you. >> let me get a picture. >> oh yeah, bob. [indiscernible] >> what were you doing? inaudible] >> what were you doing? >> in d.c. >> you know, i walked into kelly's office and i walked in and i said i have to tell you, i have a really big complaint and i want to see the senator now. and they were like, she is in washington. i said, that is a likely story. they are always in washington when there is a problem. i wrote the note and said, give this to the senator please. no, i didn't tell them. i just told them i was a new hampshire constituent.

>> governor. >> megan, nice to meet you. >> they are newlyweds. > newlyweds? >> nice to meet you. > wow. nothing wrong with that. nice. >> i am a criminal prosecutor. with that smile? >> that is how she wins. >> where did you go to school? >> u.n.h. >> and you do what? >> i'm also an attorney. we get candidates like you to talk about fiscal issues. >> i hardly ever speak about them. >> i know. >> i got my picture taken. >> i am from ohio, as well. >> where you from in ohio?

>> akron. >> how did you get here? >> i got married and carried away. >> do you go back? >> just when my folks were there. i was born and raised there. then we went to pittsburgh. >> where did you live in pittsburgh? >> murrysville. [inaudible] >> we have a daughter in pittsburgh. >> does she like it? >> she does, she is a nurse ractitioner. her husband is a doctor. > allegheny general? >> and her husband is a chief of surgery at allegheny general. and she is a nurse practitioner. >> allegheny general is one of the best trauma hospitals in the world and he is a chief of surgery. wow.

>> if you have any problems -- [laughter] go to allegheny. >> i was trying to get one of my famous shots and he rejected. did he play -- did you play? >> just high school. i grew up a few miles from you. ur dads worked together. >> he was the postmaster. >> how coming ever got picked his man of the week. >> we were there before computers. my father would go and pick my mother up late at night and i was always really worried that one time my dad would pick my mom up and they would never

ake it home. and then guess what, they were killed in a car accident. many years later. by a drunk driver. but i became a better man because of that, as sad as it s. one of our young men in our department got a call from his mother whose grandfather did not wake up last night. swept him home. he is 22 years old, he was crying. i said it is ok, kid. >> that is the way to go. >> you are absolutely right. >> you know, for me it would be like taking an apple off the tree on the 18th hole, once i be my friend -- beat my friend in golf. that would be just great. believe me.

>> hello, senator. i was a junior staffer so we didn't interact when we were on the -- together. admired you from the back row so to speak. so it is good to see you here. >> john? >> absolutely. >> so what makes you an activist, you raise cain with people? >> no, no. >> do you know doug? >> he could give you advice on picking a good candidate. [laughter] >> have i met you before, you look like my cousin harry. married to a much younger woman too. > this is my daughter. > do you all know him?

>> why does he have this many friends? when i get done they may not be your friends. >> how are you? >> hi. > and you are? > richard's niece. >> what was it like having an older brother? when you get a compliment you say -- [laughter] >> beating up on him. >> what is the -- >> lebanese. >> are you lebanese also? >> are there a lot of lebanese n new hampshire? > in manchester we do.

>> he wishes he was ebanese. >> this is emily. >> how old are you emily? >> 19 years old. >> are you going to school? >> yes, i am at university. >> what are you going for? >> management. >> good for you. there is a little company here maybe you could manage some day. do you have brothers and sisters? >> i have a younger brother, then who is -- ben who is at emery. nd i have another brother. >> i have twin daughters that are 15.5 years. they are doing great. they are doing just fantastic. they really are.

they are -- you know, they are so much fun and they are growing up. >> they will be driving. >> that is why i am glad i am in new hampshire, they are driving in ohio. they are doing very well. i am really pleased. i will tell you a funny story. so, my daughters after their second day of school, i get home. one of them says, i want to tell you about my first day of school. let's go have some ice cream. i said, i will buy. and she says, ok, i will drive. and we drive to the store. and then she said, i will drive home here in it is really interesting. then i say, now girls, because my daughters are nice and tall and pretty. and the mother is beautiful too. and they said, we going to have

this thing with boys. and they start giggling. and i say, if you have any questions about boys, you need to talk to your mother because your mother really knows how to guide you on that . you know what my daughter said, she said that daddy, you have good instincts, so we want your opinion too. [laughter] that is what she said. >> those girls. >> i thought she was sincere. >> who do we have here? >> charlotte. inaudible] >> you have some friends, you know what they say? a girl without freckles is a night without stars. >> thank you. >> we love your mom and dad. >> they are great. >> how old are you? >> turning 16.

>> and you have some friends here? >> i do. >> and you guys are all buddies? >> we have been friends for any years. >> do you do sleepovers? so you're going to have your license soon? >> yes. >> are you excited? >> i am very excited. >> how is your brother? >> he is doing well. he could not make it tonight. >> he is in grad school? >> he is starting to. >> and he went to yale? > yes. he just graduated. >> probably couldn't get into hio state.

>> hi. how are you? i walked way up the street and he ed a side street and came out and were getting ready to drive over hee. there were about six people standing outside this building. i thought well, i'll walk over and really surprise them and then i fourth quarter we were in new hampshire. i said hi, i'm john kasich. i'm running for president of the united states. they were like oh, yeah, nice to see you. [laughter] absolutely no surprise. i was on a plane the other day going to california. i was talking to this couple. i didn't know them. i was sitting on the aisle, thank goodness and they were next to me. asking what do you do?

and they said what do you do? i said how about i let you know what i do when the pilot says we're about to land. we landed, i looked a at the wife and i said i'm the governor of ohio and i'm running for president. she said well, tell us the truth. in new hampshire they would say what else do you do? >> leer a few of the features for labor daymond. a town hall event in seattle discusses the pros and cons of big bat and civil liberties and then a debate about how to reduce poverty 2010 president obama and arthur brooks and then mark cuban and george w.

bush on leadership skills beginning sard at 10:00 on c-span 2's book tv. we're live all day long in the nation's capital with the book festival with programs featuring cokie roberts. astronaut buzz aldrin and others. sunday at noon, a live three-hour conversation with former second lady and american substitute -- lynn cheney. and labor daymond beginning at 11:45 a.m. eastern, authors like eric loomis, ann coulter and others. on american history tv on c-span 3 saturday evening at

8:00, lectures in history. lisa brady explains how chemical agents used during korean and vietnam wars created long-term damage to people and the environment. sunday afternoon at 4:00 on real america. crowded out. the 1958 national education ssociation film addressing overcrowd schools following the baby boom. and then our interview with illionaire david rubenstein. >> up next on c-span, a discussion about the depuche of the u.s.cture in then a look at the iran nuclear agreement and its implications for the u.s. and the middle east and later president obama and the king of saudi arabia eeting at the white house to iscuss bilateral innovations

and global affairs. speakers include a california urban designer, an environmentalist and from the commonwealth club in california in san francisco, this is an hour. this is one hour. >> as we all know, american inf rastruture -- infrastructure is crumbling. this includes congested airports, dusted water mains, and our roads are further examples of the way -- busted water mains, and our roads are further examples of the way that american infrastructure is crumbling.

the gift problem lies not with this condition, but with the outdated philosophy that underlies it. much of the physical structure that we live with was imagined and built in an era when economic growth was assumed to be a god-given right, natural resources seemed limitless, and no one had ever heard of climate change. today, that philosophy has manifested in the absence of meaningful mass transportation, water management systems, and designers had never considered that water would become scarce. also in food production systems with factory farms and the use of refrigerated trucks to carry foods across the country. resources grow scarcer and the concentration of carbon dioxide increases upwards and that philosophy has been revealed to

be faulty. but more and more people are in place the -- are embracing a new philosophy, one that is hopeful and realistic. citizens, organizations, and communities all across the country are beginning to understand the critical need to reimagine our critical infrastructure and the opportunity that such reimagining presents for a new philosophy to be put into practice. they are not talking about repairs or retrofits. that is not sufficient. they are talking about something completely different. the magazine of which i am editor has been publishing a series of articles called "reimagining infrastructure." we have identified infrastructure as an aspect of american life were people felt that they could make the most difference. as part of a partnership, we published 12 articles over the course of two years that showcased projects from around the country and we are setting a

new bar for how we think about infrastructure. these articles describe the way in which we look at public and private enterprises, communities, and grassroots groups that are coming together to create infrastructure that is created on sustainability, community engagement, and innovation. to see all of these articles and to learn more about the projects, you are welcome to go to our website at orionmagazine .org/infrastructure. i would like to turn this over to our experts, harriet is at the office of community planning at the u.s. department of housing and urban development. she has extensive experience on the local, state, and national levels in these communities and works on helping these economies.

harriet worked to make washington, d.c. a walkable, likable, livable city, redefining the city's zoning code for the first time into -- first time in 50 years. my next guest currently leads a master plan for the ocean beaches in california. he has but -- has developed an exhibition of a historical survey of san francisco. he is a lecturer and an instructor of the graduate program of urban and regional planning at san jose and has taught at the san francisco art institute. ginger is the author of three books and has published at they -- published essays in "harpers," "the new york times," and "orion." she has just completed her last article on infrastructure about

burlington, vermont's decision to take control of its own power supply. ginger has received grants for the arts and the eisenhower foundation as well as residency groups and the center for land use interpretation and she lives in new york city. harriet, let's begin with you. harriet: great, thank you, chip. i am granted talk a little bit about transportation and what i am going to tell you about my experience in the district of columbia demonstrates a little bit about what chip is talking about -- thank you -- about how infrastructure can help a place be more sustainable. it can help engage the community and could actually demonstrate innovation. so infrastructure in the

deficits that we had in the category are not good to be met overnight or remedied overnight. we need to also think about our infrastructure in a different sort of way. we did that in washington, d.c. where we had comparative advantages. we had the metro system, we had a bus system, so we had both rail and buses. we had a great network of walkable streets, right really wonderful -- right? really wonderful street networks but that does not mean that we had a lot of people writing the buses and trains or people walking on the streets. one of things that became clear to us was with these competitive advantages, having these assets, we could really do a lot more

with them. we really began to see chance rotation -- began to see transportation and the choices we could bring to the city as an even greater's source -- greater source of comparative advantages. i have a number of graduate students and the audiences and i heard them talking before our program began about how rough it is to graduate from college with so much college debt. we have a dozen colleges and universities in washington and for us, the strategy in d.c. was to see what we could do to retain the students who got educated in the cities of -- city and what we could do to attract more college students to be there? we thought if we could make transportation really inexpensive and so that people could it around and meet every daily need, that that could be another source of comparative advantage. indeed, that crushing college debt really prevents people from being able to make a start on the rest of their lives. so giving people the chance to

pay down that debt without having to make a car payment or pay for the maintenance of their automobile seemed like a really great thing. we knew that that strategy was working in d.c. where he saw a national ranking that said that we had the highest amount of college debt in the city, so we were winning, and the lowest amount of default rate it we also had the lowest amount -- highest a lot of talent and we had businesses looking for knowledge to workers coming to the district of columbia, so it was a successful strategy in that sense. transportation is a form of affordability. having transportation choices mean that the second-biggest household expense after housing could be much, much less. in fact, if you put those two expenses together, none of us have a housing bank account at a transportation bank account, i mean, you could really make another more expensive city a

lot more affordable because you could just increase transportation. that helps people a lot at every income level in the district of columbia. so it turns out the transportation is about the source of resilience. do you remember that little event that we had in 2008 called the great recession? in the desert of columbia, we had something happening very odd in 2008. hundreds of cars started dropping out of the vehicle registration rolls. we asked, what was going on? people were dialing down their transportation costs because they could've because they were concerned about the economy. they might have lost a job or someone in their household had a cut in their hours, and they were trying to manage it the best they could to weather the financial storms. what happened is that we had very little mortgage defaults in the district of columbia, very little bankruptcy and foreclosure, compared to the rest of the region to be at we had the same jobs and housing markets and that was based on

whether people could dial down the transportation costs. another example of transportation choices providing resilience is that on august of 2011, we had a very rare he -- very rare event in the district, we had an earthquake. they had no idea what was going on. 10 minutes after the earthquake, the office of personnel management, in their infinite wisdom, let every single federal worker go at the same a second. so we had a massive traffic jam. 10 minutes after that, every single like share bike in the downtown was gone -- bike share bike in the downtown was gone. if you are like me, you have a totally and utterly monday and commute home and you could sail past people, but if you were in a car, you were in that car for

2-3 hours trying to get home. so those transportation choices, using those spaces on the street and sidewalk meant that we could evacuate a lot of people from the center of the city without having to build any new infrastructure to do it. transportation choices can be a source of health. at this point, more than half of the trips in the district are taken by walk or bike bike or by transit. so -- or by bike or by transit. so our poorest people are still much healthier than the average poor people in the country because they have a way of getting daily exercise. transportation can be a source of neighborhood safety and vitality. the more you can get people to walk and bike, literally the more eyes you have on the street and a safer it is for people to be out. you get a different sort of traffic when it comes to retail and other establishments.

that lower costs that you have for transportation also means that you have more disposable income to spend locally, because if you have auto mobility as your main way of getting around, and if you use it that goes out of the local economy, but that is not so if you use a bike or you walk or use mass transit. presentation choices are an enormous source of access to jobs and to opportunity. i mean, imagine if you live in a place where an automobile is the necessary prerequisite to even a first step on the run of economic opportunity -- rung of economic opportunity. it is a huge source of economic mobility in the district of columbia. and finally, i will say that transportation is also an

enormous source of transport -- source of innovation. you live in a city that is like the district of columbia and it has experienced a lot of innovation. about car to go and zip car and uber and lyft and all of these other choices. they are taking advantage of things that shows the millennial generation that automobiles, as it turns out is something that is used 5% of the time and is parked 95% of the time. so millennial's were smart enough to realize that they didn't want to use that on-demand service and it has really spurred a lot of -- they didn't want to use those cars

but instead use on-demand service and at has really spurred a lot of innovation. a lot of these services can be called in an instant using a smart phone. it is kind of ironic that it is so radically reshaping transportation when in fact in the early 20th century, the disruptive technology was actually the automobile. human pattern was basically the same way -- travel patterns were basically the same way for the last 6000 years, and it was only after we embraced the automobile that we changed the infrastructure and the very form of our city to accommodate that technology. i think one of the things that we have learned as humans, we like walkable neighborhoods. everything about her quality of life is enhanced by -- our quality of life isn't has by the quality of choices and in cities like washington and separate cisco, we get to see that on a daily basis. -- washington and san francisco,

we get to see that on a daily basis. and with that i will turn it to my colleagues. >> good evening, i had a great pleasure last week of visiting hoover dam, which is in many ways, the apotheosis of a previous generation's iteration of infrastructure. we may all have concerns about that philosophy today, but it is extraordinary work of civic if the structural art at a beautiful, pitiful thing to see. -- beautiful, beautiful thing to say. -- see. so the urbanization of the west would not have been possible if not for the hoover dam and civil projects. it is very much on my mind as we reflect tonight on the meaning of infrastructure and how that meaning is changing. i am going to talk primarily about projects here in san

francisco, especially the ocean beach master plan, which is an attempt to create a long-term plan for the adaptation of san francisco's specific coast, which is facing severe erosion from coastal storms, which is likely to worsen as the levels rise. it is really a story of a complex of traditional, fixed infrastructure that is placed there to protect coastal water and sewage infrastructure. and that traditional, fixed infrastructure is facing a very uncertain and dynamic future. and so the story of coming to terms with that and trying to plan for that ends up touching a lot of sort of key themes about infrastructure how -- how infrastructure is changing and what we can do to fix that. there is three miles of very --

three miles of beach subjected to very heavy and intense surf. it is a recreational area and it is a national park and part of a system of national, local, and regional parks that are very popular throughout the region and it is where we go on the rare occasion where san francisco is hot. the ocean beaches is thronged with people and it is a beloved landscape all of the time. the complex of the infrastructure that i was referring to was built to get san francisco to comply to the clean water act of the 1970's, and san francisco had a combined sewer and water storm systems, which means that the storm graves go to the same place that toilets and sinks go to read that you can then treat the stormwater water, but it is a disadvantage that the system can become overwhelmed in a wet weather system. so from that infrastructure,

they were able to reduced the number of issues to about 70 per year and now there are about seven per year. most are unaware that that is the case. unfortunately, the system is located immediately adjacent to the coast were this is taking place, and the city's response has been very dramatic. there has been ad hoc place of boulders and they do a good job of protecting against erosion, but also compromise the quality of the beach by covering it up, it narrows the beach by degrading both the safety and access to the water and also the ascetics -- aesthetics to the beach.

this also got them in hot water with the california coastal commission. so that is the landscape that my organization came to, requested by some community-led task forces led by grants by the california coastal conservancy, the separate cisco utility commission, and the national parks service. -- the san francisco utility commission, and the national parks service. there is something that is political deadlock about that and there is a sense of either/ or, so we initiated a two and a half your process in which we tried to really convey the technical challenges that we were facing with the current infrastructure system, the way the coastal dynamic shapes the beach and drives that erosion,

the user issues, and we tried to get all of the stakeholders to understand how many different things this place had to solve for, and find a way forward. so through that process, we came up with the ocean beach master plan. fundamentally, it includes many recommendations, but the core of the plan is to incrementally close a stretch of our coastal roads, the highway, over a perio d of decades, and use the space that you pick up by doing that to create a much more flexible approach to the problem, and going from a kind of either or -- either/or mode to total management. and beach nursemaid was at the place where it is being dredged

for application purposes, and low-profile structural protection and it is much less intrusive than the armory solution, and since that time, we've been working with the agencies to implement various pieces of the plan. there is a lot involved, not only with the protection of the coast, but the way to make that possible. so i think that this story sort of touches on a number of different important themes. one is the idea that we need to be designing for change at this point. the future is not going to look like the past. in some ways, we have an advantage at ocean beaches because we can already see erosion happening. it is not an abstract, someday problem. this was a problem that was already taking place. that kind of adept of management

approach is something we need to be thinking about, not one of fixed solution, but a series of solutions over time and by how the landscape changes. the second is the idea of a multi-objective approach -- multipronged approach. my use in my imperative to win out here means that we like to the good about this as the city is bringing to planning to be mostly the process of scientists and engineers and academics. the group of city planners looks at multiple systems and how they interact and finding the most optimal solution as quickly as possible. another way of thinking about that at ocean beaches that we were talking about is thec13 interaction of several different infrastructures, some of which are somewhat more novel to think of in that way, so opposite of

sewer infrastructure is also the roads, also the beach itself in the ecosystem services that that provides in terms of habitat, in terms of recreation and so forth, and then also the system itself, the pre-existing situations and a new approach to a less obtrusive structure. thinking about how these different kind of imperatives present themselves with a big part of what we are doing. finally, just the importance of water, both fresh and salt, as we contemplate the severe drought that we are facing here in california. so many of these issues relate to water in terms of managing the combined sewer and stormwater flow of the system and also dealing with coastal erosion and damage caused by ocean water, so i will hold it there and we will look forward to more discussion.

ann: this is an clark of the commonwealth club of california, and we have the principal deputy and assistant secretary from the office of community planning and development at hud. ginger is a journalist and historian and you just heard from benjamin grant, who is an urgent -- urban design policy advocate here in san francisco. our next speaker will be ginger. ginger? ginger: so i am a writer, not a planner, so i don't have the same deep level of expertise is my fellow panelists. i did write a book about niagara falls, which i sometimes described as a giant piece of infrastructure disguised as a natural wonder. then i subsequently wrote a book about the interstate highway

system, which i came to see as a giant natural wonder disguised as a piece of infrastructure. [laughter] ginger: which i suppose that is why "orion" suggests i write a piece on community power and reimagining infrastructure, the series of sparked tonight's panel. reporting kind of gives you a sense of the big picture, so i thought i would just kind of share the big picture ideas and also some of the surprising things that i learned in writing about community power, specifically out burlington, vermont, but also looking at other community power projects across the nation. another -- a number of things were surprising about this, the first being the variety of projects that were happening and the variety of places that they were happening. so to me, it didn't seem surprising that burlington, vermont, for many who are

listening, there is coffee tricky, artist and all chocolate making, that kind of a town, they decided to build a biomass plant and use it to start developing their own generating -- developing their own or generating their own power in the 80's. a majority of the town decided to create a hydroelectric plant by vote and then they made a contract with a wind producer, they then were able to source 100% of their power renewable he --renewably and also locally, being the first major city to do that. of course, they are vermont's largest city, so it is quite an accomplishment. it also wasn't surprising to me to hear the story of home, massachusetts, which was a very early community power town. they invited in a wind turbine

and it was so successful that they built a second one. i was a little surprised to hear that the exact same thing happened in willmar, minnesota, and i was quite surprised to hear towns like st. george, utah were installing community solar projects. in spearfish, south dakota, a town i have never been to, actually, i wish i could've gone reporting for this piece, because i just love the name so much, it is another community power town, and they purchased an old mining hydro plant and rehabbed it and started generating their own power. so the range of these projects surprised me. the range of the type of power projects in the type of communities that decided to get involved in doing this. so the question is, why would they do this? and that was kind of surprise number two, the variety of reasons that places decided to start to develop their own

power. burlington has actually rested there are municipal utility, which was at the time at the hands of a private company, and they turned it into a municipal utility a century ago, and they did it because money. the rates were too high. money is still a reason that many towns are trying to get in on the community power. it can be a source of revenue for a town. and with public power, actually public power consumers, pain significantly less on average, then private power consumers. some towns wanted to develop green power. boulder, colorado recently didn't renew the contract with their private power producer because they were tired of the company were dragging -- company dragging its feet and the citizens just said, great, we will do it ourselves. another reason is to get more responsiveness from the power company. winter guard, florida -- winter

garden, florida, needed a series of upgrades and they said, we are not going to do it via contract, we are going to do it via a municipal utility. they invested taxpayer dollars in their needed upgrades and now they are actually paying less than they were before. another common reason is the sort of typical buy local reason when we think of our food systems often. but some towns aren't thinking this way when it comes to -- some towns are thinking this way when it comes to power. it keeps jobs in the community, it keeps profits in the community, and howard, celtic odette used it as a role in the economic redevelopment of the town and hired a bunch of out of work tractor mechanics and opened a turbine repair facility and built themselves a wind turbine and created an entire

series of economic stability -- and created cannot stability for the town. the thing for me is that all of these towns are part of a larger movement, a movement you may have heard of, toward distributive power. i think the thing that all of us have been thinking about is infrastructure being more distributed in the new century. the 28th -- the 20th century move for power to be centralized , vertically integrated, and scaled up were pretty big huge power plants out in the pucker brush. i've never heard that statement before but i loved it. in the 21st century, it seems to be learned -- seems to be largely about reversing that trend. not surprising, it makes them more controversy all and not

less. surprisingly, you might see people squawking more about wind turbines because it blocks their view than you would hear about them squawking about a huge coal plant if it is out in the pucker brush and you don't actually see the emissions that gives children asthma or the acid rain that goes downwind. so i think if people think about infrastructure and when we can see it and when we don't -- so i think people think about infrastructure and when we can see it and when we don't. another thing that surprised me was that in the and it became clear to me when writing this piece is that we are going to rebuild our entire electrical grid one wind turbine and solar patio -- solar panel at a time. we are not going back to the 19th century where everyone has their own windmill and every factory had its own dam.

the great thing about these communities is that they are developing their own power but it gives them a chance to rethink infrastructure and see how it works because it is aging in two ways. it is old-fashioned and it has been around for a long time, and electrical infrastructure hasn't changed really very much since thomas edison wired up the jp morgan mansion in new york, but it is also old-school. it is based on an old model of thinking about electricity and how it should work, and that is optimized for those big centralized power plants that are way out in the pucker brush and it is centralized for fossil fuels. so developing our own communities, we are thinking about how a power grid might look like. we're looking at increasingly renewable power sources.

there was a system that we had that was for most of its history virtually and literally a monopoly. at that does not mean that the utilities will go away. they are going to be more critical than ever. they're going to have to enable green power and they're going to have to get smarter and interface with what is now being called the internet of things, possibly with our electric cars, with their phones, with our appliances. they will have to get more sophisticated about pricing, and reward people for using less power. utilities are going to have to become a partner in increasing efficiency in developing green power. unfortunately, that means we are all going to have to get involved in thinking about the lorien, nitty-gritty about relighting -- the boring, nitty-gritty rewriting of our

energy system. i think, you know, i had a lot of fun talking about electricity. i am kind of an infrastructure geek, and i am thinking generally around "orion" and "orion" "reimagined infrastructure" series is that we tend to think about big things as a way that things are. we tend to think about the status quo and it is this huge giant ship. you cannot turn it around. at the same time, we are aware about the same -- we are aware that we need to think about critical systems, certainly the power grid that is basically functioning in hand and is

tipping the scales toward fossil fuels. we need to tip the scales toward more renewable sources of power. harriet mentioned presentation and infrastructure and i leave we are all are interested in rethinking the infrastructure that has encouraged the sprawl and ported sustainable urban planning. and ben mentioned hoover dam. we all feel critically at this time and certainly with this audience that it is time to rethink a federal system of water saving systems. the good news, i think that i took away from working on this piece was that it is not impossible. it you know, we are always rethinking our infrastructure, as much as it feels like it is the way that things are, we are always changing it. think about how it a mere 50

years, it has been dismantled and we got rid of an incredibly complicated system of rail and enforced it with automobiles on a very complicated system of highways. that was driven by incentive, that was driven by desire. i think we can do the same things especially with the same level of desire to them -- to imagine and new system and how it will work. [applause] >> thank you, ginger, very much. this event is the commonwealth club of california, and find us on the internet at commonwealthclub.org. i am an williams, and i'm ahead

of the member-led forum. it has come to that point in our forum where we have questions from our audience. first of all i want to thank our speakers so far. harriet who is the assistant secretary of hud, and jim and grant, who is the design director at birth in san francisco and ginger strand who is a writer and historian. now we turn to our moderator, h. emerson blake, the executive director of the orion society. h. emerson, you have charge now to ask the audience questions and have our panel discuss them. h. emerson: thank you, ann.

the first question is going to go to you and the question is, given our obvious use of audio and other -- automobile use and other forms of transportation, how can we shift this? obviously, that can be applied to any of our panelists to answer it. harriet: you might make the argument that the federal government is renewing this with the gasoline tax, which basically makes states and localities be more or less on their own. that is for transportation, and in some ways, that really favors bike ability, walk ability, and even transit, over very large and very costly new highway expansions when we cannot pay to maintain the things that we have up. that was not entirely, maybe that was a slightly facetious answer, but i think in general,

ginger talked about desire. i think what we are seeing in the communities across the country is that they see these transportation choices as being important parts of their economy and their competitive future, and that more and more places are investing in transit, with or without the benefit of a federal partnership or significant federal funding. as many of you know, the federal policies have favored roads over transit, just in terms of the share that the federal government was willing to pay. so the fact that there is less money for all of those things doesn't necessarily -- it is probably more of a disadvantage for road building it is for transit or for the other modes. i think that in fact because of the strong links between land

use and the value of land around transit, in all candor, i sit on the board of our transit agency in the washington region, just for an example, 86% of all of the office construction that is underway in the entire region is literally a quarter-mile or less of transit, so it is on top of transit. so in that market, as an example, if you are not developing on transit, you are essentially not selling or leasing any office space. so i think that is increasingly what cities are experiencing and i don't think you are getting that kind of payback from new road expansions. harriet: -- h. emerson: thank you, harriet. the next question is, given the expansion of urban communities

in california, how can the walk ability and bike ability of the community be increased, especially with the car centric infrastructure choices made years ago? ben: this is something that spur is working on quite a bit in san jose, and we started working on that very deliberately, partially because it is the largest city in the bay area both by area and population, but also because the problems of san jose, which was largely held in the postwar -- built in the postwar period around the automobile, is this strange area compared to most places. it turns out to be a very, very difficult problem to achieve what we call the retrofitting of suburbia. if you build a place around a

car, you didn't just build a place around the car, you also built our kids around auto mobility -- built markets around automobility ar, and if you look into all these factors that shape and build an environment. if you want to turn it around, it takes a real and sustained engagement on all of those fronts. i think one of the sort of weaknesses of traditional planning and urban design is to show a picture of what a good walkable neighborhood looks like and you can say, well, i showed you what it looks like, why aren't you building it? it is very challenging and more of an uphill battle than you first imagined. it is very difficult work and it is work that is starting to build fruit -- yield fruit. there is definitely progress in san jose but also in other urban

areas around the country there are crating a more walkable and accessible area it is more affordable and more livable and better in terms of the public health benefits and so forth, but it is very, very difficult because you have to work with very different factors. 's -- >> i might disagree. this is actually the subject of a lot of guerilla activity, urban activity across the country. this shows people what it is like. but i think the street is a wonderfully adaptive and mutable

thing. that is no matter how a or narrow it is. compared to other elements of the environment, it might make sense compared to a lot of things. i might just say that we have an example in our region of the place that was on the cover of a look representing suburban strahl -- suburban sprawl, tysons corner, it now has light rail. all of those parking lots are being the raid with a gridded -- being remade with a gridded network of streets. now they are adding all other kinds of urban amenities and it won't happen overnight, but in 25 years, it will look like a real city, and that is a pretty amazing thing. they dropped the corner from the name, they are just tysons now, and their aspirations are urban.

ginger: that is an interesting model to look at, the city of remaking the urban landscape. new york has been very successful and a number of the shifting streets out of car usage. this is particularly under our last transportation commissioner who was really dedicated to moving and putting there are the -- and putting these up. tysons corner, or tysons now is more interesting to me.

ben: i agree and i will disagree. and a lot of those examples of these urban things are illegal. build a better block has sort of poked at her assumptions of how we use public space and use it as a public right-of-way and it has been incredibly influential because that touches on a whole large set of themes in info structure -- themes in infrastructure today, like reduced budget resources and also tremendous regulatory process constraints. a great thing to try things out is to try them on a temporary basis to read people will tolerate things for a short period of time if they know it is going away.

h. emerson: ben, i wondered if you could keep going in that vein and talk about using film as a way of increasing people's awareness for themselves about being users of infrastructure. talk about the way that the art help people understand how infrastructure their lives. that is so much about what the orion project has been about. it shows examples about how art can be used to help people think differently. ben: sure, and i think the genesis of that question is that i was involved in an organization called city space, and it did interventions in urban spaces and did a film festival as well as other exhibitions and things like that. this was 10 years or so ago and what we found was that there is

just a tremendous hunger for exploring the idea of what a city is and to conduct that exploration in urban spaces is a very engaging and exciting thing to do.3 so we would have a festival of short films, for example, we would do it in an md lot and get a very large number of people who were very eager to explore these questions, and that has put us in a much broader -- do it in an empty lot and get a very large number of people who were very eager to explore these questions, and that has put us in a much broader conversation across the nation. that is the nature of our democratic society and how we live among one another here in a public space. this is how we can achieve

economic development, community development, and so forth. i think that is part of our broader urban moment of getting over the letter half of the 20th century and embracing our cities again and part of that is figuring out how to tell that story to one another. h. emerson: part of what we learned in the orion reimagining infrastructure project was getting a sense of just how exactly our broken american infrastructure really is and how much it really needs to be changed and how expensive it is not just to maintain and retrofit but to fundamentally reimagine it, as we have been saying, so that the infrastructure still works. so the next question to the audience is very germane to that, how do we get public and private partnerships? ginger, i'm sure this is something you were writing about when you were writing about burlington. how were they able to afford

that and how were partnerships at play there? ginger: i can speak briefly and i think that harriet will have a lot more to say on this topic. certainly with burlington's electrical district, which is part of their utility system, incentive was absolutely central to their shift into green power. they are able to make their utility profitable by generating renewable power, selling credits , selling renewable power credits, they actually generate more renewable energy than they need and they sell these credits to other states, which, you know, when i sat there and talked to them about it, it gave me a headache eventually because it was so complicated. i am not even the giving you a reasonable sense of how complicated the whole structure was. that it made me realize that there is a fine balance between working with private developers

who develop some of the power resources, working with state and federal incentives in order to make the whole thing make financial sense. but i really want to defer to harriet. harriet: i -- what i would say goes back to something that chip mentioned at the beginning, and that is that our infrastructure prices isn't just a question --infrastructure crisis isn't just a question of aging infrastructure, we need infrastructure that is place making, as ben described, that is resilient to a changing climate, and that is part of the reason that private investments sit on the sidelines and i think that this is a moment when in every major infrastructure category, water and sewer,

energy distribution, telecommunications, we are at a major inflection point. that straight line that we used to be able to draw from 40 years in the past two 40 years in the future, we can't do that anymore. technology and climate and changing demand, all of these things are making it impossible for us just to forecast it. it makes it risky for somebody to invest in projects like that. so we need to do more to future-proof our infrastructure and do more community engagement, do more scenario planning. think about the risks of severe weather. think about other climate-related impacts, and i think that that is part of the reason in the federal government at hud and with the white house and the national economics council and the treasury and half a dozen other federal agencies, we have developed an initiative called build america

which is designed to do exactly that, get more private investment in our infrastructure , but also deliver better infrastructure for those investments. and that means more free development, more planning, and more infrastructure that is performing in a way that i think a lot of the panel has discussed, that is more distributed, that is more adaptable, that produces lots of benefits and solves lots of problems. there is a famous quote attributable to winston churchill at the end of world war ii that he said "gentlemen, we are out of money, we will have to think." [laughter] harriet: that is exactly where we are in this country, we cannot afford more infrastructure, so that will be a good thing to help us think. h. emerson: it is comforting to see that other countries are ahead of us in thinking about sustainability and infrastructure that is actually

encoded into law to make sure that those changes take place. the question from the audience is a variance on that. how do you see resilient infrastructure being adapted in the nation, particularly in cities that will be affected by climate change? ben: i will take a bite of a small piece of that. have had a fair amount of interaction with the dutch in thinking about coastal management at ocean beach, certainly in the northeast as well, and because of the dutch, of course, they have an 800 years history of managing their coasts. from a certain lens, a certain traditional environmental lens, there is something very troubling about that sort of high intervention, inventive landscape that is the dutch coast.

on the other hand, increasingly, we can no longer pretend that nature is out there as this kind of pristine wilderness for us, and our job is to be just a small as we can be. our virtue lies in being a small entity and in letting the wilderness happened. increasing the, we are in a situation where our footprints are on a global scale, hence our necessity for managing processes and we have to meet that challenge. and so the traditional philosophical boundary between the city and nature is polar opposites and never the twain shall meet and it is breaking

commonwealth club panel tonight is reimagining infrastructure. i want to thank our panel tonight for the wonderful information and the conversation that we had. h. emerson -- harriet has been the head of office of planning and hud, ginger is a writer and historian, and benjamin grant who is right here in san francisco is the urban design policy director at spare and has led many of the processes to develop programs in policy at spare for the city. i would like to actually ask the person who has been our moderator tonight, h. emerson

blake, editor and magazine of "oh ryan" magazine and the executive director of the orion society, emerson, -- "orion" magazine and the executive director of the orion society, emerson, what stands out for you in terms of reimagining our infrastructure, america's infrastructure? h. emerson: i think a lot of us, certainly a lot of us at orion, like so many people, when we think of infrastructure, we think of bridges and roads and apostles you hit under way to work in the morning and the words that you said when you hit those potholes. and pretty quickly, you begin to realize that the way that our lives play out, they are so defined by infrastructure. when better infrastructure is available, we use it, and when better infrastructure is not

available, we are locked into it. we are people who like so many people who are trying to understand how to live better, full or, healthier, -- fuller, healthier, saner lives. when thinking about infrastructure, that is think it about concrete ways of change to make it easier for us to be able to live the kinds of lives the way that we want to live. that is the message we have learned that over orion and that is the way -- learned at orion and that is the message that we want to teach to our readers. ann: thanks to our panel and our moderator, our moderator is h. emerson blake, the executive director of the orion society, and it want to think the deputy

assistant secretary for the office of community planning and development at hud, ginger strand, and environmental writer and historian, and our own benjamin grant here in san grann francisco, who is at spare. -- spur. unfortunately, we have commented -- come to the end of our program and we really hope that you enjoy it. we appreciate you for coming tonight and we wish you all well. at this point in our program, we are looking at the future also for our program.

[applause] >> we will see what is next for the iran nuclear agreement ahead of next week's debate in congress. we will be joined by trita parsi and matthew mcinnis. with therie hunt national association of federal credit unions talks about the u.s. credit union system and what it is doing to address identity theft. to we give you your shot give us your thoughts. 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> the cities tour. working whether city affiliates, this weekend we are joined by charter communications to learn more about the history and that really life of grand junction,

colorado. the mining of a certain mineral had importance. >> all over the colorado plateau here outside of grand junction, we are surrounded by morrison rock. we find a lot of dinosaur bones, fossils and that has here outsid intrigued scientists for along time. we also find a mineral, a rock that contains three different elements. it contains radium which is radioactive and was used to help salt and fight cancer. element thatins a builds steel. it was of extreme value. it also contains uranium. uranium, as we know, is one of the best sources for tom our and weapons -- atomic power and weapons.

announcer: he was responsible for the cultural development due to the water legislation. >> he fought the battle to reserve water for western colorado by making sure that we got our fair share. how did he do that? well, beginning in his state career and then going on to his federal career, he climbed up the ladder of seniority and was think, morecise, i power than you might normally have. certainly in the united states congress where he was able to make sure colorado and western colorado would be treated fairly in any divisions of water. was thet major success passage of the colorado river storage process in 1956. announcer: see all of our programs from grand junction today at 7 p.m. eastern on c-span two and sunday afternoon

on american history tv on c-span3. announcer 2: congress will begin debate on the iran nuclear agreement. a deadline to pass a resolution of disapproval is september 17. now officials from th discuss te deal and the long-term implications. the center for global interest hosted this event. it is one hour and a half. >> let me see if we are on. we are. my name is richard burke and it is my privilege to welcome you here today to program sponsored by the center on global interest, i will not take too long describing the center. program sponsored by the center on will not taket, i too long describing the center.

i think it is apparent to many people that washington these .ays is over think tanked but i think the center is actually a very special and unique place. for one thing it is the ,rainchild of nikolai's lovin one of the more interesting and creative people in town. heritage.ussian not only to its programming but i think to its approach to the issues, which makes it forresting and worthwhile participating in. my relationship with global zero, and common friends, i was .appy to join the board

we are focusing on the iran deal . i have been asked to not only introduce our chairman or moderator, but to make a few brief remarks for they will be .rief given my background i thought i would make these remarks in the context of maybe these are issues the six panelists could explore in one way or another in their remarks. is first point i would make in my experience, arms control good asts are never as the advocates make out. they are never as bad as the critics complain. because arms control agreements do not really fundamentally change facts on the ground. they tend to ratify or reflect

those facts. the -- the isis move more four to in 2003 or negotiate a deal with iran. the deal would have been very different. it would have probably been a deal that would not be as controversial as the deal is for the iranians were much greater distance away from a nuclear weapons capability than they are today. sometimes delay and arms control can be disadvantageous. if you don't like trends or a changing balance of power, a the example of that was in late 1960's 1970's.

the agreements themselves are not going to fundamentally change the realities of where a ron is -- iran is. that needs to be clearly understood. something toe is this to agreement, in the past we haven't had the kind of pressure brought about by sanctions which played an important role in bringing the iranians to the negotiating table. this leads to a difference in -- supporters and

critics interpret the agreement. the supporters see it as a traditional arms control agreement. ,nd recognize that both sides interests have to be served. there will be criticism about certain features and facets of the agreement. many solve this negotiation not so much as diplomacy, as getting ready for a surrender ceremony. on the battleship missouri. a form ofhis as coercive diplomacy designed to disarm iran. it is because of that interpretation of what this negotiation was all about, the agreement itself was so controversial.

my final point is to me the most interesting thing about this agreement is not its arms control elements. the most interesting thing about this agreement is the one thing that people are in some ways afraid to discuss. the long run political and strategic implications of potential iranian normalization. internationally and specifically in the middle east. no one would agree that this is going to lead to a normalized relationship. creates that possibility. given the fact that central problem in the middle east today is the kind of 30 years war that is underway between shia and

it ranthe fact that a ron could become a more normal actor in the region raises some really interesting options and choices. one of the big foreign-policy maybeons that at least not this administration but another will have to address it seems to me is whether the united states is going to continue a policy of supporting sunni arab states against iran as the saudi is one us to, whether we will pursue a more balanced diplomatic effort which would mean inevitably closer tehran.s with to ron -- i hope the panelists in one form or another will address them.

i want to turn the floor over to jim fallows. just like there are many think tanks in washington, there are arguably washington has too many journalists. i can say that because i was once one of them. i don't think of jim fallows, who is the national correspondent for the atlantic , many important --ks and articles beginning i do not think of jim fallows as a journalist. i think of him as a writer. that in my view, there is a difference. journalists run around and report what is going on. about whatnk deeply

they are saying, and they are explaining the world to their readers. jim has done that in many capacities. most importantly if you have a chance to follow his brilliant writing about china, over the last decade, it has been a toilblazer in explaining western readers. we lucky to have jim with us. without any further it do you have the floor. jim: thank you for that introduction to me and the informative set up for our panel. thanks to the cgi and chairman who have us here. and to c-span for broadcasting our discussion. we have six panelists, a finite and what isme,

fascinating here is in the last 48 hours the terms of discussion of the iran deal have changed. it is not a question whether they will participate but what that won't mean -- will mean. with the announcement of senator mcconnell ski -- senator mikulski that she will be the vote. what this means regionally, what it means for united states foreign-policy, evolution within iran. we have a range of views to discuss this topic. ambassadorrt with whois pickering to my left has held every ambassadorial role the united states has to offer. the russian federation, india,

el salvador, united nations. every other eminent role that our state has. not onlyayed a role over the decades and how we should think about the iran deal . now that this in the stage that the sin is not going to be able to block it, how should we think in your five minutes, what are haveain things you want to in front of our minds? >> i agree with most of your points. the sanctions were coupled with bad economic mismanagement and perhaps military threats to help drive this toward negotiation. i think your conclusions are right. i think i can agree with you that there are too many think tanks and too many reporters that there are so many -- too

many retired diplomats. let me address your very cogent question. if this goes through, and nothing is certain because even ,enators can change their minds let's assume that it does. let's assume that the process begins and it will mentation complies.d iran and people are worried they enter -- they will have a flow of iranian money coursing through the most serious problems including syria and other places for it people opposed to this deal who believe that it is a mistake to work with iran against isis. why, i don't know. nevertheless that is out there from time to time. more extreme on their views. that raises question number one. we have in a backhanded way been working against isis with a ron

ineract -- with iran in iraq a very backhanded way by bombing in syria. there will be certainly an opportunity if this moves to begin to talk to iran about two issues that constitute in the fruit.low hanging we have shared interests. we don't have all interest shared but there is something to talk about. and how we could coordinate in a more direct basis through the our bombing,ent, their training. and the important obstacle in iraq, how can we build a political complement to the military activity we have undertaken.

that doesn't mean to brush out and begin to negotiate with ice is, god for bid. i don't think that is a possible option. i do think it is important we encourage the iraqi government morey a great deal attention to their sunni friends. majority role must be complemented by minority rights, even in iraq. finally, as my time draws to a close, there are opportunities that lie out there, given that the moment in syria. we have an effect a no-fly zone that gets turned off and on when , abomb in northern syria soughthe should not fly when american planes are bombing. there is a possibility in my view for coming together on a transitional government. this would not require a cease-fire but that would help. a transitional government first

might help. which involves representatives of various parties, as hard as it is in my view, is something we ought to try. we cannot try until we talk with iran and russia, and turkey and saudi arabia about making that happen. iran plays a critical role in this. iran must know that a link to a solid is getting them know where. as we know that a link to the moderate syrian opposition, as much as we like it, is giving us nowhere. the process of getting nowhere slow or fast in syria has come to the point where the terrible damage to human life in the diplomatic fatigue could possibly be harnessed as a result of the nuclear agreement into something more useful. a hell of a long shot but we ought to think about that.

there are things in the history of our relationship that need cleaning out. it is mistrust and difficulties on both sides. everything from dealing with the shaw some money in escrow to the question of the -- to hostages are all out there and they are important. the president was right to say there is nothing in this agreement that forbids me for taking a tough line with iran that steps over the boundaries, and that has to be part of the process. let me leave it there and look forward to further questions. mye something that i know in reportorial mode, it is fascinating how until the last two or three days the discussion about this deal was about the first strike nuclear potential, what this happen or not? the discussion is moving to the regional applications that both of our ambassadors have mentioned.

we have heard of the surplus of think tanks, journalists, diplomats, and energy experts. we have an eminent one, the principle of international market analysis. respected andt influential voices on broadcast media for the heritage foundation and other foundations. as we move to talking about these implications of what this deal, what the new position is going to mean, tell us what you think we should be thinking of the ramifications now. councilith the atlantic . before we jump into the oil and , which wouldn iran be terrific just as it would be terrific if we could cooperate on fighting isis and afghanistan, and all these wonderful things, i would like to take a step back and evaluate the process and the agreement,

and i would say that the united states brought a formidable coalition to the table. become the five members of the security council, including iaea. and china, and we walked away weakened. the one celebrating or the iranians. the american public, the majority of the public is against the agreement. it used the agreement negatively. and unlike what we all witnessed, i am honored and humbled to follow ambassador pickering, whose career i always admired and came to know him back in the 1990's where he was an excellent ambassador, but as we all remember the soviet union that negotiated arms control

changed the behavior fundamentally, and that process the big transformation, to the collapse of the soviet union and emergence of russia. the anti-american and abandonedrn town was until 20 years later, as we witnessed today. empire, theup its soviet union gave up its empire places like vietnam. today we are witnessing the expansion of the traditional persian imperialism in the middle east with involvement in yemen, where iran is backing the who aziz --- hossis. and the shock of the assad regime, and our sunni arab

allies are really insecure and frightened. we are thinking in the united two years, four years. they are thinking the glory of the pre-islamic iranian empire. 15 years from now the iranians will be only weeks with the capacity to enrich uranium on an unprecedented levels. they will be weeks from the bomb. so, what are the results of this agreement? a nuclear race in the middle

east. buying reactors. the saudi's are buying the french reactors. the turks are buying reactors from france, korea, and russia. all these are building the skill set of the multipolar nuclear environment. a gentleman told me 10 years ago if iranians go nuclear we go nuclear. i believe him. the turkish industrial base is bigger than the iranian. to wrap up my 14 points i will try to bring it in the q&a. what can we do? we need to show we mean business. thiswe be able to enforce agreement by having military power in the middle east?

both naval base and land base. we need to make sure that any violations of this agreement extracts a high price from the iranian regime. it is unacceptable that this rhetoric continues. when he to put pressure on he ran to cease -- iran to see sentences genocidal rhetoric that comes out of toronto every friday. -- tehran every friday. iran is rife with tv, satellite above and beyond the hands of the regime to the people of iran. to those dissidents who are in jail, to those minorities, women, gays, others whose rights are violated, hanged in tortured, we need to talk to that people.

if iran normalizes and goes the route the soviet union went in trying to become a part of the international community, of course the natural gas resources are probably competing with russia to be the second largest in the world. you can have pipelines, natural gas, the reserves for the oil companies they can put on their books. they are enormous. this is why we see a stampede of business people to cut new deals. has to bee security our first priority. this administration bought it. if it breaks it, it owns it. next administration will have to re-examine the performance until 2017. thank you very much. >> we promised you a range of views.

we will engage the other panelists back and forth. our next speaker, i don't know enough about iran to speak with confidence. when it comes to the millennial long view of china it is possible to overstay that. we heard the exchange between he said too soon to tell. what is often left out as they were talking about the 1968 upheaval in france. nothing one 200 years earlier. many people have some connection with iran over the years. both having dealt with the shock in the early days, the fateful toes that jimmy carter gave the shawl in 1977, i was there. how would it feel to be the speechwriter at that event where the president toasted the shaw as an island of stability in a sea of turmoil.

that was a memorable moment. we have our next speaker who will tell us about one of the themes and dr. collins presentation. the texture of what it is like in iran now. you have recently been back to iran. he of done a number of interesting reports for the foreword. you have been in many tv shows pre-tell us how your visit to iran is the first reporter from a jewish publication and decades , what that experience as to our discussion. dr. collins: sure. how everyone can hear me now. after that yen and yang of pro and con, i have nothing to say about the agreement. it is not my expertise. i was in iran. i came three weeks ago. was the first generalist from

a jewish publication the lead in since the revolution. i'm interested in the timing. it was something i have been trying to get a visa for for two years. i finally got a visa. i was given understanding after applying a few times that i got a letter from a member of the iranian jewish community that would make a good difference. things started to move. i found it was fascinating. it was amazing to see people were reeling to criticize -- were willing to criticize the government with their names attached. you can see some people speaking to my little phone video on our website. and i would make a habit after they spoke to me, i would ask me, tell me would you be willing to speak to my cell phone video

and ask the question do you wish to destroy the state of israel. and they would answer the question. by in large, people have no interest in destroying the state of israel. this gets to an important point about iran. among ordinary people, the support for the agreement is -- is just almost blanket. i had a hard time finding anybody who was against the agreement on the popular level that wasn't the case all the time with popular people. that's not to say that ordinary people have any clue about what the agreement -- what's in the agreement, what the agreement is about, whether it's a good thing or bad thing for iran. what they see in the agreement is reconnection with the world. and this is very interesting to me because i done a lot -- i probably wasted a lot of time researching the economics of iran today after the sanctions. i was ready to talk to them about unemployment, about economic depravation, about

poverty. this is not to say that none of those things exist there but that's not what they talked to me about. what they talked about to me was not the economic depravation but the psychological depravation. they felt very sice lated over decades. they very disconnected. palpable hunger. people talk to me about, you know, going into a domestic place -- a security officer looks at my passport and said more of you should come here. a security guard asked me what do americans think about the iranian revolutionary guard. and i told him most americans are frightened by the iranian revolutionary guard and said but why. [laughter] so there's a sense of -- of disconnection coming from many political angles. the iranian revolutionary guard

was not friendly to america. he was weary and suspicious. and he was suspicious with me. of course the course of the one-hour conversation sitting in front of the tomb became clear that he like many iranians have this love-hate thing with america. he has this lively curiosity about's going on there. he was baffled why a super power with defensive expend di chure larger than the 10 countries against the revolutionary guard. he said oh, oh, that. kind of what the americans say about 1953 and the c.i.a. oh, that, if they even know about it at all. there's this mutual bafflement and ignorance. there were people who are against the agreement and there are people who are hostile to america for sure.

i spoke with two grand ayatollah and a very senior ayatollah. and i asked my stock question do you wish to destroy the state of israel? it was a fun question to pop on people. and one of them said, yeah, kind of. i do [laughter] he said that i think that israel's policies are atrocious but i think they're atrocious because of the inherent nature of zionism and because if israel cannot change it, then they should be destroyed. two people said we oppose israel because of its policies not because of its existence. and that offered some implications for the future. right now the supreme leader is definitely in the camp of people who oppose israel buzz of its existence and he's also in the hostile of america camp. it's a deep-seated thing. i don't see that changing in a

long time. underneath him there's division among the senior clerics where some of the most interesting debates take place. this hung tore reconnect with the world -- hunger to reconnect with the world, i think a strategist with how to go with this agreement all of these are relevant factors in terms of exploiting the potential of the agreement to create greater change. >> thank you very much. so we've had a really fascinating unfolding of the conversations so far hearing from our two ambassadors about some of the next stages of opportunity for the united states and other players hearing from dr. cohen what he would use as the dangerous ramifications. hearing from larry about the fabric of the society that's going to be changed under that oh, comment about the iranian hostage. i went to vietnam about a decade after the u.s. withdraw from there. i was asking the vietnamese

people how are they with the united states. they said there are hard feelings with vietnam. and i said why? oh, the war. we have anti-chinese, anti-french war, etc. most americans were born after the fall of zy gone. the median nage the u.s. is -- age in the u.s. is 38. now we're going to hear from a scholar who's going into various aspects now with georgetown iversity previously at the pelper center. tell us what you think should be added to the discussion about the ramifications of the deal. >> thank you, we've been talking about all aspects of the nuclear program, the nuclear deal except the actual nuclear aspect of the nuclear deal. let me take a step back and

address that because this is what the deal was designed to do. the deal was designed to curveball iran's nuclear program to stop a tense country from developing a nuclear weapon. of during that in violation the treaty and the safeguard agreements with the it. e. with the international atomic agency and it does that well. it may not be a perfect deal. and again, for a lot of people unless iran stopped its enrichment program, any deal falling short of that would not be a good deal. but that would not be a realistic deal. this is as good an agreement as we could possibly get. it gives us eyes on virtually every aspect on ian's nuclear program. the thing that it does as well is that it strengthens the nonproliferation regime. we've had a bit of a crisis in this arena for the past few

years. we haven't done as much as we could on a number of aspects of it. but this deal brings a country back into compliance. it does that without a single shot being fired. and it does that with u.s. leadership. aerial mentioned he took a completely different stance on that. but that's a very important point. the u.s. was instrumental in getting this deal. and essentially strengthen the nuclear proliferation regime. i want to also emphasize some of the things that have been said going back to iran's regional activities and what's happening domestically. but these were things that were not part of the agreement. the agreement was designed to do. however the agreement does also strengthen a number of u.s. interests not by design. so for instance, this is empowering a team and the iranian foreign ministry that is very much pro engagement.

this is a team that knows the u.s. well. the foreign minister has spent decades and the united states still has a number of the the rs and others in iranian government. it is a team despite getting a lot of backlash for it at home. and it's done that without the political capital that it is now going to have thanks to this deal. not only sit willing to engage with the rest of the world, it also is willing to pay the price for it and now it has a political capital to do that. you have to be careful not to overstate iran's power and you know the return of the glory of the persian empire. let's face it, getting yemen doesn't get you the glory of the persian empire. it does not. and also to the extent to which iran is backing the houdi and to the extent that it is successful in doing that we should be

careful not overstating these things. has a very dynamic civil society. a number of folks -- it's one of the key talking points is iran's human rights track record is awful. yes, it is awfulful but we're holding irans that we don't hold the same sunni allys that ariel was talking about. i ran needs to improve the track record but is it going to do wit sanctions? has the past 35 years of sanctions helped? >> no. you know what has helped? stopped the regime from everything it's wanted to dosm it's been iran's very civil society. i was there. we saw it in 2009. i saw people my age come out and take to the streets. a lot of them -- a number of people got killed. a number of people end up in jail. many were stopped from pursuing an education because of that. t this dynamic open fairly

educated young portion of the population is now going to have the ability to pursue what it wants to pursue which is more rights which is more engagement with the world. so far people came out to the streets, the government would say, look, we have this nuclear crisis, we could get attacked tomorrow and it gave it an excuse to essentially send people back home. now with the deal done this is not going to be as easy anymore. so for all these reasons, i think that the deal does a very good job of what it was designed to do which is curve the nuclear program but it helps achieve other national interest not by design. >> great. thank you very much. i think it's very valuable in our contributions so far. we've had engagement on a lot of the main long-term issues whether this agreement will help or hurt nonproliferation activities. we've heard opposing views whether which forces are going

to strengthen in iran. that is good. also i want to not jippings it but i want to congratulate all previous four speakers keeping right to time. the pressure is on the two of you. this is why i'm pointing this out. wire not going to hear from politicalnk who has a background. he's the senior director in the washington institute he had senior roles with condoleeza rice and colon powell. tell us how you think we should be thinking about the agreement including anything that has been mistated so far? >> let me start by saying thank you for c.g.it. . it's a great honor to be on this panel with such fabulous experts as we have here. i've been working on this issue for 10 years and so -- i imagine everybody feels like they've

been hearing about it for fwice that long. i'm going to try to be brief. i think that -- i was present at the creation borrowed phase of this p15-plus process. i've been a supporter of a negotiated outcome. it give mess no pleasure to say this deal is a weak deal. i don't think it's a strong deal. i think that we didn't -- we didn't manage a diplomacy as skillful as we might have. i think what's interesting about the debate, in a sense we're having a debate about a congressional vote but what you hear is a lot more agreement than disagreement even amongst the opponents and the supporters on that congressional vote. those were coming out like corey mckowski has bara done that without reservations. i think the next president is going to come into office

thinking that they want to strengthen this deal. i think that the charge they'll give their national security staff regardless whether it's a democrat or republican is how do we strengthen this deal and how do we strengthen our broader iran policy while avoiding all of those negative consequences that have been raised in this debate? with not just military conflict, which i done think it's imminent as it was painted up to be. but also our allies. we don't want to have a break obviously with our allies with this issue or any other issues because we have a lot of irons in the fire in the world that we need to tend to. so i think that will be the charge for the next president. i think that will be tough to do with this deal on the books with the u.n. security council in trying it. we're going to need a lot of creative thinking hopefully from all the experts who are currently thinking about this now. i think the idea that iran will fundamentally change ilts strategy or policy in the region is really not much more than a gamble at this stage.

i think there is an idea that some folks have that this deleel ow -- deal will clear away problems. the way i see it there isn't really anything in this deal which certainly not requires, certainly doesn't require iran to change its regional poll schism and i don't think there's anything that incentivizes iran to deal with the regional strategy. remember iran's regional strategy is not just about the united states and nuclear diplomacy. iran has a strategy which is quite coherent and poses serious threat to american interests. they support proxies in lebanon, west bank, elsewhere. they have area denial strategy in the persian gulf. these are serious