tide gauge stations at battery along long island and eastern shore where hurricane sandy hit. they weren't looking at hurricane itself but look at storm surge. it did show because of rise in global sea level there has been increased in likelihood of that high storm surge. and so, you know that is, those again are areas where our scientists can come forward say something about individual extreme event, say something about the actual hurricane sandy i think is more challenging. >> right. i was, i'm from rhode island and there was something called the 1938 hurricane and people, you know, through all my youth, people talked about the 1938 hurricane. in providence, rhode island, 10 feet of water. the whole downtown was underwater. i don't think we've seen anything since but you point you can't talk about an individual event. you have to talk about how many such events are you having where

you get this kind of a surge and clearly that is on the increase. so in terms of foreign policy issues and, and i think this gets into some of what erica has been dealing with, we have more and more of these effects of climate, what we think are climate change. we're seeing, seeing droughts become more serious. we're seeing storms become more serious storms and how do you see this affecting us in terms of this foreign policy? i mean,, one thing we have to deal with is often the united states is turned to help, people turn to us for human hahm aid and seeps that, that we're running through that much more quickly than we used to in the past. >> right. it is really interesting. we were all invited as part of the global thinkers event to a event at washington, d.c. as well and was focused much more on foreign policy and not specifically climate change but

as a scientist who spend most of her day inside of a science building it was interesting to interact and hear from folks like current ambassadors, people who are defense advisors and people who work at the pentagon. almost every single panel discussion we had climate change came up as an issue. these are not scientists. these are not activists. most of them were uniform or typical inside the beltway suits. so this is not a convention of environmentalists by any stretch of the imagination. these are realists. these are realists looking around saying, the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that the climate is changing. that means things like people with living, where they getting their water, where they are getting their food, these things will change with it. we may not know exactly where these changes are going to happen or be the worst but better start preparing for and thinking about these things. you take it from me.

you also take it from our leaders in our own national security community and in our own community of world leaders who are saying, climate change is something we need to be conscientious of as we need to think about how the nation, the united states in particular, considers our national security and where our foreign assets are located and where we expect future problems to occur in the world. i think that from the perspective of a scientist, it is our job to try and make sure we provide that information in a way that they can best use it to make decision. is there uncertainty in it? of course. these are smart people. they make the decisions all the time with uncertain pieces of information. i think, but at the same time, is it something that you should disregard because you don't have a 100% confidence? no. i think it is, it is information that can be very valuable in helping the united states think about where future issues might arise and one of the ways we

think about that from the scientific perspective you have your extreme weather events and then you have your exposure and your vulnerability. so for example when an extreme heat waves, extreme drought hits the united states, certainly our farmers have been impacted. economically we've been impacted, but really has it caused great social disruption in the united states? no. we're pretty adaptable. we're a developed nation with great resources and we have air-conditioning. so you know, from a perspective the average person in the united states is not hugely impacted. take that same level of drought and extreme heat and put it in country, you know that doesn't have the resource that is we have, or is already unstable economically or socially and it can have huge consequences. so it's not just the extreme event but it is the vulnerability of the people who are being impacted by that event. i think from a foreign policy perspective the united states, it needs to be looking around the world and trying to identify those locations and being

prepared. i think we are. i think we are. >> take an example, for example of a domestic issue. there was a pbs program a year or two ago, ken burns documentary on the dust bowl. what was quite extraordinary bit he chronicled how we began to take these, i guess switchgrass, pull it out and plant wheat, which had a different degree of going into, going into the ground, consequence was, when an inevitable drought came it had catastrophic effects on the ground cover and before you knew it, you had dust storms everywhere. so, that would be an example of, if we had understood that better in the first place, we might have told farmers, no, you're not going to do wheat. so are there more examples of that where we understand the phenomenon better and therefore we can prevent those things from happening? >> absolutely. today, you know, many, many different parts of our economy

are making major, major investments on the fact that our world is changing. so coast call communities, for example, are a really good place to look where we know sea level rise is happening. we know the storm surge is going to get worse. rebuilding after sandy. there have been a lot of requirements about people having to raise their homes. certainly the insurance sector is very sensitive to this and they are, for example, whether it is linked to the climate change or not sometimes, they, their insurance rates are very responsive to natural disasters and extreme events. but i think that the other part of this is that you're talking about really adaptation side of things. so there is a certain amount of climate change we already experienced. even if we turn off the greenhouse gases today the way physics work, there will be continue to rise in global average temperature. there will be forced to live with some of the consequences.

what do we do about it? how do we adapt to it? certainly individuals are making some of those decisions where to buy their homes whether to live along coastal areas. whether to do fire mitigation in colorado because they're worried about drought and forest fires. what they do is, they try and help people understand how, what the climate is in their very local area and how they can make decisions around that from an agricultural perspective. monsanto also invested a lot of money trying to understand climate change because again it impacts what crops you might invest in the future and where they could be selling their crops in the future. this is not just some, you know, government rebuilding after sandy type of effort. this is something that, cities and corporations and towns are taking seriously and spending a lot of money on. it is important that they have good information so they don't, they can spend that money in a way that is most help to build

resilience in their communities. >> i would like to encourage people to start to stand up in front of the microphone, if they have a question. okay. we're good. we'll go right to we'll go right to glen. >> i have a request for thomas and i have a query for erica. i will go with the query first. erica, would you comment on the observation that in the united states, the response of the government to the occupy wall street number, which was non-violent, was excessive? con generally, does that -- consequently does that encourage violent opposition to government policies? >> right now. or do you want to ask thomas too? >> right now. >> okay. i think you know it is interesting.

occupy wall street was a highly localized movement and i think that there were certainly places in the country where there was an excessive reaction to it. and i think in fact, that in the short term those excessive reactions actually backfired. in fact i, when i was sort of scanning the life cycle of this movement, i don't think it had anymore popular support and legitimacy than it did the day after the guy at uc-davis, the pepper spray cop, pepper sprayed all those students who were sitting in, in the face. i think the day after that happened the movement had more support than it did at any other time in its life cycle. that said, i think that the lack of unity that was present in the movement, the actual, lack of consensus among many of the different occupy he, local occupies about whether non-violent or violent means should be used and under what conditions and the fact that,

that those two conversations, kind of took over the general assemblies in a way drove many people away from the movement, i think are good reasons for why it has demobilized somewhat. i have a friend and colleague named wendy pearlman wrote amazing book, whether repression causes erstwhile non-violent movements to become non-violent. she finds the answer is no, not always. in fact a lot of times repression makes non-violent movements bigger because more people are drawn to it. it depends on organizational capacity. their ability to discipline themselves. their ability to commit to non-violent action even with voices of radicals within the movement demanding violence and collectivism forward that draws more people into the movement. so i think the explanation for why it is demobilized less related to excessive i agree government reaction in many places than related to the organizational structure.

>> thank you. thomas i would like you to turn your laser gaze on the question of the minimum wage. >> oh. i would just say that i'm lucky there has been an amazing amount of new research on the minimum wage actually done by the third professor in the course, econometrics course, aaron dubay who has gone and looked at a lot of evidence and found that the research designs actually weren't as good really separating causality out as well. once you correct for, you find that the minimal wage reasonable increases in it is not going to cause mass unemployment and actually will reduce poverty quite a bit. so there has been really excellent research done on that, actually by one of my professors i respect quite a bit. >> okay. thank you. >> one lesson may not be

apparent, a cane can be a very good investment. sometimes gets you to the head of the line and i appreciate that. i did not hear the word population in what the speakers have talked about and i think this could really be addressed to all three of them because population is at the heart of global change. and, i wonder if, people are thinking, well, what would be the ideal population for the earth and how do we over, a long period of time get there? >> that's a toss-up between thomas and stephanie. so i'm going to give stephanie -- >> well, it's a great question. it goes, i am not a population demographic expert. i'm sure that some a -- from resource perspective equations

economists use are better able to quantify that. when we talk about the vulnerability and exposure to extreme events, that is hugely based on climate change, one of the numbers that often gets thrown around in increase in billion dollar disasters in the united states. it is true that generally those are on the rise. how much damage an extreme event costs being over a billion dollars and we calculate that over the years and we've seen it go up but there is pretty good argument the reason it has gone up because our population gone up and amount of infrastructure we have in the way of extreme events has also increased. so, certainly population has influence there. there is also of course the rise in population and the rise in global wealth. certainly contributed to the amount of greenhouse gas that is we're emitting as a global population. in terms of the carbon emission side though i'm not sure if it's a question of population reduction or more thinking about what technologies we can try and

make more pervasive around the world to limit, to start to producing greenhouse gases and make our life-styles less carbon intensive. i think that is issue regardless what the actual population of the planet is. >> thomas, you want to comment? >> i think stephanie really touched on one of the most important points. you know, so population in general, population growth is good for economic growth because there are more folks to go out and work and produce things but the question is, about the carbon intensity of production and how carbon intensive all our methods are. so finding some type of a balance between that i think, good thing there, is actually not necessarily a tradeoff between more growth and more carbon emissions. certainly with existing technologies there are but there is also a lot of research also coming out of umass a lot of

green jobs programs, they actually produce quite a bit of jobs and they help us become more energy sustainable. so, for example, in terms of green energy, a million dollars in the green energy sector will produce almost three times as many job as in the oil and gas sector. one of the reasons for that is, not necessarily for moral reasons but because, you know, if you're going to retrofit a building you have to do it here. so there is a lot of domestic content in that type of economic activity. so the question is, you know, how can we reduce the carbon intensity of production? you know i'm not sure, you know she knows, stephanie knows quite a bit more whether population reduction will be necessary or not, i'm not sure. it is not my field but i would say that there are ways that we could very much reduce the carbon intensity of production and -- yeah. there are things we can do better. >> erica. >> i have no comment on that.

>> no comment. >> they both said way smarter things than i could. >> i hope you guys, all three, run for office at some point, i want to say. and maybe to further that end i wanted to see each of you willing to speak about one kind of moral ramification you see of the research? you're very data driven. i think that is why you're credible and speak a dimension morally. erica, specifically i your take as wielding of nonviolence as tool for politics and geopolitical interests. >> start with erica. >> so the preliminary trouble that our findings bring for kind of the standard on the use of violence, at least, is that you know, over a thousand years we tried to hammer out the conditions under which it is morally acceptable to use violence. that comes out in just theory and other ways but one of the key conditions that somebody has

to credibly meet is to make the case that violence is necessary for them to achieve their goals. that it is, it is not casually being wielded or whatever. it is actually, just when the violence is necessary when it is a last resort. when it's proportional. when it is discriminating and so forth. and what our findings present is a real different cullty for just war theory because it is demonstrating that violence in many cases may not be necessary and moreover, from what i have looked at in my cases, in cases where people are using violence or armed strug bell, they almost never used concerted civil resistance for a significant period before they turned to violence. in other words, many people seemed to be in these armed groups turning to violence before they have exhausted all other methods of civil resistance. civil resistance campaign takes

almost three years to run its course. almost every armed insure again occurred from 1900 to 2006 started within maybe six months to nine months of the onset of a real dissident movement. in other words it seemed like they were jumping the gun, literally and figuratively. in terms of, using non-violence to promote one's own aims. this is the current moral quandary, the way maria and i argue it, civil resistance is method of conflict. it is in very blunt terms, a weapon. so the question is, you know under what conditions morally is this weapon being abused? now a lot of people ask me this now because they're watching what is going on in thailand and they're saying okay, people are waging civil resistance to subvert a democratic government. many people made the same claim about ukraine. that civil resistance was being used to subvert a democratically elected leader.

a constitutionally legal leader. and whether we agree with those assessments or not it presents a real difficulty when is it okay to use civil resistance. given the fact we felt comfortable spending a thousand years developing a just war criteria it is time to spend a few at least to spend developing a a just civil resistance criteria. >> stephanie. >> i discussed earlier how i felt that science has a seat at table and people have to bring their values to that discussion as well. the decision about whether we as a society or community to choose to do or not do anything about the fact that we're changing our climate system is very much a moral challenge and i think in part it's starts with the question of, what are our morals on this question? how important is it to us that we have, you know, that we get to enjoy certain things that we enjoy now?

are these changes okay? maybe they are. and i think that the other aspect of that is, the moral questions around who was actually going to be impacted? so for us in this room again, more heat waves, okay. can i handle that? probably. more floods. well we had a huge flood. barely tell. we probably be okay with a lot of these changes for quite a while to come here in the united states? for the most part, maybe. but, we live in a, we live in a planet much larger than our country and people who are going to really be impacted don't all necessarily live here with us an enjoy the comforts and enjoy the economic growth that we do of the so i think we do have a moral question of how much we, as a society think of oustselves as global citizens and not just citizens of a very lucky developed nation and there are going to be consequences, there are consequences, much larger for other people around the

world. for example with the coastal inundation issue, a lot of those communities will be impacted, people who will be impacted are not second homeowners on the east coast. they're truly poor people who, this is where they live and this is, they don't have an option to simply go somewhere else. they will be displaced. so is that our responsibility? i think those are tough moral questions. i don't think that we have had a lot of discussion about whether we think that the plots are right or whether there is group of, the global temperatures have plateaued and whether we have to actually do anything about this in in country but we haven't spent as much time having this conversation about, what is our obligation to, how, what is the moral consequences of these clangs? are we willing to accept them? i don't think we've had them to the extent we have around the data and around weather. again, due, are extreme events impacted by climate change? it is an important question and

i certainly care about the answer but i think we, as a question about the conversation about the moral impacts of the answer to that question. >> thomas. >> so, you know economics is particularly challenging. and i'm sure the challenge like you mentioned in your field as well, between values and morals and the scientific technical questions. it is very much in economics we have to deal with it. there is top rate technical questions about what the models imply. if they're appropriate. how to interpret the statistics. whether, you know, all your conditions are satisfied. but then there is also moral questions about the type of society we want to live in. and there is also questions about intense distributional conflicts as well. austerity is often times an intense distributional conflict and it's, it is a really hard thing to navigate. at times as economist west help to clarify decisions but there is real moral implications,

right? like one of the problems with the financial crisis is that you know, there was a lot of private debt in the run-up from financial institutions borrowing a lot of money to invest in assets that collapsed and the public authorities had to take those bad debts on to their balance sheets. the question of how to pay for that, right? is it really right to, for example, cut schools, health care and pensions so that we can pay off creditors who often times, you know, didn't act with the best interests of everyone in mind? and so, you know, there are other really tough questions too. if you read the political aspects of full employment, by michael koleski he asks the question why business interests opposed full employment policies to a large extent in his people period. there are periods where you could compromise and have a lot

of good things but these underlying kind of distributional conflicts come back and they keep coming back again and again. so how to navigate that, it is really difficult and it is something that, you know, we have to confront and face. easier to talk about data, whether a correlation is statistically significant or something like that. but when these policies really affect things, it is really tough. sometimes you have to make judgment calls about what is acceptable, what's not. who will have to take the loss, who is not. who bears the burden of at just meant as well, and in what ways you can bear a burden of adjustment. one of the points made about the international financial system at its time one of the main problem it is was always on the, burden of adjustment was always on the deficit countries. and so they would have to cut

wages and, you know, to become more competitive with the other countries. well there's, is it, could there be a more equitable distribution of the burden of adjustment, you know, instead of necessarily the deficit countries having to cut their wages and have prices fall? you could have inflation in the surplus countries and raise wages there too. that is one of the problems between greece and germany right now. another thing is, sometimes there are times to compromise where writing down debts can actually be in a lender's best interest because, you know, having a small stream of income is better than having none. you know, so there are room to compromise but at love times it is very difficult and different forces will try to use political institutions to kind of, to very much further their own interests. so it is really difficult, sometimes tough choices have to be made. sometimes there is room for

compromise. sometimes parties aren't willing to compromise too and these are all really, difficult questions and these are problems of our time we have to face so. >> thank you very much. >> thank thank you. i'm a practitioner of the dismal science i confess as thomas carlisleed channeled through our dine. keynes said economy -- economists are like dentists n that line how to be better dentists. two quick comments on erica and stephanie. i agree that the problem of the south is the greater one. that was my last piece of advice to study before i left geneva. earlier at korbel we did a lot of work on sanctions. much of it is published. some published. but you're both local so we can discuss. for thomas i have question of

economics as dentistry and about causality. one problem with reinhardt rogoff paper it is not really about causal relations. it is about correlations and there are two aspectings of causality that i would like you to consider and discuss. one is temporal. what happens after what? i mean, debt and growth. the other one is about conceptual problem between debt and deficit that, it really is theoretically deficit should be more the flow aspect and not so much the stock aspect of debt which is important. so in a way it is like barking up the wrong tree. so those are my questions. >> thomas, go ahead. i think it is all you. >> so i encouraging people to be

more humble like dentists takes time. it is difficult, to incorporate like i mentioned before, incorporating replication. promoting the kind of critical spirit that animates science, these things are tough but, it is hard to say. how to promote honest research. it is, that's a tough question. more critical mind. more graduate students doing replication in their econometrics courses. another thing is critical popular engagement. when i look at history of thought in economics i think so many of the times when we have seen the development of really excellent new ideas and public policy tools to handle the problems have been when the public engaged with the discipline and said, you know, your answer is unacceptable. you know like if, you know, you can do better. and when you have critical popular movements questioning it really pushes economists to be

more creative and think of better ideas, of ways to say it. the questions about, one, causality and two, the stock flow thing, those are actually reasons why i thought their results were implausible when i thought those were things we discussed early on. in terms of the causality thing, it was actually the initial goal of the project to quickly replicate the basic results and ask those questions. we never got around to the second part because we didn't deal with the first but, one of my professors. david: aaron dubay who we mentioned he did look at that quite a bit. so in terms of the temporal thing what he found is that current growth predicted, sorry, current debt predicted past growth better than it predicted future growth. there was very little coral nation between future growth and current debt but past growth was very much correlated with it. that is telltale sign of reverse causality.

in addition to some of the regression estimates he really included basic controls for reverse causality and able to cut the estimated coefficient by 50 to 70%. people looked at this since then with mixed variety of methods, time series or different panel methods come down saying there is very little evidence on the side it is really high debt causing slow growth. it is probably more that slow growth is causing high debt. . .

that i think public authorities i think of so many more tools to handle those than the private sector. i think we should very much look back at the old wisdom that sometimes was discarded. >> thank you. >> this question is for stepping. at lunch you discussed your flux capacitor. will be the best technology to get the best data. so my question is really about the use of technology in getting that new data. i'm wondering what you're seeing in terms of drone usage to gauge data point. i know people are using some of these drones in atmospheric research. i'm wondering where you see the future of unmanned systems and gathering the data for you and what the landscape might look like? >> good question.

we at noaa have a program trying to explore more uses for unmanned vessels and in part because they are cheaper. they can save a lot of money and that's important. the one area where they are becoming novel in the use -- uses is in the ocean and sending drones into the ocean to traverse the ocean and the debate and to be able to do so in different locations with that of the ocean column. so i think it's an area it's going to increase. certainly as technology gets better and technology gets cheaper, those are important things. on the other side of that, another interesting technology is nano satellites. we spend billions of dollars launching these satellites. every expensive but they're very, very accurate and very, very good. nano satellite is the opposite. you could have a lot of them. they're not as accurate, but they are cheaper you can put a

lot up there. there's trade-offs. the technology is changing our ability to observe the climate, and hopefully that will contin continue. >> professor gilbert? >> i wanted to thank you all, and it's been a very refreshing conversation. about science with all these important moral questions. and i want to speak particularly to thomas. i ran across an interview with you because my stepdaughter goes to evergreen state. and i think people at evergreen state and u.s., people are encouraged to think about the emperors new clothes which social science has often been. and paul krugman in "the new york times" endorsed saying he didn't believe gillespie before. and cited larry summers, since he's not going to be famously

involved in the federal reserve, actually recovered himself as an economist and has pointed out that we have permit unnecessary unemployment of millions of people here the reason we have this is the emperors new clothes. that is, the political aspect of what he is saying. rich folks don't like government spending money on poor folks. even if it would benefit them, even if voted stimulus the economy and make businesses more successful. he's the most extreme example result is apparently is necessary to cut off food stamps for poor kids. i don't know what country the people who did that or want to do that live in, but it's not what i want to live in. so i would yo just say about th, and this is the question, it seems that we have the conflict between the scientific

conclusion of games that in a depression if you spend money on poor folks, you should give money to poor folks. and powerful, wealthy political interests which have created this great environment, including in the economics profession, reaching to reinhart and rogoff and coming to paul bryant who loves to cite them and no sites something else. is there much we can do about this aside from some sort of big movement from below? is science enough to persuade those who ought to be persuadable on the basis of all this evidence that spent a little money on poor folks is not a bad idea even from their point of view? >> thomas, we will let you take that. >> no, i -- the points you raise are really important. i think it's really interesting.

within the economics profession i think it's a little more politically homogenous than some of the other social science professions. i think that's one reason, research like this came out of an environment that was open-minded and critical in a lot of ways like mission evergreen and umass amherst. i think there's more political diversity and people seem, interpreting things in a different way. that's why i think it was really good from a scientific perspective that you have people who question, receive wisdom and critically interrogate it. in terms of dealing with the political problems of conflicts of interest, it's really difficult. you know, he mentioned that one of the reasons why some of the more powerful data base interest is historically opposed some of the full of liberal policies because the idea that we don't have to depend on the private

job creators for jobs, the public sector can actually do that, is actually, if you take that to its logical conclusion, it implies that big changes are possible. but in the past we've also seen compromises, too. there have been times we've seen compromises. over the last 30 years there's been an attempt to renegotiate those compromises in a way that was more resembling of older social contracts before the new deal era, before these type of public interventions were accepted. and i think there's just a problematic about how to change it, i would really, i would, i would lose a lot less sleep if the we really worked was balanced research, always informed policy. f. scott fitzgerald, targets and

understand something of of theb depends on them not understanding it. it's a difficult thing. that's why i encourage popular engagement. we can do better, and i think it's much more democratic because there's something come it's essential, people who are affected by policies should have a say in those policies to the extent they are affected by them. there's something undemocratic about the image of technocrats in the computer labs creating the optimal policies for everybody. we should just do that. critical popular engagement is really important to i think that's what we have seen the best ideas that are really addressed the needs of the many. i think that's why we've seen them emerge from critical and popular engagement. >> maybe i'll just close with an anecdote.

which is, when fdr was elected president, he got a visit from a delegation of some african-american activist. many of whom had spent years in india studying gandhi, and spending time with him and whatnot. and they came and presented a plan that that would be more fair for people living in this country who are african-american, and involve a number of other social programs, social safety nets, things like this, and they explained it and laid out the whole idea, the justification and he said that's great, i agree with you. now make me do it. what he was telling them was, i cannot stand in front of the congress and sell them an idea unless you show me that there are millions of people are willing to show up in the streets and support of this. so that's where these sorts of great social movements of the mid-20th century came from was politicians saying, we are not leaders, we are followers. so if you want something done, make us do it.

>> going on from your making people do stuff, so the greatest in africa, for example, i grew up in west africa which doesn't see much media coverage, stuff like that. how exactly do you think that environment is necessary to push the nonviolent movement? and how exactly do you incentivize them? who exactly is the best actor to bring about that type of nonviolent movement? i know i'm cheating but this is for thomas. which the argument that austerity is used to rein in spending in europe? once the economy gets better the governments just don't stop seem to be spending in europe. >> thomas, take the last weekend in erica, you will have the final word.

>> all right. the argument that we need to rein in spending now because governments just don't stop spending, if you look at the history of, i guess i would see two things. one, it's not really accurate based on the facts. there's been periods where a character world war ii, how the public sector leverage and they then those debts. they did that quite a bit. the other thing is public spending is necessary to bed. it depends on what it is. certainly if you public spending that's used to give the politicians, best friends like a lot of money they can abscond with, that's terrible. but a lot of public spending and put a floor underneath the economy. if you look i think at the history of how a lot of the industrial powers agreed, -- grew. it was very much to public

intervention, public spending on things. they really good. they can be good for developing asic technology, industrial policy. there are reasons why those are really good. markets can provide certain classes of things decently but things that have kind of a publipublic good aspect to the r positive externality are not as good at pricing them in a way that will get them to produce adequate quantities. so i think on a couple ground, one, i mean i don't think it's true that politicians always are doing runaway spending, et cetera. but then they could be very legitimate reasons for those programs. and especially in a slump you just like basic mechanical reasons you'd expect deficits happen because more people will need public services if you of mass unemployment. and so i think the question is really asking how we can do it better and how we can make sure that there is accountability

from the political institutions that are benefiting all of us, things like infrastructure, schools, et cetera. right now it's really interesting that the interest rates are lower than the inflation rate so that we have to pay back less than we borrowed in the future. it's almost like free money on the table. a time like that as long as it's targeted infrastructure, develop, et cetera, that could be incredibly useful. so it's really asking the questions about how to do it well, and i think getting away from the narrative that public sector is always bad and inefficient, et cetera, i don't think that stands up to scrutiny based on historical records spent thanks a lot for your question, and research on where these nonviolent movements come out of is pretty inconclusive or they seem to come out of any type of environment under many different conditions, and literate and illiterate societies. it's all over the map.

in poor places, in which places. we don't really know what the causes are, which means it's kind of a universal in merging phenomena. personally i know that when i was a kid i know to make a really hard for my parents to pick me up. i which is become a bag of potatoes and that was civil disobedience. it came from and intuitive thought, so i believe that most humans have the capacity to do it. and i'll just answer your question more broadly with an anecdote. martin luther king asked a young reverend named jim lawson to go to national and desegregate it right from the beginning of the civil rights movement. and imagine being 30 and having martin you -- martin luther king tell you to go desegregate pacific sea goose to national and the typical model have been bus boycott, putting, lung people to either boycott buses or sit on the bus we were supposed to.

thatcher rosa parks example. but reverend loss was not sure that would work everywhere so what he did was instead start right at the gate with these types of sit-ins, he spent a year going into peoples homes printed asking them what bothered them on a daily basis. it turned out that when he did that he was usually visiting when mothers were home with her children. so most of the people he talked to were women. he asked them what bothers you day today. they said the main thing that bothers me is the indignity of my children having to wear ill fitting clothes. it something that hadn't occurred to but when you go into shopping district in downtown nashville there were about to let their children try on clothes because of racism and they did know what size they were so they would pick what they thought fit, take a dump and they would try on and it wouldn't fit but they weren't allowed to take it back and returned to the store because it was considered dirty. humor to sink in a story again and again and again. again. what he realized was the thing that is rising with these people is the day-to-day indignities of

segregated stores. not so much just desegregation but the shopping stores and lunch counters. so they started with lunch counter sit ins and trying to desegregate shopping district of national. that was the goal. and ultimately what happened is that through this very skillful sequence of events he was able to draw on the support of the common grievance, that these women had, the movement was huge, thousands and thousands of people, students from fisk university and also women and men alike, and they would sit in at his lunch counters. the surface was so great that the lunch counters would close and the police would come and proud of these students and taken to do. soon to jails were completely overwhelmed but they still had these waves of people coming to do these sit-ins. ultimately, he became so disturbing to the general public the way business owners shut down their stores. they lost 80% of their income.

and they went to the minute of national exit something has to be done. so what they did was they tried to resort to terror. they started burning crosses, started beating people, taking them out of their homes and they went after the one black lawyer who was brave enough to actually defend these students in jail. they bombed his home. so that totally backfired. there was a huge sigh the barge and movement demanded a meeting with the mayor of nashville. who met them on the front steps of the courthouse and ask them out right with a camera rolling and the microphone in his face whether he personally thought that it was morally right to discriminate against someone on the basis of their skin color. and in the face of 5000 activists staring at him from he said the only thing any rational human being could say, which is no, i don't think it is morally right, and that was the moment the completed changed that city. again it wasn't the moral pressure. it was the disruptive capacity of this movement that was rooted in very personal grievances.

that lead that change. my answer to question would be i don't know what would lead to a change in a country that you're talking about, but i know that it couldn't be exporter importer or built from the top down. it would have to come from ordinary people who were expressing a common grievance around which they could unite. >> thank you very much. let me some half of the school of the korbel school and the university of denver it is been an extraordinary privilege to be here with stephanie, thomas and erica. really, me, this has been truly, truly a fascinating time. just keep up the good work. even if you're not on our top 100 list next year, don't worry about it. keep going forward. you will be on other lists. so thank you, thank you very much applau. [applause]

>> we have news from ukraine. russian president vladimir putin has signed bills making crimea a part of russia completing the annexation from ukraine. the associate press writer and president putin hailed the incorporation of crime into russia as a remarkable event before sunday bill into law. russia russia the annexation after sunday's hastily called referendum in which its residents overwhelmingly backed breaking off from ukraine and joined russia. ukraine and the west have rejected the vote. we do expect her more about this at today's white house briefing with press secretary jay carney. he would be brief and ports at 1:15 p.m. eastern this afternoon. that would be live here on c-span2. another view on the situation in ukraine at an event at george washington university. college professor from ukraine and a student will be part of the discussion on the situation in ukraine including the reaction of europe and the u.s. and the position of president

putin. we will have it for you by start at 3:30 p.m. eastern on our companion network c-span. coming up tonight at eight, a reasoning examining brain injuries and contact sports like football and hockey. thousand and heard from nfl and nhl officials as and nhl officials as well as scientists, doctors and athletes about the extent of hagrid injuries and what's been done to prevent them. here is a preview. >> american football is an inherently violent sport. that's one of reasons we love it. that's -- the forces encountered in football can be huge. and certificate between a running back and linebacker at full speed. we can show using second law of the force each player exerts on the other exceeds three quarters of a ton which is why football is called a contact sport. two players who collide at full speed helmet to helmet are

expecting the same force to their heads that one of them would feel if he had a 16-pound bowling ball dropped on his helmet from a height of eight feet. medical knowledge of confessions is in its infancy but we know one thing for sure, forces to the head and neck cause concussions and we just heard how big these forces can be. here's another problem. they are getting bigger. since 1920 the average weight of pro-line has increased almost 60% to just over 300 pounds. at the same time these players have gotten about 10% faster. combining the factors of speed and mass to check laid kinetic energy, the energy is able to cause energy, osha injury can we find the amount of energy at the line of scrimmage on any given play is almost doubled since 1920. and exact opposition to this trend is the fact that players are shedding their protective gear. kneepads that you three centimeters thick now bear a remarkable resemblance to

teacup doilies. or scholars, popular with alignment of my generation have gone the way of the flying wedge. modern football homeless our technological marvels if players choose and not for the collision cushioning ability but for how cool they looked. another problem is the state of her medical knowledge. while i'm not confident to explain these issues, i think it's safe to say that a roomful of head trauma physicians will not agree on the details of what concussions are or what causes them. this means the diagnosis and treatment of concussions has a long way to go. as her understanding of these issues improve we may find injury rates due to the increasing energy of the game and the wholesale shedding of equipment have increased faster than we thought. >> that hearing on sports related injuries tonight begins at eight eastern on our companion network c-span. here on c-span2 booktv in prime time continues with a series of afterwards programs.

at eight. that's all tonight starting at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. coming up next, discussion on hunger, obesity and the food system. social entrepreneur and activist alan gustafson addressed a number of students at pepperdine university in early february. in 2007 along with laura bush, ms. gustafson cofounded the feed foundation that provides school lunches to 70 million children around the world. he also cofounded foodtank featuring. this is about one hour 15 minutes.

>> thank you. thank you all. your campus is amazing. pepperdine, and i remember when i was looking at colleges not that long ago but longer ago than any of you, that my parents suggested i think most because they would have loved to have visited here, and they came and looked a little bit even from the road driving up and i was like i'm not sure i would ever get any work done. some highly impressed that all of you are still here in school, whether it's been one semester or a couple of years. and that major getting enough work done to stairs i find that incredibly impressive. and thank you, i know we're upset in california were having this ridiculous long drought, but it is glorious weather that is kind of the good and the bad going to get the. anyway thank you so much for having me here.

i want to start off, this talk, a new understanding of these issues that often times seem very disconnected. i want to start up with kind of a main premise which is that i believe we can feed world. and i think it's an interesting statement to make in a global picture that we often get that suggests the actual we can't feed the world, and the population is growing to 9 billion waste still have some hungry people and with all these issues connected with agriculture and trade and all the many things that food is connected to. and so many people i think make a statement that we won't be able to feed the world. what's interesting is thomas mel has made this statement hundreds of years ago talking about the fact that we're going to run out of food and people are going to starve. of course, there still is hunger

i think it would come from the perspective that we can feed the world we have a lot more hope in solving some of the world's biggest problems. assuming we have a solution as i think is much better way to go about trying to find the solution. i think the bigger question is can we feed the world well? we have plenty of calories right now on a plan to feed everyone but as we know there's lot of other food related problems that don't choose and that having enough calories. i think there really is one of the biggest challenges of our times. it's a question that has driven me to this new understanding of hunger, obesity and the food system. so i'm hoping that in this talk i can walk you through my own experience, my own coming to the awareness of these problems and maybe you can see how i've come to this new understanding of these big, deep issues. the other thing to start with whenever you're talking about

food is that food is awesome. i know so many times, it's kind of awkward, go to a fundraising event for hunger and there's this fancy meal or people are sitting around talking about the problem of obesity what eating junk food. there's a lot of challenges because of something wicked every single day. it's something most of us do many more than four times a day. but it's also something that every major culture has always come to as part of the celebration we know the matter would come from whether we were home a month ago for christmas with their families or celebrate hanukkah or celebrating the wall become one of the many cultural celebrations, it's all about food. that's the same for every single corner of the planet. i think when we're talking about these issues with food which remember food isn't necessary the problem. food is something we all want to enjoy. this is not about the world going on a global die. this is about creating a food

system that allows people to enjoy food but do it in a much healthier way. so going to also start to talk with this picture which is so super random for most of you because yes, it is an aircraft carrier. because it has a lot to do with where i am today in my study of food. first of all started mike weir working for the military. as was that i studied political science and international relations. i was in school my senior year at columbia when 9/11 happened. this had a huge impact on my studies but also on my life. i started to look in my work studying secured issues and terrorism. i moved into my first job and i was focus on these issues and working with the military. i was noticing a lot of places around the world that need these aircraft carriers to come, the areas where there's terrorism and violence and long-term and security are often the same ones where there's hunger. this crystallized for me in my own we being about these issues around the time that the darfur

crisis, around 2005, was burning through east africa and the sudan. that's still a major challenge today. it was just a couple of weeks ago there was an american helicopter that was shot at in south sudan. this is an area the world where there's been chronic long-term hunger and also chronic long-term violence. those things are incredibly connected to the other thing interesting about this aircraft carrier is that i switch my career focus, talk about terrorism and insecurity to food insecurity. i noticed that we use these same big ships to deliver food to people around the world. it's almost like we're going to take these ships to those places anyway, whether we will bring food or bring the weapons that need to fight the conflicts to come out of a lack of food, kind of the question. i found it so interesting that this one image that we are so

connected to, our military and our physical security, is also so deeply connected to global food security. i would say since i was on a college campus, i have to make this statement once that is going to be reiterated throughout my talk. the reason i connected those two things is not because i got a masters degree or a ph.d in them. it's not because i had teachers who totally walked me through the process of seeing the linkages between food insecurity and terrorism. exactly because i just read a lot about it, and i really encourage you in your own journey, whatever the issue that you're passionate about, and i'm passionate about food, but whatever your issue, a lot of answers and the new understandings about these issues can just come from your own personal studies. so my own reading about the crisis in darfur have a look at it from the lens, studying terrorism is look under broadly to this idea and shifted my career. what ended up happening was

shifted my grid is a certain working at the united nations world food program. this is a u.n. food agency that's third largest mentored agency, the largest humanitarian agency in the world. responsible for feeding millions of people. one of the most simple things i learned about in working for them was their school feeding initiative. it's a simple idea that we have endemic what if kids can't afford a school lunch, you bring it to the its way to get them to go to school and give them the basic nutrition to build the focus and stay in school. it's a smart and relatively low-cost intervention. in 2006 was learning about it, it was about $34 to feed a child in school for a year. now what we've seen around the world it can vary from $20 to over $50 depending on where you are and where the food is coming from. it's a relatively low-cost way to make sure a kid gets to school can provide them with the free school meal. part of my job at the world food program is working with the celebrity ambassador which was really cool but also it's the

balance of how do you use people, how do you use these, all of a friend who lived about 50 miles south of here, how do we use them to get attention on these causes but not take attention away from what really needs to be talked about? in my work i started working with one of the celebrity ambassadors, lorna bush, and she had this idea of how can we choose fashion industry to raise awareness about is really simple easy solution of child hunger called school feeding. because i had so much reading about food issues in the world i thought now it seems like a time, a moment where people ready to talk about whether it's child hunger or how we can use fashion in a better way. around the time we were think about this new idea, magazines start having their green issues and to start talking more and more about socially conscious things and eco-friendly things

and reusable water bottles. so the idea was if we could support this school feeding initiative and a simple way that a lot of people could access, we could fulfill this need for children have enough money and enough food to go to school. so we cofounded a business. and it was completely insane at the time. i don't get how to start a company and neither did my business partner but i was working as a spokesperson of the yuan, probably the last person you think would go into, not one but it was just a need to get money and awareness raised about the java problem -- child hunger and the solution to great the product to do so. the company feed was sounded really on that mission. we could feed one child in school for when you just place on one of these bags. it turned out it was a little hard work with a little bit of -- that we could have created these products and sell them all around the world.

we this is great partnership with whole foods, we had a feed bags in every single foods and that he was what you're buying groceries for your family, think about the fact there are people in need around the world and we provided 100 school meals for each paxil. through the partnership were able to provide 430,000 school meals, which is incredible from just a simple partnership sold in a store we shopped at on a regular basis. the other thing that was cool we were able to produce our products whatever we wanted. we could decide. we had this amazing experience producing products in kenya where i thought we're working with a women's go out. when we got there we found out it wasn't mixed boys and girls who were students at a local school for the deaf. one and most amazing expenses i had was when this guy actually in this picture told me that what he liked about this is to know that i was one of the cofounders of the company. but we like it working on this

product is it any surprise was going to be sold to help provide meals for hungry kids in kenya. so here's a young person who he himself is deaf and living in what we consider to be a poor part of the world, but he was proud of something he was working on we go to children that were actually less fortunate than him. what a great lesson about the kind of human nature that every one of us wants to make the world a better place. we are all just been looking for ways that we can. one the other things that was interesting about running feed on the flipside is there's an expectation when you're producing a product. our friends who were about 20 miles south of here, there's an expectation that they will get those products for free. wait a minute, you could buy the most money in the world and you want me to send you a bag that feeds hungry kids for free? no. so we had a policy that anyone was going to buy our product they would go by. somebody would pay for it. so one of the coolest

experiences of this time in 2007, eight when these products are getting off the ground is we got us weekly magazine with reese witherspoon caring one of our bags that she went to whole foods and bought. i think that was such an incredible snapshot of a moment in time that there's such an energy around getting products to have meeting, the fewer people that want to just go out of the way to buy them and wear them, get photographed. so i think went to remember that no matter what issues we are interested in, sometimes there's amazing moment in time when those issues time has come. so of course feed is a great success and distillers to an incredible company and i'm so proud to have been involved in getting it started. we've able to provide now the number is close to 70 million school meals but if you think about that, that was too young girls who started the company in my apartment and with no idea how to run a business.

those products sold to individual consumers around the world and provide over 70 million school meals which is incredible. but one of the weird part about running feed is we did so much travel both around the u.s. to stores and around the developing world to places we are feeding kids, and that we have these weird experiences in both of those environments. what i was like there's something still wrong, it is something i can't think attention to. so here i was, a picture in uganda, india where this house was i was visiting, was there to shoot some pictures of the projects we're supportive of icon into a little market and in the market i was like made out of some local food to bring it with me. but the only thing i could find were like nutella and cookies and lots of soda, and some pringles, some white bread. i was like okay, not to be like the american stuff but i don't

eat any of that junk. this is really weird that i'm in rural uganda at a little market and i can't really find something healthy to eat. so i didn't think about an account on a plane and went back and we landed at j. k. -- jfk in new york. when you go into this little snack shop hudson news shop, you kind have the exact same options available to you. it's soda, its chips, cookies. and i was like that's really weird that this area of the world that suffered from chronic hunger and food insecurity and the city that's obviously has, certainly there's still millions of hungry new yorkers but there's more this major obesity crisis happening all across our country, but the picture of food in both of those places is strangely really similar. and also at the time, we are creeping up to sort of 2010 time period, i was noticing a lot more people were talking about domestic food issues.

the food crisis that happened in 2008 got a lot of people focus on hunger because of people around the world. ever governance topic of all kinds of stuff going on but to the fact that someone more people were hunger with rising food prices. within a few short years, the conversation swung back and there was this rampant obesity epidemic. as i was living in this will trying to support hunger but actually eating in a world that was all about how to avoid obesity, i find it incredibly ironic. around my 30th birthday, i'm actually over 30 now, in 2010 i was like what the going to do, how am i going -- how will i make a big party? i want to make a big party i went to something more meaningful than that considering my career. i had this crazy idea that maybe in the last 30 years since i've been on the planet this problem of obesity which has been treated since i was born and this problem of hunger have more connected to them that i thought

initially, maybe that experience of being in the market in yukon and coming ove out to the airpot little snack shop in jfk were actually what the answer is and the key to this new understanding. i had the opportunity to give a tad talk in 2010. i made this link that maybe these food problems are really kind of a 30 year window. if you look at 2010 when we were and what we have continued to go now in 2014, actually over time, although the gross number of hungry people we have reduced the fact is there's still so much hunger. in 2008 the number of hungry work dramatically up. but this other problem of obesity we see more face-to-face has been great in just the last 30 years. switches the time that most of us have been on the planet this obesity thing when from the

nonexisting to being a major crisis. look at these two maps. we are talking about under 15% and now almost every single state is like a crisis of obesity. thank goodness were out in california where we are a little bit better but i think depending on where you are, you get the same really high percentages of a deadly disease. the other thing that's crazy and i notice also spending time in the developing world is when you're out in maybe in the hungry areas or in the rural areas, you don't see people that are so much overweight. as you get closer and closer into the cities, you end up seeing obesity taking root there. as more people are eating our western diet, you end up seeing the levels of obesity and disease and diabetes and cancer and heart disease and stroke and all of those things as we have. because almost everywhere you go you see the same chain, the same

brand, the same soda, the same sugar syrup but it's this incredible fact instead of just ending hunger and getting people to be healthy, we are ending hunger in getting people to be overweight. we are also having this kind of weird never before seen problem of people in the same person, both hungry and overweight. this happens a lot when you see on the news think about people going to food bank in america. a lot of people that are facing food banks actually look overweight but are malnourished, don't have proper nutrition. because the calories they can access are the cheapest, least healthy calories. they're gaining weight but they're not gaining nutrition. i really think this connection between how are we going to end hunger in our time but do not just make all the hungry people into people for giving with another food related health problem, the kind of the question for our generation. we now know that what's been happening in the last 30 years has great the obesity epidemic

but it hasn't ended hunger so what are going to do going forward? if we have a world where in 2010 it was a billion and a billion and today it's around eight to 909 people that are chronically hungry, and 1.5 billion people that are overweight, the numbers are not necessary going in the right direction. so in looking at all of this stuff and working in one area of food, i had begun to dig deeper into what could possible have created these problems. that kind of take you way, way back to the farm. as weird as it is when you can look at a basic snapshot of farming systems, we have farming systems in america that are these massive farms producing a lot of corn, a lot of soybeans, wheat. and we have farming systems in the developing world where a lot of mostly women farmers are struggling to get by. it's almost like neither of those is just right to use kind of the goldilocks of the three

little bears thing. like none of that is just the right way of farming it seems. sorry for this crazy wordy slides but there's been so much changes in the last 30 years. we've lost a lot of farmers. our farms have consolidated to become bigger and a lot of our food companies have consolidated to become bigger. farmers have been making less of the dollar. we've reduce our agricultural aid, giving more food aid like on the big ships in the picture so instead of spinning over agriculture special still people are now to grow their own food, we've been sending more and more of our food as the answer to the people. we produce are funny for just the basic public research in agriculture and african corn production that region of the world that especially needs corn production has in many cases gone down. consolidation has gone up. temperatures have changed. all of these number of natural disasters have increased. so many data points have gone in the wrong direction.

one of the major things that's changed in the last 30 years is our reliance on a few single crops. obviously corn. so many of you whether you've seen the movies or read books have heard about this that gore isn't everything with its high fructose corn syrup which was first put in both pepsi and coke in 1984. think of that data point. this is a part that didn't exist until the '70s and was adopted by both soda companies in 84. look at the obesity epidemic started in 1980 and continuing dramatically but even that gave point alone is enough for question. we started getting more and more corn to our animals and have this massive increase in people looking around the world to how are we going to feed and increase the supply of animal products. maybe we are not doing it the right way. we are feeding a lot of corn to animals, increasing their fat. maybe that's also increasing ours. now, of course, we are even feeding corn to our cars. and we're still having so much

corn extra they were singing it over the seas to feed hungry kids. we are doing a lot more dump him -- dumping of record excess. at the same time as is one product has overtaken us, the agriculture products we really need to be eating have become harder to eat. over the past 30 years fruits and vegetables, the prices have gone up for the consumers is been harder and harder to access those things. the prices of soda and junk food, things that are made of corn have gone down. at the same time, which makes a lot of economic sense, fruits and vegetables are getting more expensive and less healthy food is getting cheaper, more and more people eating less and less healthy food. we have this system built on things like subsidizing those agriculture products and increasing the investment and research for those products.

we have the outcome of people eating more and more fast food and drinking more and more soda. if you look at this graph which is nerdy but interesting going to think of the fact we all go to the store come with a limited amount of dollars. we will spend it on something but it makes a lot of sense we end up spending those limited dollars on things that have more value for the dollar. if it's cheaper to buy soda than it is to buy a healthier product, and it makes economic sense to do so. if it's more challenging to buy the fresh fruits and vegetables are at the top of the line, maybe will not buy them so much. the usda is telling us to fill half a plate with fruits and vegetables but we don't go anywhere near that. when you go to most grocery stores they only take up about 10% of the grocery store. you are supposed to fill up your plate half i was on that episode 10% of the grocery store. that doesn't make much sense. we have these dueling problems as the outcome. it's crazy that mississippi and

india have a sort of dubious distinction of both having sort of the highest numbers of malnutrition and some of the highest numbers of obesity existing in the exact same populations of people. clearly there's something radically wrong with how we're getting food or grown food in those places that's leading to the stool -- is to dueling problems to the other thing i think is so ironic is our population of farmers are some of the most overweight people in our country. it's kind of crazy that this, you know, super bowl ads from last year, i remember the famous farmer and one of his buff looking guy is out there doing the hard work in the field. the really is pretty different. a lot of people that are driving around on totally mechanized tractors, not getting a ton of exercise and eating a lot of junk food while sitting in the tractor cabs, and the other relatives a lot of farmers especially those working hard and growing all this food, a lot of the junk food countries are demanding, are not even growing

all the foods close to home. so which hard to eat the fresh right from the garden, right from the farm food that we get used to in california. it's harder to eat those foods in our big corn and soy growing regions. so clearly laid out the problem. it's obesity and hunger that are killing us. they are killing innocent kids, telling people that don't realize that just the getting there may be eating themselves to death. then we've got health care as a solution. another interesting fact, this is from more than the last 30 years, kind of a similar trajectory. we used to spend more money on food. we are eating more fruits and vegetables, maybe even for differently. and we spent a lot less money on health care. today we are loving the fact that we don't spend that much money on food, all looking for the cheapest option to we end up paying for it on the backend by setting has been spending more money a healthy. instead of food just being an

agricultural act may be agriculture is the health of that. the farm bill was passed this week again but something of us don't even know about it. there's an uproar when health care legislation is going to affect us all and changes everything. but isn't food and the farm bill going to affect us more. almost no one is talking about it. here we have in the state of california one of the most rich agricultural land in orbit so many of us don't even know how i'm guessing it's our fault, we don't even know the fundamental issues that affect in these farmers. when subsidies are going, with a tax breaks are going. that eventually end up in our mouse. i would argue it's time to rethink the entire system and just you may think of crazy but you will hear that a think it's not as competent as you might think. we have come in the last 30 years, a food system went crazy if i would say in many of the wrong directions. will it take us another 30 years to make things change for the

better? i don't think it will take that long but i think if you look at young people today that are looking into the future and saying what is the system i want, if we take some responsible for building it now, it's very possible that 30 or so that we'll be looking back and saying wow, wasn't that cool we reverse the epidemic of obesity? wasn't that cool that we finally ended hunger? like our parents and the generations before them say they're going to do. we have to look at food as both the problem and a solution. we can't tell people no not to t as way to end the b.c. we can't keep throwing out excess food at people around the world as a way to end hunger. we have to look more fundamentally and how we'll change the system. so i would argue that to change the system we need to start very basic. if we're going to change have a system has an outcome, went to change the measurements they go into it. are we going to judge our agriculture just on how much it produces or are we going to judge it on how much exertion it

produces? what about waste? is a winner know there's about 40% food waste in america? actually this is the first super bowl that just happened, the first super bowl one of the most, largest sporting events in the world that had composting but isn't that crazy its 2014 and this technology that's thousands of years old, the first time it was used in the super bowl. there's also 30-40% food waste in the developing world as well. all this investment that's gone to helping people grow corn or giving people some of our food access hasn't gone to helping them store it and having better roads to take it to market and having better refrigeration along the way so it doesn't go back. these places where there is dire hunger, instead of focusing growing more food made we should focus on reducing waste. how about focusing on food

diversity? we grow so many of the same thing over and over again. we forget the fact that we don't need just one thing to survive. we need a lot of different food. rewarding diversity and agriculture to change the way our entire agricultural system functions. maybe instead think about growing a lot of one thing, we think about replicating farms around. we are lucky like in california. we can access great farmers markets but a lot of different stuff growing divide. what if we had a system that was replicated in other states? what if instead of growing tons of corn in iowa and nebraska we grew a lot more diverse things? i was used to be a couple of apple growing. what if we grew more diverse apple varieties and i'm? may be the farmers wouldn't be so overweight. what if we think about the real cost to growing food? i know that you're not all agricultural scientist your but it's pretty important think about what goes in to grow the food that we can be. most of us don't know about the

chemicals and products in the inputs that are used to grow our food. what if we have new goals for the new food system like what if the health of the farmers is the number one golf? farmers in developing world who are hungry, building the system has failed and farmers in our world that overweight, that within the system has failed. what if that is the key goal in a new food system goes what if another goal in the farm bill is tied to the health care legislation? so the only way health care legislation is successful is if food legislation is successful. what if we demanded that from our congresspeople? although don't hold your breath on that one. what if instead just focusing on food and calories a let's get enough calories and giving people vitamins over here, we thought about the fact that nutrients come packaged inside a food. we want people to eat a diverse diet, not a multivitamin and the sugar cereal all day. what if we in our generation we

define the value nil? what if a value meal wasn't just how many calories you get for the lowest dollar? what if it was founded by some of issues of metrics by cat nutritious is this? how good is this for the and i lived to? have good will this make me feel? how much will this help me prevent illness in the future? what if that's the value nil? so if you are the new question before we get into the really fun stuff. there's so much talk about how we're going to be the world and how will and obesity. what if we should think about future consumers. people to focus on the fact that young people today are going to be the ones making all the decisions about our food economy in the future. the future consumers are demanding one thing or another, that's probably the best place to start looking. i think that's a really hopeful place to start because i don't know if you've heard but mcdonald's, one of the largest food companies in the world, has publicly said they have a mole in the problem. their problem is not enough

millennials will go because we are too busy going to chipotle which has healthier food and treats the animal better and often treats the workers better. what if that's actually the future consume and what if that's the future of our food system? that would be i think a much better place to start. maybe we should be questioning if yes there's food in every corner but is that a model we want to continue? we want to make sure every time we turned around, even when the going to staples to buy office supplies and school supplies, somehow there's candy bars. that is so weird. what if we don't want them to be every single place we turned? want it is their we know we'll go divide and get it and be mad at ourselves. so maybe that's a fundamental question we have to ask. i don't know if you guys have heard this quote but it's misattributed to einstein to i don't who sent. this idea of the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and trying to get different results. let's keep growing more and more

food but hopefully someone will end up with a population that's not overweight and hungry. that's not working. let's talk about the future feeder. i would argue the future deed is probably in this room. when you look at the changes that with our start to make it our food system, i think it bodes really well for what the future could hold. one is that we love farmers markets. it's not because it's like the hipster thing to do on a sunday morning, which it is, so wear your skinny jeans, but it's also because it's a great expense to go and see someone who's going to food or made your cheese angry like that experience. we also like these things called csa's, which depend on where you are, it's like a very well-known acronym but the idea of buying emerge supported agriculture combined for director from a farmer to help the farmer had consistent income but also to help you have a consistent

stream of healthy local food. the crazy word organic that people like to diss or not talk about or obsess over but the fact is the sales of organic food has grown very consistently. if you're looking at business drinking it's a smart business trend to start getting involved in. it something that is consistently growing even as, even if some food groups have slowed down. the local thing isn't just hey, let's be really cool and wealthy and shop somehow within the region. it's a legitimate economic movement. people are interested in finding out where their strawberries were grown. and to think people are more and more willing to say, i don't need this type of fruit in the dead of winter. we don't have a debt of what they are, i know we are in socal but let's pretend we're in the rest of the world and people don't need fresh strawberries every single day of the year. i think there's always this

attitude about these trends that suggest they are only for a certain few. the fact is these are trends that once they start made with a certain few have moved all the around the country and eventually all around the world. i was at the meeting of this group called the world food prize two years ago and there was a farmer from bogotá, colombia, was talk about the fact they were just starting up a really strong farmers market movement there. this is something that's been probably replicated from california farmers markets that have existed for a long time that now can be built around the entire world as a new way to engage farmers and eaters and have them work together to greet their economies. and also growing food in cities is not just something for people that want to have a vertical garden or they think it's cool to grow tomatoes on the roof of the restaurant but it's a major economic force. there are some the 800 million people that are living in urban

environment and growing their own food, especially in the developing world. right to our south in south l.a., ron findley who is an unbelievable leader for this method has ackley said things like growing your own food is the only way you can truly print your own money. and if you become a guerrilla gardener, you really kind of saying screw the man, just by growing vegetables new your house. if you think about turning food into sort of a revolutionary act, it is something that's and currently needed when you look at the date of hunger and obesity around the world. it's not just in america and it's not just for farmers nearby. more and more we go to college campuses people into a things like fair trade coffee and that sounds like okay cool, it started on college campuses but now more a more places you go are offering things like fair trade in these two examples of how the bananas in switzerland and huge percentage of the sugar

and you get our fair trade certified because people realize we are buying things in countries around the world m1a2 import them. ..

this is the 24th l. word and these are the representatives of all the major food chains, mcdonald's and chilies and all l live garden. what they are saying is people are looking for things like locally sourced meat and grown produce, environmental sustainability on their menus. nutrition, sustainable seafood. all of these things are not just the trends fancy restaurants in la or malibu are interested in the major chains around the country and around the world. so i argue that we have to do a better job of connecting our apple computers with the apples that we eat. so many times people say we can never get the whole world to eat healthy because it's impossible. it's only something that both he do but the reality is that is what people were saying.

it was that very few people ever had. there were more cell phone users on the continent of africa than here in america and that's the way the trend is going. they will have better access to technology still don' that stile the access to basic food. the creative destruction for the technology products. there are so many young entrepreneurs engaging in new food companies so food trucks which are funded eat and also crazy creative destruction example of innovation. i want to make some good tasting food right out of my truck.

all of these innovations that are proving our lives from being able to talk to each other for snapshots. but the fact is all the technology to have fun with for a farmer or i don't know if you've ever seen this because i am a food nerd so i would care as a hash tag which is a farm sophie and there was even a picture recently of a pope and somebody said to the point is we have all of this technology at our disposal and instead of just using it as a great way to have fun and take pictures of ourselves we can use it to find better quality food. we have layers of where the

restaurants are in great technologies to find the best food option or the pop-up restaurant and that's something that i think our generation is pioneering as a way that we will connect better with food going forward and it's not just because it improves food systems for us and because the food systems we build in america end up becoming a food system around the entire world and that is such a missing link about all these discussions that we as americans end up building the system and building the brand is that people have had all around the world. an example of this is that coke is available in more countries than art recognized by the united nations. that is a prius that we have invested in building and now we have seen that it's literally

one of the universal products around the world. what if the next generation we could do for healthy food that we have done for brown sugar water. what if we could actually be used to technology and use the well to create a food system that's replicated in a way that people get healthier and that solves the challenges. the time is now that we can actually build the food system that would feed the world while. none of us want to grow up and deal with the health problems of obesity and see a world full of hunger so we are at this incredibly unique moment in time where we can be the generation that helps to build a better food system. one of the most incredible thing about being relatively young is that i have sat in so many rooms where people that have been

working on these issues for 50 years stand up there and are like how are we going to see the world? i didn't mean that is how it is but the fact is they all are not going to see the world because they are not going to be a ground. if we don't continue to grab onto these conversations and own them about how well we see the world we will not ever see the world. and the reality is there's only one way to start doing that. it's not to become a crazy food activists like me or that you're not going to be calling for the rest of your life. the only way to do it is to do it from your table and i know that sounds crazy i'm linking all of these issues with something we do every day three or more times a day but it's totally true just like we've built up the global brands and restaurants and products and all

that crazy food options that are available. we actually have the power to change the way that we use the dollar is at our table as a way to change the world. so my very simple message out of all of this is that you can start by changing dinner and i know that sounds really simple, but it's totally true. had we seen the things we find cool and we invest our limited dollars are the things that end up taking over the world. it wasn't like every consumer was again to have pringles and coke but the only option for them in uganda is because those companies have been so empowered by our use of them that they were the first ones to get around the world and be available. i think it is up to us especially the next generation and no one knows from all sectors across the world to change what we put on our plates

and to build healthier food systems. i think it's time that we realized that although giving and charity is awesome and i've been proud to engage in a great company that helps people give. we have to remember how we live is so much greater than how we give. we are still spending 10% of their income around food. we spend less than 2% on chair ready. if we shift a little bit more of our food dollars to something that helps improve the world we are doing so much more and i know that is a crazy thing to think about what i'm trying to tell you to eat a different ecosystem to help feed hungry kids around the world. our mom used to tell us eat everything on your plate because it will hold starving children. she was kind of right. the way we eat does have an impact on the food available around the world more with more importantly the food available in our communities.

so i would challenge you to think about what you eat as a way to think about innovation in your life and the same way we think of about apple computers, think of the apple that you're going to eat because we are investing in a few varieties and not the whole diversity that apples can offer to us and we are making a consumer choice that is the kind of apple that we want. a couple things to remember like eat your values. do you value the life o of a farmer in the developing world that grew that a banana or is it like i want the cheapest that out there? i would argue that if we do a better job in banana republic paying a fair price for those we might not have challenges like guatemala having the fourth highest level of malnutrition in the world a country that we import from and we haven't been able to get this neighbor out of poverty than enough to feed its own people and we are partially

responsible by in every one of those products which doesn't afford people the opportunity to send their own kids to school without our dollars and i would also challenge you all to it's hard in college but if you are going to occupy something how about occupying your kitchen? i found it ironic during a lot of those social movements that were connected so much of the food was the great food that many were fighting against. one of the most powerful things you can do is to control what you put in your own body and i think we forget about that. we view this as something that our grandmothers wore when actually it can be the most subversive tools we have two take a hold of something and do it for ourselves. and as much as this seems weird eating family dinner, few of us actually eat, sit down with our friends and families and have a meal and share a meal.

we are so focused on other things in the world that are so much more important than sitting there at that moment that we don't do it. the data suggests that when you eat with others and just other humans, so many things in life and prove. and i ensure it also means the food you eat improves because who wants to sit there in front of eating a family dinner when all you are doing is taking out of a bag of cheerios and it's a way to do better things for your food. so it is less expensive to make a big thing of quinoa and share the burden then it is to try to go and individually portioned the south for your self. and also, you know, spending the time, spending a little bit of the effort cooking makes the food more meaningful and we do not all need more reasons to try to eat a little bit less. so if it has a little bit more meaning and took a little bit

more energy to produce bab baby weevil saver just a little bit more. maybe that is the only diet that we would ever need. so, i would say that we do have the opportunity to see the world while. it is the opportunity of our generation because of how interested we are with feeding ourselves better. i think that it's so connected if we feed ourselves better we will see the world better. so, i encourage you to stay interested in what's going on, continue t to give and help the hungry. i know the world of the companies are doing and organizations and nonprofits is incredibly important to feeding people today. we don't need solutions to send access to feed hungry people. we may be help build a food systems that allow people to feed themselves in a better way and the reality is the revolution should be delicious because food is awesome.

i'm going to leave you there and take questions on the micropho microphone. [applause] we have plenty of time for questions. if you have a question raise your hand and we will bring the microphone to you. >> my question for you if this is your generation i remember somewhat a little bit of my cousins are your age and when they were schoolchildren they fought against mcdonald's having large in their french fries and i remember signs on the walls don't go to mcdonald's and they boycotted and mcdonald's changed what they were doing so i think it's perfect that you are targeting this group of college students, but you have a generation coming up who are being fed at their schools can

be and soda and all kind of things that become normal to them. and if that became something that they rallied against, then you have the next generation coming. have you thought about how you might engage younger children. >> that is a great question. what's been interesting is from where i sit looking out at the ecosystem of people involved. it's far farmer to school progrs which is awesome. my mom had a garden but she had a garden to save money. not because it was the hip thing to do. but i grew up knowing what a tomato was and where it came from but i don't think most of my schoolmates did. i don't think people understood the connection between the little peapod that maybe you planted in kindergarten and what that ends up being later. so the energy and focus around

the farm to school programs is amazing. it is a great example of something that is done and works both here at home and in the developing world. in latin america, asia, south asia, literally everywhere helping feed of those kids healthy food and the same solutions apply. it's a perfect example of how the similar solutions, the simple solutions help kids everywhere no matter where they are. that said i' about one thing i would say to the generation. i'm in my mid 30s and friends have kids. i don't think they are ever going to roll back to the happy meal. i think we've had a next generation i don't think any of us are going to go feed our kids that food. so i think we are really at this amazing tipping point of radical

change. mcdonald's actually recently has announced that they are switching over to sustainable beef by 2020. we don't yet know what sustainable beef means honestly the fact that they are using the word is amazing. and in the land, mcdonald's has stopped coming has only used cage free eggs, and that is fairly radical when you think about how many egg mcmuffin's they make. so there is energy. they are now serving oatmeal. it has a lot of sugar so don't think of it is a healthy food fd with your serving oatmeal for breakfast. you are right. these movements do work. they are proven to work. but i think in terms of -- of various kind of an interesting movement. there is the farm to school and the school garden people that there's incredible work being done in california and the chef in boulder colorado, incredible

people, but there's also a next generation of parents who i'm sorry but, like, you don't need a cupcake party every friday. and i think we are -- when we start having kids come out we are going to sort of put our foot down and say just because you have soccer practice doesn't mean you get a gatorade. you get an orange slice. there is going to be a shift back to some pragmatic sense of what kid who means. at least i hope. >> thank you for your speech. i really enjoyed it. my question is about how you propose changing the way we eat and how that is related to the problem of the protectionism that is predominantly in the western countries especially because of world war ii history and of the need to rely on

ourselves for food and that's what i think from what i said is affecting how african countries and american countries, how the farmers are not able to sell the food they produce because access food is being produced in america and europe and is being dumped in africa and latin american countries that lead to lower food prices. so how do you feel -- how do you propose a solution to getting rid of the agricultural protectionism? >> i think that you pretty much summed up the deep understanding of the global food systems so congratulations to you and your teachers and your reading for knowing all of that. that is a very -- the complexities are there and you did a good job of boiling it down. i would say look i think all of this comes down to power at the doorstep of the senators and congressmen.

one of the things i'm arguing is if we disempower the company is, the groups, the lobby is that big for that kind of protection we disempower them by moving our dollars from their corporate. they won't have as much money to pay the lobbyist. and i know that sounds distant but it is true and one thing that has been interesting is that there has been a longtime fellowship between the organizations that give food access aid and the companies that provide the corn and soy access into the organizations of the nonprofits that are giving that access. there is a relationship because the organization nonprofits need corn to feed people and the companies need the cover of the

hunger organization to allow them to continue getting support from washington. the rules in the bill for people who don't know this is that in order for us to give most of our help to hungry people it has to be u.s. food and corn sometimes beat and rice on u.s. ships sent over to the developing world. that might be good for a few peoples jobs and i respect that but that isn't a long-term answer to get people to feed themselves. so we have been able to actually already in this last farm bill we've been able to break that law be a little bit because now people say why aren't we helping people grow their own food and now there is a lot more energy conversations and money being directed to help people grow their own to danny pfeifer ten

years ago and that's because people know that's the system and they are trying to push it in a different direction and i think the more that we stop eating these foods and in coverinempowering the system ths power they are going to have two spread those kind of policies around the world and it's incredibly frustrating because we feel so disconnected but when you do the research to know how much we are hurting our neighbors around the world by just the food policies affecting us. it seems counterintuitive why are we trying to feed people over here but eating in ways that keep the farmers down over here and not allowing their imports. it's a circular system that doesn't make a lot of sense.

if more people were able to eat more and more locally and regionally that wouldn't be a terrible thing and we have to import coffee so i don't think we are at risk of cutting off the developing world i think we have an opportunity to eat more local food and make sure the food we do eat is imported in a fair manner. >> i don't want to sound cynical but i have story in, so i do see some parallels to the critique that you're talking about food aid for example going back to the 70s certainly, the 70s and 80s. what i want to know is what do you think is particularly different now? one thing i'm hearing is a

broader consumer-based movement that you think has power but i guess i'm just still sort of wondering about that. i don't want to be cynical. i want to have hope and i love the way that you presented this as hope that again even in the past there was the generational energy and people writing about food and using the sum of the language but there are patterns here. >> there is a radical differen difference, the obesity epidemic. why that is a radical difference because it does affect me meet and i can speak to any audience in the world and every single person is either in the context of the modern food systems struggling with their own weight because we certainly now all

struggle because it's easy to be heavy into being normal and they know people that are deeply struggling with major health problems relating. and i think that is a radical change. if you look at the data since the 1980s that radically changed. there are food related health problems and sickness due to the safety issues and a radical obesity epidemic and the availability of cheap sugar, fat and salt liberally everywhere returned is a major difference to protect themselves from that moment that they are trying to harness as a way to improve the world and the connection is if i understand that many people might come to this and come to the table because they care about their own weight and health and the way they look it can be harnessed to help people

around the world if it is done in the right way and it's missing from a lot of diet conversations how that fits into the food system. going on a diet is just putting up a wall around your software as i am arguing is that change the system so none of us have to live like that anymore and we can actually assume that when we go to a restaurant, the food that we are going to be eating is just fundamentally okay to eat. we now know many other does not. many of the options available to mainstream restaurants are not okay to eat. thousands of calories in one dish or fry in trans- fats that are unhealthy that didn't exist before. so i'm hoping people's energy -- unfortunately people's self-interest of energy can be harnessed to help improve these local global issues.

>> i would like to reiterate there seems to be tension between the locally sourced produce and also using the capitalist system and that kind of thing to change the system when there are already institutions with economies of scale that are not going to change without very pointed policy measures. what kind of things outside of the generic anticorruption lobbying changes do you think should be done so with respect to food policy worshiping policies what do you think are the most relevant policy changes that need to be an active? that is a very comprehensive analysis of the issues. number one, the campaign finance

reform. that is what is interesting about the issues surrounding food is that so many of the political challenges are not limited to what the outcomes of food are. there's a lot of challenges that campaign finance reform could help. food is the same. we have incredibly deep pockets. the reason we have incredibly deep pockets is that these things are connected. if we do disempower the companies and the lobbies is a great irony by the first lady whose work i respect that she had to get people to more vegetables and literally two days later subway and announced a sandwich that has fritos. i like this has got to stop.

this is ridiculous. that's not more vegetables, that's corn chips. our dollars are pumping into the fritos sandwich and i think that the -- i don't get to talk about this in the context of the food talks. there are a lot of other complementary issues that will help nudge food policy that has nothing to do with food policy. it is urban planning. that sounds random, but you live now and a college campus. you're pretty much living in one of the best designed human focused living environments that you're ever going to live unless you live in a really walkable city in europe because the fact is college campuses are designed to be you are designed to walk even though there are hills

which means you probably have really strong thighs and stuff. but you're more or less designed to walk where you need to go to the public transport bus that takes you if you can't walk and there's options for you to get some snacks for food. food. there's options for you to eat and exercise. there's options to go to the library to the bookstore, they are all walkable. one thing that is going to help nudge the food policy as younger people want more walkable and firearms when they leave college, too. one thing that's interesting is the real estate has shown this in the last five years as real estate become tighter the areas that have lost the most investment are the areas of the ex- suburbs so far outside of the suburban areas where you can't do anything unless you drive. i don't think most of us want to live like that even if it means we have to have a smaller house i think most of us would