will address resilience. it will address economic data fits by providing what is in effect a smart grid. so this is the way that we are also the president put forward

for us to be thinking about this resilience. it's not just about doping seawalls as important as that may be or about allocating structures close to the sea but it's also about old things art as we readdress the infrastructure and use this as perhaps an opportunity to develop the 21st century infrastructure. in fact, i should say here in new york my understanding is the sea level of the new york harbor is about a foot higher than it was a century ago so we understand the sensitivity to all of these climate actions and a number of steps including establishing a green bank for efficiency and clean energy technologies. i would just add that we are

also going to focus on d.o.e. in the coming years on much more work with the states because we believe this is a critical area for testing things out for drawing upon the creativity that states and cities have been showing in terms of energy and climate policy. so finally i will just add that when it comes to emergency response and this adaptation part of the agenda the department of energy speaking now for our own responsibilities is head of what is called emergency support function 12 under the umbrella of fema basically asleep department for addressing energy infrastructure issues. we already operate the northeast heating oil reserve and we operates the strategic troll in

reserve on our nuclear weapons at tivoli that they have alluded to. we have had long-standing operational emergency response for controlling nuclear weapons material globally but this is a new step out for us in terms of the major operational requirement in the civilian or if you like, working with all of our energy companies. and partly to do this we have at the department of energy had a reorganization looking at how the secretaries are deployed basically assigning one of our three secretaries to focus on management performance so all of these operational questions we are looking to upgrade our focus on that. i should add that in terms of the grid and resilience of course extreme weather is one issue but in addition things

like cybersecurity are an increasing threat one to which we are also devoting much much more attention. given the time i am going to be much and there. i would be happy to take questions on the quadrennial energy review for example but i think the message is i hope clear. one, our program in energy, the department of energy is clearly directed at the president's climate action plan. that is our focus. to do so we will upgrade our efficiency work. we will continue to help drive down the cost of low-carbon alternatives across-the-board, all of the above as we support

also the weather agencies like the epa in addressing climate. but at the same time as the president said, we have to have knowledge that we are seeing and will see more frankly and so we must also look at how we develop our energy infrastructure for that future column cut in infrastructure that provides repost this and resilience against extreme weather events. with that i thank you for for your attention and i would be happy to take some questions. [applause] [inaudible] >> we are going to come to that but maybe we can do it in the right order, the okay? we will come to it.

[inaudible] >> so we have about 20 to 25 minutes for questions with the secretary. we have been collecting cards than half of them were related to hydraulic fracturing and methane. if you want to start without when let's start with that one. there's a lot of concern here in new york about shale gas development. what is your view of the role that natural gas plays and low-carbon economy and how shale gas can be -- what actions the u.s. government itself taking to get there? >> okay, so first of all it is a fact that in these last year's, the natural gas revolution shall we say has been a major contributor to reducing carbon emissions. the president has a cool essay

mentioned of 17% by 2020. we are about halfway there and about half of that is because of the substitution of natural gas for coal in the power sector essentially driven by market forces. in my previous life and we did a study on natural gas. if you asked the question up front is natural gas part of the problem or part of the solution for climate change we have reached the conclusion yes. [laughter] that is certainly in the near term and potentially for some years out the substitution of natural gas for coal combustion without carbon capture would be a major contributor to reducing carbon emissions but in the longer term assuming we are

cranking down hard on carbon emissions than it eventually gas itself would have to have carbon capture or it would be to carbon-intensive so that is the classic definition of the bridge to the future and future technologies. now come to the next question is there has been a lot of controversy about methane emissions and first of all again in the president's climate action plan they were specifically a callout or addressing what you might call the nonco2 greenhouse gases hydrofluorocarbons for example. we have an agreement with china to work on that and did methane. on methane we currently have an interagency group formed by the presence direction headed by the epa including the department of

energy and the department of the interior and the department of agriculture for example to look at methane emissions. we are in very close contact with the defense fund who has had a major study of their own on methane emissions. so we will see what comes out of that. >> we are going to remove people from the room if they shout out. >> the data currently looks as though they are more on the low side of the estimates of methane emissions. >> would the please let the secretary answered the question? [inaudible] >> the question is already then asked so let him answer the

question. >> the current data suggest that's an incorrect statement that we will be exploring it and secondly we will expand the study from the narrow focus of ground the missions that the will to emissions and to end improving the transportation infrastructure. the other thing is in addition in terms of methane production at the well of course there are technologies that are increasingly being used to capture the methane and in fact as an aside those can also be used beneficially in an environmental context in the sense that for example it's a lot that are to use natural gas engines to drive the fracking fluid than it is to use diesel engines with a local air quality issue. so that is the second and there was a third point i'm trying to remember what it is now.

[inaudible] i forgot the third . anyway that is where we are and again there is no issue in terms of co2 emissions that natural gas has. i know what the third one was. then comes the issue of the safety in terms of fracking itself and there again each of the issues to be addressed i would argue has clear solutions but that technologies, the issues being manageable i have always said is not the same as being managed. we have to have consistent application of a standards through regulatory and other approaches. so i think that is the overall

program and that is what we are doing. >> let me just broaden the question because there are questions about natural gas and fracking in the future of methane. they're also more rightly about fossil fuels and the questions are along the lines of all of the above. why not just focus on renewables and increased fossil fuel production? you spoke passionately about the need to tackle the increased urgency of the climate change problem and the administration has offered new unconventional technologies in this country. i think some people view those things as having tension between them and being hard to reconcile so perhaps you could talk about how you think the public should understand how those things fit together and how they are consistent in what is the right way to think about being serious about climate and the fact that the u.s. has the potential to significantly increase its oil and gas production? >> certainly.

first of all, at start with again the truth. 80% of our energy today is fossil derived. the transportation sector is still today within a couple of well within 10% ethanol but largely is dependent upon oil as a transportation fuel. i talked here about hopefully going to a future where we see a lot more electric vehicles using low-carbon electricity going forward but the reality is in the energy business is extremely hard to see very rapid changes in deployment. so we have to be practical

pragmatic totally committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, doing so and accelerating that to the extent that we can within the current realities. now come to let me go to your specific questions about gas and oil. first of all i would say they are different questions. on the oil side are production has gone up substantially. in fact in the last five years the added capacity and global oil production in the united states has been by far the biggest contributor and in fact bigger than the next three combined and that has come mainly from the unconventional type oil. now here what we are seeing here is a substitution for imports. this has significant economic benefits.

it is not changing the carbon balance specifically but it is certainly reducing our balance of payments substantially. long ago we were spending a billion dollars a day on importing oil. that is now at its lowest level in many years and are production is at the highest level in many years. but in the spirit of how i define all of the above we are working assiduously in multiple dimensions to reduce oil dependence. the president pushed the yen precedent café standards a doubling of fuel efficiency by 2025 and that is already having an effect. we are working on a next-generation biofuels and we are we are working on as one saw especially the battery technology that is key to

electric vehicle penetration but beyond that other things for light vehicles etc. new materials which by the way worst part of the tesla safety success as well as might add. we are producing more oil and producing imports and working to reduce oil dependence at the same time. on natural gas and maybe i should have said if you look at the cost of removing the marginal co2 in broad terms from the lowest efficiency next for electricity and its highest for transportation so that is the one that is going to be a little bit harder frankly in terms of getting this transition. natural gas serves three major set years of the united states. heating and electricity and industrial applications.

on the electricity is where we are seeing the large growth because of the low prices and again this has been beneficial for our carbon equation. it is widely believed industrialized economy that has reduced carbon emissions but going forward again we are not just sitting on this. we are pushing solar hard, wind. we are just now going to go into our first support for offshore wind for example the place where reduction is required. nuclear provisional loan guarantee to see if nuclear power plants built in the united states come in on budget and are reasonable. even as gas takes a more prominent place in the mix. so that is our philosophy. philosophy is we have got to

keep pushing carbon and we have to be pragmatic and we have to keep working on those alternatives that will support a low-carbon economy in the future. >> i'm going to take the questions roughly in the order of preponderance as they stack up. shell gas development and methane was the largest that. the next largest is on the export of natural gas. i suspect you may not be very specific in answering this question but the question is along the lines of how much and by when and how many days until the next permit and so assuming you may not answer that question may be more broadly i will say that two recent borders improving natural gas and quite forceful in explaining why the department exports and natural gas were in the public interest. they talked about the need to look at cumulative impacts and

changing market conditions. i don't golf hypothetically speaking you can talk about the kinds of things what sort of scenarios in the future might lead one to a different decision about whether. >> it's an excellent question. next. no, no. first of all the department of energy is called upon to license applications for the export of natural gas to nonfree trade agreement countries, and for countries with the free trade agreement it's essentially automatic and less there were some glaring issue to make it not of the public interest. that is sort of like mexico and the sense of nafta for example. south korea's a gas user in a free trade agreement country but most of the market for natural gas are countries that do not have free trade agreements with

the united states. that includes europe japan so we have to judge on those. so has the department has issued three licenses one of them is final and i should caution or just note a statement of fact that the last two that were just issued in the last few months are provisional licenses. they still need to go through the veep a process for example. so the environmental review is still needed to come back for a final license. in the first case the first license granted, i think that was about a year in between the provisional and the final license and even then that project is still not exported. it's still a couple of years away from exports. these are large capital investments, a billion-dollar

scale and one has to arrange customers and suppliers to make the project go. so going forward what we have said and this was established by the secretary that we evaluate the applications case-by-case roughly speaking in the order submitted. there's a published order so everyone knows where they are in the queue and we are working through the next one. there is no secret the next one is code point trade you can go to our web site in maryland the only one on the east coast and evaluate that application. ..

in terms of what it might do with market impact. >> ten more minutes, so will move quickly to as many of these as i can. several questions about nuclear energy. what do you think should be done to handle the indian nuclear plan, and more broadly was stopping as for ms. thomasson more sources of nuclear power? >> i'm not going to comment on the indian point plants specifically. first of all, unless a, i probably don't know enough about the specifics of the indian point plants.

if i take the bigger picture, there are several issues. one as i already alluded to, the department did issue a provisional $8 billion loan guarantee for the construction of the first to new nuclear power plants in georgia. there are two additional ones in south carolina. therefore next half generation, i would say. they have some new safety features. i think the big question with those plants is going to be did they get built on budget and more less on budget and schedule if they do then i think there will probably be a real look in some places for new nuclear power plants.

if they have very bad budget performance, as did some recently in europe, i think it will seriously cloud any future for such gigawatt scale plants. i don't want to imply there is an issue. the latest reports from both georgia and south carolina are encouraging, but there still in the early stages of the projects . second issue, of course, post fukushima. and there are clearly a number of steps that the nrc will be taking for licensees and licenses. and, you know, clearly there will be probably some increase in operating costs in responding to new regulations off for example, may be a requirement for periodic seismic review as opposed to just a onetime

seismic review. various other issues. we still don't know the full extent of what will be required, but that will do some at least a marginal increase in operating costs which can have an impact. the third thing to my third and fourth thing, the third thing is clearly the nuclear waste back and remains an issue. i was a member of the blue-ribbon commission on america's nuclear future prior to my becoming secretary. i in the ministration and the proposed senate bill are all aligned that we think the blue ribbon commission core recommendations need to be followed. in those two are principally a consent based process for nuclear storage facilities and dental track of consolidated dry cask storage, presumably under federal control which eliminates a liability that we're paying

utilities. secondly, the geological disposal track. the fourth nuclear pointer would make is that there is some promise. i emphasize it is on the promise that this stance cover up the new generation of reactors. so these will be much smaller units, maybe 200 megawatts, maybe even smaller. and if these are economical, they generally have very attractive safety features. they could be an important part of a nuclear future, but we won't know until we build some. the department of energy has provided some assistance to move one and send a second, possibly a third to licensing. and a target date would be a first model reactor operating in 2022. >> a couple of questions about foreign policy and international energy.

particularly about what the change in the north american energy landscape means for america's place in the world. one of the questions to man the past the u.s. has conducted a defensive energy policy. given the revolution in shale there's an opportunity to be proactive. the aegean strategic implications, department international perris are. given us to reorganization. what -- how the work will be managed moving forward. in national energy policy. >> first of all, in terms of the current situation with regard to the increase in gas and i'll, first of all, the substantial increase in natural-gas production in the united states is already had to my would say

to my geopolitical consequence that even though we have not exported anything. basically of the lng that was supposed to be imported and elsewhere to your. some now in the future demand no say i would go beyond the united states, and it's a big unknown how much and when. but certainly f. the world's unconventional gas resources are developed aggressively, nominally resource in place in china is bigger than the united states. very attractive looking reservoirs. eastern europe. a lot of this was very enthusiastic a few years ago. a few polo ground realities and above ground realities have taken a little bit of the bloom off the rose in some places. again, there is a potential for

dramatically shifting the flows of natural gas globally. that will play out over the next decade, would say. with regard to oil to my take the united states becoming a much more significant producer is certainly in play, but i'm want to remind to some times especially on the laurel side the assumptions about big geopolitical shift just because of that tend to be perhaps over plate. i would note, for example, that we did very little of our imported oil from the middle east. does not change our security posture in that part of the world. that's just a fact. and there are many reasons. one is we have many more

security equities than just the oil. but secondly, the united states has a unique national security and foreign policy responsibilities in their global order. and to the extent to which our key allies of subject to a strong energy security problems, that inevitably influences our freedom of action in national security. so i think it's a much more complicated story. if unconventional resources are developed strongly around the world over the next decade there is no doubt global markets will change, shares will be different, and for structure requirements will be different.

>> incorporating renewal and to the u.s. trade, the el look for great storage applications. any steps the department is taken to make the grade capable of taking more renewals? fifth to. >> several things. real looking hard and right now and again refreshing a road map in terms of utilities scale storage technologies which are obviously are going to have an enormous impact. right now one terms of the grid itself a number of activities. i mentioned one, for example, mainly using recovery funds that the partners support the deployment of a substantial number one michael phasors in the transmission grid. essentially making detailed phase measurements. this is -- collecting the data,

of course can be a way of a very strong signal about impending problems and giving one an opportunity to address will. as just one example of what i would call smart technology that were trying to deploy, and exemplary already mentioned in my remarks was this morning's events with governor christie in terms of actually trying to move toward building a physical microbrewed of nontrivial skill which would include full destruction, lot of integration of renewals in the microbrewed. no, i think there is a much bigger story in terms of especially remote large-scale

wind and solar. and it's a big year for structure issue. the last part of the talk to did not give, your starting again. the president climb an action plan, the perjury mill action review. the executive secretary for an effort that will span the entire ministration. its focus will be on infrastructure, how we info electricity, gas, you name it. integrated, his resilience to natural events, server secure and can integrate a large-scale renewal but in large scale distributed generation into the transmission and distribution systems. >> we're out of time. >> radioactivity.

>> he said that there was a part of the talk to you did not give. there are enough karcher to build to start for another hour. hopefully you will come back and spend more time with us again. as you can see, of interest and passion on these issues. we appreciate your taking some time to talk with us about the truly important issues that are a stake for the u.s. energy outlook. i want everyone to please join me in thanking the energy secretary for being here today. [applause] as i said, we have many more events coming up this fall. follow us. please remain seated -- seated until the energy secretary has left the room that we can all live together. thank you for coming today. [inaudible conversations]

>> the center for strategic and international studies, hosting a panel of the upcoming g20000000 president obama's visit to sweden here on c-span2 at 830 eastern. also a national press club newsmaker discussion on the future of democracy in egypt and at 10:00, companion and work, of going online security secretary janet nepal, will give a farewell speech at the national press club. she served as a head for the permits as 2009 and is leaving to be president of the university of california. the author of captain audience. challenging everything you know about trucks and society.

the book stranger wills, 1979. >> next susan crawford talks about her book captive audience, the telecom industry a monopoly power. she argues that america's economic future could be threatened by other countries that have the internet capabilities that are faster and cheaper. >> thank you for being here. thank you for doing this. >> stuff with the basics. what is the status of broadband in america today. >> we of the picture that is quite different from most of the of the developed nations. we have for a very high speed and download speeds in america

talk cable monopolies in local monopolies in each region of the country the dominant market. and so for 85 percent of americans, their only choice is born to be of the local cable monopolists. we don't have any of the fastest 25 cities in the war when the cost and access. we are not in the world's leaders, some more in the middle of the pack. we also have a very deep digital divide. having internet access at home is very tightly correlated tear socioeconomic status. about half the people with incomes between 30 and $50,000 per year have an internet connection at home. the numbers even lower. rich people tend to have an analysis of how. also, 9% can't plan and texas where they live. so does the picture. >> either we get here? the internet started here and

still dominates something was the vine? >> well, there's quite a history. a good thing about the internet is you can reach anybody. as the whole point. the universal disability system. the whole idea was that the content provider would not be subject to the whims of the telecom provider. we have this huge split which depends on openness and connectivity and to register and wires and money expense of building infrastructure in america. so we started off in america with the phone system bell was the leader of the world, in view of the room. and then in about the 70's the cable industry was launched in america. cable initially was just for one-way entertainment.

as telephone and cable started competing copper to delete in the late 70's cable had a tremendous a vantage which was local exclusive franchises and all law in 1984 that completely deregulated cable. so fast forward. since 1984 and now cable was in its model of not being particularly open, not being available for a disability everywhere has taken the lead of the financial matters. much cheaper to upgrade its cable system that is today up the phone wires and replace them with fiber. so we get to this place of local monopolies and the result of this policy vacuums they have to take everything, make sure it got to replace the one to go and there were not allowed to pick and choose among content.

this was a trade-off that the problem, either infrastructure elements the very expensive to build and operate on, huge economies of scale. cable was taken the lead, dominates the market, and the telephone companies are backing off. as a result of all this we have no plan to upgrade to this very high speeds around the world and the cable operators have no particular obligation to serve all of america to close this internal digital divide. so that's how we got here today, policy the like to spell out, plus just the economics of how expensive it is to build. it's very difficult to see any competitor showing of. >> there would have been a moment where the cable companies would have had to act by telecoms, recognize the sec. regulated. after recognize that there have

to serve everybody. carr says in the case for 30 years. we deregulated cable almost entirely. there's nothing in the '96 sector would make the matter differently. so for the last 30 years kayla's been building and the assumption that there would not be essentially regulated very much. basically they see themselves deepened the dna. to see themselves as like in a private store, no different. subject to these kinds of obligations to serve everybody a reasonable cost and to connect with other networks. none of them as part of their ito says an industry. that was part of the telephone industry, but they have lost this battle to serve americans.

almost completely backed off. most wireless companies today, not providing wired infrastructure to america. high prices, huge digital levine's internally. the country as a whole is sagging in the national competition for connectivity. craigslist talk about. a way of thinking about it that would be in to satisfy some of our needs for broadband. how was it executed? >> and ancient regime that goes all the way back to people operating in the medieval era in your. when you hold yourself out to the public and providing an essential transport or communication facility, your subject of public obligations even hire a private company. the whole idea of common carriage control to the

railroads, and the telephone industry in 1910, in exchange for essentially a private monopoly you to provide people with services. you take on public burdens. serve everyone and to not discriminate when it comes to content and attachment. so this regime was still exist in law but has not been applied to the cable companies. word of apartheid has been given access. >> where the threats? the digital divide. want to focus more on the notion of free and open and a, not justified, but the possibilities of the isp is actually filter. you put that ahead of the divider of the digital divide? >> these two things stick together.

with no competition essentially, very high speed internet access and america for providers, and every incentive and no legal limitations to parses criminate and make sure that it's reaching which markets and charges much as a possible can, not systematically serving the poor. in ensuring that they can provide specialized services. whenever it is. they charge a lot. so the risks really can't be overstated. one big flow of water. and that peipus control absolutely by the gatekeeper moving to a technology that would make the pipe essentially and differentiated. it's all the same stuff, but the

gatekeeper, the cable company can pick and choose among communications, trevor wants to, send communications with the you're going to chicago. that would remove the threat to them of competition there would like to sell americans. think of anything, home security video, whenever it is, cable pairs can choose. they can pick and choose among what goes on line and deliver that tousles. it's like living in a gated community, taking media which is all about not having to ask for permission and being a will to reach anybody and sticking that on top of an infrastructure which is absolutely controlled by a set of maybe four or five gatekeepers. they're is a deep conflict their threats are very real.

>> you have -- your book is very much a ruckus tory of comcast and nbc universal. you have four or five cable companies. is the present or future? size the the sort of threat is a concern for the future? >> they're streaming themselves. the cable guys fight each other for franchisees there's been tremendous consolidation. there 50 million american households in 39 states and about 49 percent of the american population. they never competes with the big company brethren. divided the country and it's

also very big, second degree of a distant second, but not card out. in their regions when it comes to a very high speed internet access. they dominate. with the exception of port cablevision. everyone else prima stands alone so the threat is real today to accompany mike netflix it's eating a polanco traffic. with the future is entirely dependent is a much the cable companies to. bringing the streams goes to people so that they can be seen. charging based on usage of that there will start assuming that

accessing netflix will drive the bundle build up even higher. so the economic future completely dependent. as is one story of hundreds of thousands that has to do with the power of a single gatekeeper of raw information reaching american homes the backbones, it's a bit of competition. but prices a cost of the dropping. constantly going up. but again, this big stack of fishing nets at the moment when the back room and a national network to connect to comcast that because your contested. is getting cheap.

india because of this bottleneck control by the few actors access to the home, they can charge or rather what. so where you might seem very interested markets, and and not sure anyway, even though band with the scouting cheaper and storage is getting cheaper. competition is giving cheaper. the whole prices going down except for businesses and consumers all of that as of for grabs. the cable industry has the lowest reading of consumer satisfaction. >> t think americans will stand?

so can envision a boutique internet access. organic connections of their possibilities for different options we can choose a service, if it's not public and perhaps as transparent or at least fast, something has the spirit separate from this giant monopolies. do you think people would choose that? >> of the love -- the ability to choose. the musher that made sense. is because the services and economic manner or really a natural monopoly. it so it expensive to build the matter initially interviewed a lot of revenue flowing in to pay yourself back. and it doesn't make sense to have more than one.

so it's very difficult for competitors to enter this field. is just like water or electricity. you wouldn't want to of those connections to your home. so we actually -- >> how does that change? >> the layout as with other countries are doing. every single citizen. >> the little bit. >> a restaurant of glass alliance potentially infinite amounts of permission. >> infinitely upgradable. so what is off about where we're stuck as a country with a series of cable monopolies is that there physical cable connection is second-best. so the hybrid fiber coaxial. it was built initially for

passive consumption of information, being entertained. and it can be upgraded to very high download speeds, but it's very cramped with architecture. we tinkerers cells as publishing and going to the doctor from our own. does he said, a single thin strand of glass can carry 90,000 tv channels and be upgraded infinitely as far as we can tell >> more capacity. >> capacity is infinitely a credible. >> who owns the fiber? howdy begin the bill that out? >> in the united states we have a deep tradition of private operators building communications networks subject to public obligations.

that is where this fire broke national network eventually will come from. i see a progression. all over the united states or really irritated about the high prices and low capacity networks so they are agitating for fiber to be built, and especially the businesses. fat progression is a patchwork across the country that will eventually reach a tipping point of jealousy and awareness of america which will change federal policy and drive toward having an integrated national network, but not nationalized. but giving private actors a very reasonable way return in exchange for what is essentially a monopoly on services where they operate. this works pretty well. we can also -- something that

happens in many developed countries, the operator has to be wholesale level only. this is going on in singapore and in many northern european countries and australia. the operator then is obliged. people call this. the move in and sign up for utilities, water, electricity, and you get a choice of internet service providers. they will be traveling to you over a standardized wholesale fire retail and as the bill to your house. as of this happens. in moving to an apartment and have a choice of 34 fiber to the home providers, internet service providers selling his services for $3,040 a month, metric which means equal aplomb and download.

very low prices, lots of choice, and the standard will sell infrastructure across the country really makes sense. >> some of the great examples. >> the electrical utilities said a great sigh business would be the use their connections to every home to provide the streaming farmer. they're doing that, selling services to residents. adelle have the retail competition, but the utility is in the business of making reasonably priced fiber available. as a result businesses and moving from not tow the agenda. a very excited. every part of his excited about this because they're getting

reasonably priced. they fought tooth and nail, a lot of litigation. actually, it's actually illegal a very difficult for cities to do this because these system operators, cable companies and telephone companies go to the state house as. city should not be allowed to compete with us. and the charter make it very difficult. a muffled the we will roll them back. does not make sense. remove the power of self-determination. >> what is the logic? it clearly is better for american consumers to not have the choice of cable or fiber. faugh. >> it gets a lot of traction.

rears serving these communities perfectly well. social some of. not many cities given to business. bill will do exactly the same battle with the lecture city in the beginning where cities wanted to run their own municipal electricity systems, a private monopoly said don't do that, that's a terrible mess. so the details in the state passes, but the attraction they give is the feeling that government should not be in the business of the commissioning the internet access that is enormously attractive. so the story is that it's virtually very cost-effective for a city to be patient with

capital to guarantee loans to private operators, build these systems the payback over several years and in their freeing clear, not truck by the scene of gatekeeper who got the business. >> out as a highly intelligent live with that? is that the correct analogy? patinkin the book you say we're driving and gravel roads. >> when i speak to people as a commotion made sure there were real ways across the united states were built to federal highway system to connect all americans. this is impact the business of government. for some people that as traction. there is enough here to even be involved in. occasions.

the instinctive reaction. this is a very new reaction. today is the anniversary of the first telegraph said between boston and new york in 1847. at that point city fathers would naturally get involved in where wires to be strong. it made all the sense in the world. this is the only way to insure that everybody gets a connection and a reasonable price. because so have private actors building and operating, but they have to be subject to public oversight, otherwise the incentives just don't align. companies are not evil. then the populated areas.

>> we do have the choice to read over the last 15 years your suddenly gone from paying $0.34 per cup of coffee to going to starbucks. does he say there is not your own option. coor's there really is no chores. it's interesting. it's as if all water became bottled. they should just be a flow of communication available to everyone really and think about it what's interesting is that electricity was treated as a luxury in the early 20th-century

it took decades to change the perception of electricity from wanting to the weather. they're in this middle point right now where internet access is still viewed as something slightly magical or expensive, but talk to someone trying to learn the business from some. for him to access, he can even get kaelin without having the reasonably priced connection. >> regularity of the internet. hambros following everything. >> russian actors confused between these layers. the internet is the agreement of a computer to speak to another computer using particle is now the single line to most american homes being used for absolutely everything.

is the infrastructure the struggle every. internet access, phones, the mail system, a social system. it is the idea of a high-capacity digital wire. it just becomes of platform for virtually everything. subject to no recession and competition, the auspices of -- pre disasters. i do think of the situation is turning down the entire in an instance economy if everyone could depend on this basic power reasonably priced connected to be doing better. >> the electricity analogy, were even higher than that. is that the light goes on and off. >> it should be scary to people that everything they learn,

thing, or do is under the control of a single company. >> it is and cook for some reason americans are not in the streets. >> i'm confused. >> a lot of it has to do with lack of awareness. the. [inaudible] aware of what is happening in other countries. we don't really care what's happening in south korea or sweden or the northern european countries are japan and china. maybe china. china may be the story the texas . china is committed to getting these very, very high capacity cyber connections to every home as quickly as they can. they're building sums of tales. they see this as just part of their ever structure story to created giant middle-class that concerns not stuff, does a lot on my. we have no plan to do this. as a result where falling farther and farther behind.

michael is to reach as many people -- i think it can change the world just by educating. they will figure out what to do in their communities to make sure that the connectivity issues this and then gradually will be to the point where federal policy will change. >> that is what is striking, these networks are inherently local. in neighborhood -- the neighborhood unit is technically speaking a good way of going about. >> this is that because the economies of scale of the systems are so great, it's so cheap, what's your bill to think ten an additional customer. the neighborhood level may not be the right unit of interest to digging up the streets and install fiber and in turn depend on someone else to pick up a communications a reasonable cost. you have to go through a

citywide, we're doing this. will make sure that everyone has fiver and then the city is strong enough, use of a negotiation to demand a reasonable carriage rates from the next provider of the chain, the so-called middle mild provider carrying those bits from the city outskirts to the internet backbone.