>> rose: welcome to program. we begin with joseph nye the former dean of the kennedy school at harvard. his new book is called "is the american century over?" >> the americans are in better shape than people realize. demographically, we're the only rich country that is going to keep its position in the world. if you look at the population of countries today, china is number one, india number two america number three. 2050, the u.n. demographers project india number one china number two but the u.s. still number 3. the interesting thing about that, we are the only rich country that will be able to maintain its standing and that's because we're a nation of immigrants. we accept immigration, and that is going to keep us essentially a country which instead of with a small working population

sporting a large old population we're going to have a pretty balanced population. >> rose: we conclude with jeffrey sachs the author of "endeavour." >> so this has been a good overall for reducing poverty but the reason we're facing the need for new goals right now is many other things are really starting to shake because while economic growth is working pretty well, the environmental crises are definitely deepening, and they're deepening at the global level with global warming and they're deepening regionally with water stress and deforest expaigz other major crises. so balancing the growth with the environment is one of the big themes for the new goals. >> rose: joe nye and jeffrey sachs when we continue.

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: joe nye is here. he is the university distinguished service professor and former dean of the harvard university school of government. an assistant to secretary of defense, international security affairs. his new book is called "is the american century over?" i am pleased to have him back on this program. welcome. >> thanks. nice to be back. >> rose: so why did you decide to write this when so many people are trying to figure out that very question? >> well, that's a conventional

wisdom that this is the chinese century. and there was a poll about a year or so ago where half of americans believed that china either was or soon to be more powerful than the the united states. and i thought that was simply not true so i tried to write this book in short accessible english to explain to people why it's not true. >> rose: why is it not true zoo it's not true because first of all, the united states is not in decline although a lot of people think it is. and china, while it's doing well and will continue to do well, is not continue feet tall. >> rose: they have gone through the economic issues. >> they have had 10% growth ask now say 7% is the new memory. my colleague larry summers has an article that says it may go down to about 4%. >> rose: what happens to china at 4%? >> well, they're still relying on a pretty decent rate of growth, but they've got a

concern of how to keep the legitimacy of the communist party? it's no longer communist. it's really based on nationalism and on a high rate of economic growth. and if the economic growth goes down, the danger is nationalism has to go up and that could be dangerous. >> rose: and they're trying to turn the economy around from one model to another. >> that's right. they're afraid of running into what is sometimes called the middle-income trap. the model to get to -- >> they're trying to ship from an export economy to demand economy. >> reet with more emphasis on the demand economy. >> rose: and the aggregating of power. >> oh, yeah. he has been able to pull power together in his hands quite impressively. but they still have a problem which is when a country reaches

about 10000 dollars per capita sprkincome, you see a considerable demand for participation. and the chinese haven't figured out how to deal with that. india, in contrast, inherit aid constitution which allows for participation the way it got from britain. china hasn't gotten anything like that. >> rose: social media means you know what other people are doing today? there's a higher awareness of how i might not be doing as well as somebody in india or somebody else? >> that's right. and the chinese have a problem which is social media and the internet allowed a lot of participation that they don't want. in other words, they want a certain amount of the internet for economic growth, but they tonight want it for political purposes. and they control it but you can't control it perfectly. and that adds to the dilemma that they have politically. >> rose: for a long time and i think it is said by china's

leaders we're interested in peace and prosperity. what we want to do is get bigger and richer and do better in raising the number of people in the middle class out of poverty. do they have different ambitions in terms of geopolitical aims? >> i think they have ambition to restore thina to what it was prior to 1800 which is the largest economy. >> rose: they have done that, haven't they? >> not really. the comiez chooiz is not equal to the united states in committee. the world bank last year did a calculation using what economists call purchase power parity, which is an adjustment for welfare which showed they are equal in size. if you use exchange rates, in fact they're not. if you look at per capita income, they're only about a quarter of u.s. >> rose: we are about 45 or so? >> yes, and the chinese emphasis

has been on trying to raise up this economy. the economics is still a key part of their maintaining legitimacy. >> rose: does it benefit spending a lot of money on war? >> yes ask no. they're increasing their defense budget by double digits every year for the last decade. >> rose: that's to build up things and we're spending money-- >> we still spend four times -- >> in iraq and expafg a lot of other places. >> we spend four times more than on defense than the chinese do but they are making efforts to catch up. >> rose: don't we spend more on defense than the top 25 nations of the world? >> i think we are -- >> is it necessary? >> it depends what you want it for. >> if you want it for invading iraq absolutely, not, big

mistake. >> rose: that's where we spent a lot of it. >> if you want it for maintaining a balance of power in the pacific and the reassuring allies like japan then it is. >> rose: aircraft carriers. >> mostly naval but we also have considerable air force components in japan and there are also marines on okinawa. >> rose: what do you like about the hand we have? >> i think the americans are in better shape than people prealize demographically, we're the only rich country that's going to keep its position in the world. if you look at the population of countries today, china's number one, india number two america number three. 2050, the u.n. demographers project it will be india number one, china number two but the u.s. still number three. the interesting thing about that is we are the only rich country that will be able to maintain its standing and that's because we're a nation of immigrants. we accept immigration, and that is going to keep essentially a

country which instead of with a small working population supporting a large old population. we're going to have a pretty balanced population glu guyed at the kennedy school have heard this more than once but bob gates repeated it with me last night, tim geithner repeated it with me this week-- the biggest national security threat to the united states is in washington and gridlock and our inability to maintain the kind of growth and investment that has given us all the power that we have. >> well, i think gridlock is a problem. but it's also worth noticing that there's a lot of dynamism outside of washington. for example 10 years ago we said america was becoming hopelessly dependent on imported oil from the middle east. today, with the technologies of horizontal drilling and -- >> fracing. >> hydraulic fracturing we're look at a north america which is not -- >> that is not going to rebuild the infrastructure of america. silicon valley is not going to rebuild the infrastructure of

america, is it? >> no, but it does provide a tremendous boost to what the economy is. in other words, if you look at the key technologies of the 21st century-- biotechnology, nanotechnology the next generation of information technology-- the u.s. is at the forefront of all three of those. >> rose: but they all occurred before-- those things got the seed 15 years ago before we had the kind of crisis we have now with the inability to even have a budget. >> wewent through a bad spell, particularly after 2008 with the great recession. we had great political disagreement on how to get out of it. i think we're beginning to improve somewhat. what worries me more is not the economy but it's more about what's going to happen with our ability to do things politically. for example, the u.s. -- >> isn't that what gridlock is. >> that is but let me give you an example. in 2010, the u.s. and other

countries in the group of 20 agreed to increase china's and india's and other shares of i.m.f. quote expaz world bank quote as. congress hasn't passed that in five years, which is crazy. we-- we-- it doesn't cost us much, if anything. >> rose: but that's exactly the point isn't it? that's the point. we can't continue to behave like that as a great nation and have the same kind of growth, investment, innovation, and creativity if there's no investment in it and if we're-- >> i say that in the book. so i'm not totally disagreeing. but i'm saying if you ask is the united states still got a lot of strength which comes from outside of government -- >> let's take the trade deal. are you for it? >> yes. >> rose: tell us why it's important. you look at a lot of-- it may not pass the houses, as you know. >> it's important because if you look at the capital that we've invested in, a lot of countries in the region are counting on us

to go through with it. if the congress turns this down, it will be as-- add this to bob gates' line of things which are a failure because of domestic politics. japan is ready to go. vietnam is ready to go. you have 12 countries lined up, and if we then suddenly pull the rug out from under them, that's going to be a major black eye on our leadership. >> rose: do you understand the argument of people like elizabeth warren and others? >> i think the arguments are based on a narrow logic of how they see economic -- >> or how their constituencies see them. >> how their constituencies. the trade unions have been struggling against it. >> rose: what do you think the campaign ought to be about? >> i think the campaign domestically ought to be about improving education and doing things about inequality. if you look at what the americans need we need to up our game to an information economy.

in 1950, you could get a high school degree, turn a wrench and have a middle-class income working for general motors. today, you can graduate from high school, the wrench is no longer there. it's a numerically controlled machine tool, and unless you have a community college degree and can work that machine tool you will not have that middle-class income. that's what we should be doing. we're not going up to the next level we need to go. >> rose: how do you that? >> by investing more money -- >> more money. >> in education. >> rose: and they're not doing that in washington because? >> because there's a lack of political consensus. there's extreme partisanship and i think we've got to overcome that. >> rose: that's the kind of thing people are talking about i think. >> no, no, i share that concern. but i also think that the view that the united states is down the tubes because of this -- >> i mean, it seems to me that you ought to be abe to have a very frank discussion about what's in the best interest of america's future and continuing

the qualities that have made it great. it's not an either/or. either you do this or you're down the tubes. it is recognizing if you don't do this, you'll number a worse place. >> no, i agree and that's what the book says. i mean -- >> that's why you wrote the book. >> yeah, that's why i wrote the book. the united states will have the most power resources. that was true after world war i. we didn't live up to it. we retreated isolation and let hitler take over. >> rose: is $15 an hour an appropriate minimum wage? >> i think it is. it's five years to get there and you have some problems in different areas, but i would support that. >> rose: you look at cities making the initiative,. >> i would support that. >> rose: mayor de blasio saying he supports it. is america as relevant internationally? >> it is. >> rose: this is not the decline of america but it's a different world. >> right. it is because of the largest

country doesn't take the leadership on issues like monetary stability and climate change and antiterrorism and so forth, nobody else can take that lead. if small country-- small countries can't mack a big difference, but if big countries don't make a difference, nobody does and everybody is worse off. the u.s. is still in that sense the largest country and it makes a difference. >> rose: is it a dinner world because to do it today in 2015 as president obama has suggested, you have to do it with allies. you have to reach out to people and do it together. you can't do a lot of the things we might want to do alone. >> absolutely. the paradox of american power is that the world's leading power can't solve problems by itself. we've got to learn to play well with others. >> rose: and how long has that been true? >> i think it's been definitely true for the last decade or more. if you look historically, fon an

earlier period, you'll find we didn't have quite the control of the world that we thought let's say in the 1950s. we couldn't prevent the soviets invading hungary. weso it's not as though we had total control in the past. alliances mattered. they matter even more now. >> rose: we're looking at a very difficult circumstance in iraq today. >> uh-huh. >> rose: with isis taking over with the problem that the-- the iraq militia all shi'a, anbar province is primarily sunni, isis is sunni and how do you pull that off and get rid of isis withoutangering without angering the stiewnies in anbar province because of the history of their own victimization? >> it's a very difficult job but i would put it in a broader

context, too. i think the middle east is in for a generation of turmoil. you have three different revolutions going on breaking the old ottoman state boundaries. you've got the arrested development that describes in the development report. and the sunni-shia schism and those are going to go on for 20 years. >> rose: and what will be the model of government that will be most effective? >> well, i think we're going to have to let them solve that for themselvess. we can't go in there and turn iraq into a democracy. what we're going to have to do -- >> i wouldn't even ask who should do it. i'm asking what would be the most appropriate mod snell state capitalism, as the chinese might suggest. >> if i indulge my preferences it will be some day democratic, but to get there i suppose you'll have to go through something more like a sing pormodel where you have this degree of openness but some

central authority. they'll be luck fethey could get that. i think it's more likely they're going to have a problem of chaos coming out of these revolutions and the job for us is not to think we can fix it. we can't. we've knot to contain it. we're going to have to use various instruments, hard and soft power to try to protect our interests, which include nonproliferation, antiterrorism protection of israel and so forth. but the idea that we're going to fix it, i don't think it's going to happen in 20 years. >> rose: can we contain iran if it has a nuclear woman? >> i hope that there will not be an iranian nuclear weapon and that's a lot of what this negotiation is about right now. >> rose: do you support the framework that exists today? >> i do. i think it's the best option we have on the table. >> rose: because the other option's almost nothing. more so than you have complete confidence in terms of both phasing out the sanctions rather than eliminating all the sanctions at once because there

may be some questions about how invasive they will allow the inspections to be? >> well, i think if you-- if you ask can we get a deal which gives us more security than no deal, i think the answer is yes. but is it a perfect deal and will we be absolutely secure? no, never it. >> rose: you know washington. tell me what you think is in the president's mind. does he believe this deal is important, among other reasons-- and you know john kerry well-- this deal is important because the alternative is not good. and because it's not perfect but somehow it may give us a chance to kick the ball down the can-- down the road, and hope that that regime may change and hope that if you can put a cap on where they are now they won't be able to go or won't make the final step? >> that sounds pretty close to what i would think is a reasonable way of looking at it. >> rose: how would you edit and how would you change it? >> i think you're going to have to be able to have very tight monitoring of the international

atomic energy agency gin there and make sure you see what's happening so you have enough of a warning period it's proverbial one year-- that you can mobilize action if something goes wrong. and i think that question of when you reduce the sanctions and keep the monitoring, how you make sure there there is an equation between those two. that will be crucial. >> rose: what about syria? things don't look good there. >> well, i think the syrian situation is probably one that's going to have to be resolveed by some sort of political deal. you're going to have to look at a situation where syria is-- i don't think it's going to be solved just by battle alone. and i certainly don't think it's going to be solved by americans going in, whether the troops that we support can make a difference or not, open question. >> rose: is it really an open

question? >> i don't think-- in the time horizons we're thinking about the next two or three years it's not going to happen. having those -- >> so you hope for a political solution. you hope the russians or iranians or the people who back them will somehow force assad to leave or somebody else-- >> probably as good as you can get in the short two or three years. >> rose: i don't want to leave this conversation without this idea. make the case for america's future outside of washington whether it's from silicon valley. whether it's from a renewed manufacturing base whether it is from demographics. what's the case for our future? >> let me give you the shortest case that i've had which is i quote in the book. i was talking to lee kwan hu one day. i said do you think the chinese are going to pass americans? he said, "no. they're going to give you a run for your money but they're not going to pass you." i said why not. they can draw on the talents of

$1.2 billion people but the united states can draw on the talents of seven billion people and recombine them with a diversity than nationalism ever will. >> rose: is that still true as it used to be because of immigration policies that we have? >> i think our immigration policies have got to change. we've got to open them glup and keep talent here. >> and the keep the talent here as bill perry once said when somebody gets a degree in science and technology at an american university, we should staple a green card to the diploma. we get enormous strength from immigration. they like to complain about it and always have. >> rose: bob gates agrees with you, i think, i think i know where you are. we have notes --ed the other levers of, we haven't effectively used it not only it those place where's we're in

conflict-- iraq, afghanistan-- but in other places. >> we have to use a wider range of tools in our toolbox. the american government is conducted in such a way-- and i speak as a former assistant secretary of defense, where we have a giant and a lot of pygmies and the giant is, obviously, the pentagon, but state and aid and other branches of the government just don't have the same kind of resources. >> rose: the last subject about america and is america in retreat? there is also this question raiseed by the president inviting the arab leaders and who didn't come and for whatever reason they didn't come, but it is this notion because of red lines and other things, america is not trusted as much as it used to be. and arab countries and allies have questions. >> well, that's particularly true in the middle east. and i think it reflects the problems that we've had not just under this administration but for last 15 years.

we have been a disruptive force. we're not able to contain it. there are going to be revolutionary swaegzs. this leads to a lot of distrust. i would say though if we look at our situation in it asia, we're probably better off. >> rose: meaning they trust us more? >> meaning if you look at the u.s.-japan alliance, for example, which is crucial to keeping the balance of power in east asia, and i've watched it closely for 20 years it's in better shape today than the 20 years i've been watching it. >> rose: am i write in believing china no longer holds the most american debt. that someone else now has more than china? >> i'm not sure of that but japan has a lot. and china does hold a lot. on the other hand, it doesn't give them an awful lot of power over us because there's an interdependence there which prevents them from dumping their dollars. >> rose: is the american century over? joe nye says obviously not. thank you for coming. a pleasure to have you here. >> thank you.

>> rose: back in a moment stay with us. jeffrey sachs is here. he is a professor, senior human adviser, and director of the earth institute at columbia university. he will serve as chief adviser to secretary moon when the u.n. general assembly adopts the sustainability development goals this september. his new book outlines how the goals aim to end extreme poverty and protect the environment. it is called "the age of sustainable development." i am pleased to have jeffrey sachs back at this table. welcome. let me start with a couple of things. >> sure. >> rose: first of all, i mean, the millennial goals the millennium goals dwe reach half the goals? we made a lot of progress. on the big picture of cutting poverty, that goal was achieved if you take the developing countries as a whole. in fact, there's been an amazing reduction of poverty overall-- china leading the way extraordinary. >> rose: they had such a low

base. >> well, they started from very high poverty rates b60% back in 1990. now they're down to well under 10%. >> rose: have half a billion people been lifted out of poverty? i once knew the number as 300. >> if you take the fraction, the share living in poverty it went from about 43% of the developing countries, population, down to today maybe about 15% much less than half now of what was the poverty rate back in 1990. >> rose: and what was the stimulus for that? >> well, there's been a lot of economic development, a lot of growth. china has really pushed things forward. but even in africa, which was the epicenter of poverty for the world, a tremendous amount of progress. the millennium development goals helped. they helped get disease under control. they helped give these countries a fresh start, sometimes the debt was canceled. they gave a new focus and impetus to education.

india, also, which hasn't had quite the achievement of china made a lot of progress. so it's bane good period. china slowed down. india is doing pretty well. so this has been a good period overall for reducing poverty. but the reason why we're facing the need for new goals right now is that many other things are really starting to shake because while economic growth is working pretty well, the environmental crises are definitely deepening and they're deepening at the global level with global warming, and they're deepening regionally with water stress and deforest expaigz other major crises. so balancing the growth with the environment is one of the big big themes for the new goals. the second big theme is the fact that while we've had growth, within countries including china, including the united states, of course, and many others, the income inequality

has widened considerably. so there really is a sense that not everybody's being carried along by the growth, even when we get the growth. >> rose: someone told me just yesterday, too if we can reduce income inequality, one of the primary benefits is raising the level of growth because of-- it puts more money in the hands of people at the lower end? >> i think for a lot of reasons but when societies are a bit bit more equal poor kids have a better chance. instead of losing what they can contribute and having them not be able to get the education the skills the talents more equal societies have more mobility. and so this is a major reason why we find statistically pretty strongly now that less-equal societies suffer a weakness of their growth compared to relatively more equal societies. >> rose: did you see the story today in "new york times--" changes of address offers a pathway out of poverty. study finds surprises on upward

mobility." the interesting thing about it, kids were taken to a different kind of place geographical address, neighborhood. >> absolutely. >> rose: they did better and there was a previous study that suggested that might not be the result so it study is important to say thank god. we know that things can change if we can improve the place where people grow up. >> it's exactly right. and it's frot a surprise but it's an advance on understanding. kids are affected by their family situation, by what their parents are able to contribute to a healthy environment, a healthy start, education. therethey're also affected by their neighborhoods and that's why you can have poverty traps where places get stuck. they just get stuck. the communities aren't functioning. in our country with so much mass incarceration, that's another piece of the agony it occasionally. and the u.s., which has prided itself throughout its history as being the land of opportunity,

the country of high social mobility because of our hugely widened income inequality over the last couple of generations now has quite low social mobility sad to say -- >> some people are locked in. >> kids that grow up in poor families are more likely to be poor when they grow up and it's not like that in some other places. >> rose: let me switch back to the environment. >> sure. >> rose: how bad is it? just tell me where we are right now? >> you know, i direct an institute of scientists at columbia university, and i think it's true every week and sometimes within the week every day that someone comes up to me and says "jeff it's worse than we thought. we've just uncovered another trend, another feedback mechanism, how dangerous this is." we're on a path starting with global warming that will put earth outside of anything ever experienced by humanity because, of course, our species is estimated to be about 200,000

years old, but we're going to have a climate that hasn't been seen on this planet for millions of years perhaps on the trajectory that we're going. and what one of our great climate scientists at the earth institute, james hanson, has shown and found in all of his research is that when the earth had the same kind of atmosphere of carbon dioxide and the temperatures that we're heading towards, sea levels were self meters higher than they are right now. the risks to the world's great cities are tremendously large. and what we're finding is that that, of course, comes from the disintegration of the ice sheet-- antarctica, greenland -- >> they're melting. >> that's happening. they're melting or they're calling f.a.a. falling into the ocean because often they're kept on the land, these glaciers, by part of the ice being underwater. the water in which the glacier

is sitting is warming up so the but tress that keeps this massive ice sheet from falling into ocean is itself disappearing and you get massive breaking up of the ice sheets. it's not just the gradual melting. it's actually the disintegration of a part of the ice sheet also which we risk, which means sudden, serious increases of sea level, unpredictable. no one knows the year. certainly not the date. but the risk is very real. and looking at what the scientists call the paleoclimate record, the prehistoric record they can decipher, using chemical signals, isotopic measurements and so forth it's a bad sign that we're heading towards a kind of climate that is so different from the climate that humanity has evolved and developed civilization in, that the risks are absolutely profound. >> rose: is it too late? >> the government's defined six

years ago a threshold, a level, a guardrail it's sometimes called. they had we must not let global warming go above two degrees celsius, or 3.6 agrees fahrenheit. we're about halfway there. what the number refers to is the temperature compared to before industrialization started. so say around 1800. we've increased the temperature on the planet almost one degree celsius, and that means about 1.8 degrees fahrenheit already. not quite, but just about. so we're about halfway there charlie. and the trajectory that we're on, according to what the climate models and forecasts say, we'll not only reach two degrees celsius, three four, five, six degrees is possible by the end of this century on our current trajectory.

it's unextraordinarily short period of time that we have left to make the change to a safe energy system. what this is all about is getting out of the carbon-based energy, the coal, oil and gas and getting to the wind, the solar, the other safe kinds of energy that could stabilize the climate. carbon is the story and de-carbonization is the operative phrase of what we need to do. we need to decarbonize the world energy system. and we grew up as a world economy, as a modern era,ing with a fossil fuel-based energy system. >> rose: lot of people now seem in favor of a tax on carbon. >> that is one of the tools that definitely needs to be used to give a signal -- >> am i wrong about that? my impression is people i'm surprised by are in favor of a carbon tax. >> and i think people would be surprised to know that even the oil companies, many of them are

saying, let's get this under way. let's make it predictable. and so shell and other companies are saying we need a carbon tax. it's really something. it's quite striking. because everyone that looks at this scientifically knows that this is an incredibly dangerous path. and we've been basically spinning our wheels for now more than 20 years since we signed a climate treaty-- we haven't implemented it. so the time is really running out to keep some measure of safety. >> rose: and you have said that the u.n. meeting in paris is the last chance to keep the temperature 2 degrees below celsius. >> we have actually three big negotiations coming up in just the next few months. just happened that this is the diplomatic overload. paris-- that is the last chance to stay below this limit that

has been set, this threshold or guardrail. then a few weeks before paris in september, we're supposed to adopt sustainable development goals. and then a few weeks before that, there is -- >> "we" being the-- >> the 193 member states of the u.n. i say "we" i'm over there with the general assembly but that's exactly what it means. it means the whole world basically. >> rose: and all eyes are on china. >> well, china's eyes are on the u.s., thank you. china is saying -- >> you've been doing it longer than we have. >> china is saying, "look you do it, we'll do it." for a long time the united states has said to china, you do it we'll do it." i think we're finally coming together. last november was a major event when president obama and president xi madeang agreement together that basically said for the first time we're going through the door together. and the rest of the world sighed a huge sigh of relief and said,

"thank goodness the two biggest economies in the world are finally working together on this." china and the u.s. have also agreed to work on the technologies that we need to get to, the advances in decarbonization that are so crucial. >> rose: are they ahead ofinous terms of that development? they do have a higher level of penetration by wend and solar do they not? >> well, they have the massive solar industry by promoting it so much in the last 15 years basically. they've driven down the price of solar cells solar photo voltaic so much that it becomes truly a feasible technology all over the world. we give china a lot of credit for taking on the early production, scaling it up and making it possible for africa or new york city -- >> that has always been the challenge to make it price competitive. >> the price has come down by

factor 100 since the late 70s. it used to cost $70 per watt of solar power. now it's down to about 70 cents. this is an incredible brooek through. >> rose: is storage capacity a big problem? >> when you have any kind of intermittent energy like wind and solar it's not blowing all the time it makes it very hard to run a power grid on that basis unless there's storage. another place we need storage is under the hood. if we're going to have electric vehicles that really perform the way people would like their automobiles to perform, and we have some great new electric vehicles, of course, on the market, but batteries are key. storage, faster recharging of the batteries, longer range-- all of this is very important. >> rose: hasn't elan musk announced plans for the home, a battery-powered home.

>> he is maybe our premiere entrepreneur in the united states he did spaceex and tesla. he is now going to be moving into the home market for storage so if people are living off grid that they can rely on wind or solar where they are and store the energy. he's also saying if people are worried about backup energy sources in case of the grid failure and so forth. so, yes, he's moving in that direction. i spoke with him recently. and he said when i asked "what do you need for the breakthrough in electric vehicles just to finally sweept market?" and he said, "the answer is batteries." and he gave me all the specs. he said we're on the case. we're on the direction. we're going to make it. if there were also scientific investments being made this would, of course, speed the breakthroughs, but he was pretty

confident that we're gog get there. >> rose: would that be an appropriate area for-- to be part of the federal budget? >> absolutely. >> rose: the encouragement of battery technology. >> absolutely. >> rose: go ahead. >> you know we spend about. >> rose: national priority. >> completely. we spend about $30. bl right now on biomedical research through the national institutes of health, but when it comes to clean energy, decarbonized energy, it's about one-tenth of that, about $3 billion a year. and yet we have a $100 trillion world economy that depends on decarbonization. we haven't quite meshed the unbelievably high stakes we have in the energy transuition the ran dthat goes into it. what we (our experience in this country, when the government has been determined to make a breakthrough-- for instance, the human genome project or the mission to space or promoting

computers and internet, of course, it hasn't done it by itself put it's been fundamental and work together with the private sector to make the huge breakthroughs. >> rose: you also beyond the tax on carbon, which can be done in a number of ways, you're calling for raising the tax on gasoline sold at the pump. >> we're stuck, of course. we have an anti-opinion four cent a gallon tax on gasoline which is the same it's been at the nominal level-- not adjusting for inflation-- since 1993. now, in the u.s. we have an added problem which is we use that gasoline toox repair our roads for the federal highway trust fund which is broke this spring. so we basically have bankrupted our capacity to manage our modern infrastructure in this country. it's mind-boggling. we have by far the lowest

gasoline taxes of any any country in the world but we haven't even kept pace with inflation much less raise the revenues to help keep the infrastructure instability. >> rose: is it the case that republicans and democrats can agree on the need to repair the infrastructure, especially things that are dplaering, like major highways and elect grid and bridges for example? but they can't agree on the way to finance it. the goals are the same, but the financing-- >> sure, one could say that. >> rose: is it true or not i'm asking. >> you don't know because-- if you're opposing a practical measure which is the way we've been amphibiousing infrastructure for decades i don't know whether one can say they share the goal. i would say to congress right now, now is the moment. the trust fund is empty. world oil prices have come down so far just in the last few months, that if we raised the

gasoline tax -- >> they came down and then went back up. >> a little bit. they started here, come to here, and they've come back a little bit. if we raised the gasoline tax we would be so much better off eight or nine months ago consumers would still be enjoying the schoon right now and we could fund our infrastructure again. >> rose: so what's the impact of shale gas and oil joon the one hand, shale gas has lowered world prices of oil and gas and especially in the u.s. pauses this is -- >> it makes us the largest oil producer in the worlt doesn't it? >> we became not own the most successful in this now technology and by some measures the largest overall, but but we have

driven down world prices with an an added benefit to consumers. all good, some would say except interest two things-- gas is not the end stop for solving the climate crise at all. people point out rightly that gas is cleaner than coal but gas is nowhere good enough in terms of low carbon. >> rose: do we need a kind of man on the moon project here? >> i grew up with the man on the food project watchingef space shot. it was brilliant. president kennedy said in easterly 1961 we would put a man on the moon and bring him back safely to earth by the end of the decade. that spirit we sliewblght need. this time it is different. we have a private sector alongside the public sector. but the spirit of moon shot, we

need to say for our safety we need to move to low carbon energy and we can get there. >> rose: china is building a lot of coal-powered plant? >> china is actually peaking in coal and ising about a lot of nucleares and renewables now. the chinese leadership, partly because the air is so dirt, we're moving away from coal. they're promising to level-- they could probably have peek coal that reaches the maximum and just start down the next two years. it's a huge step forward. >> rose: what scientific link is there between climate children global warming, and what we're seeing in terms of hurricanes and storms and you remember when hurricane sandy hit, the question was raised is this a cons consequence?

and people say you can't say it was a oncequence a 1 to 1 consequence but it reflects something. >> when superstorm accepted hit the east coast of the u.s. that storm-- for whatever reason it came-- was made much worse by the fact the sea level on the eastern seaboard one foot higher than a century ago. that mass 52 higher is from climate change, is from warming in many different ways. then on the question of whether we're getting more extreme event overall-- more droughts? yes. more extreme prippization? yes. more heat waves? yes. and most likely in most of the ocean basined around the world,

top category, there seems to beab increase velocity at the beginning of these cyclones. >> rose: some provide a link-- >> my colleagues did a study of syria, which had between 2006 and 2010 the worst drought in its nrnd history. what happened in syria the rains failed. that is a region prone to droit but where global warming is expected to draetly spruce overall rainfall. in 200sex to 10, failure of crops. then populations had sored moved to the peripheries of cities. there was a lot of unrest with

higher food prices. developmentistrations against government in early 2011. a crackdown, a-- and now there's a full-fledged blood letting. a terrible disaster. you can say that the drought was the cause of everything? , of course, not. but can you say it was one of the provoking elements? absolute. >> rose: you can say the drought in california is linked, too? >> the drought in california and the drought in the american southwest-- i was just in arizona-- is the kind of signal that we would expect from the trends that we're on right now. again, whether this particular experience in california proves that or not, it's pretty devastating. it shows us how sllo we are. and my colleagues say bee have

shown where in the the latter part of the century, we will have droughts. >> rose: president obama measure his, 1 intent and goals. 2, his action and deeds. >> intent, very strong to get climate change under control. he wants to leave a legacy. he knows how important is this. no doubt about it. he worked hard for that u.s.-china joint initiative. he has worked very hard for a number of years now to get regulations that would stop the building of new coal-fired power plant. he's under a lot of attack from the fossil fuel industry for this. so he's standing up. so far the courts are backing every step of the e.p.a. but this is america.

that means lawsuits. but president obama i believe will go forward and sign a strong agreement in paris by the end of the year. >> rose: there are a lot of so-called defort myers around. you see them from congress to academics, academy as well. is there an argument that they make that you think raises questions? exwrany of their arguments. >> just to say. two-thirds of americans in every recent survey say climate change is happening and should be controlled. there's a strong majority for moving in the direct of safety. what's the essence of the argument that climate defort myers make. it's cyclical. i think their there different groups pep i have identified in

my own ference three dinner groups, there are ream free market ears who takes the logic-- we don't want want government to regulation anything. that means climate change true. they go from politics to science, doubt or denial, not very convincing. >> rose: there are rfundamentallists who say the earth is new all of this season, we tonight really in. it's small but real. peng there are a confuse by lobby. and that's the merchant. there's been a lot of confusion

in the mediae, soaf thick fer people to understand isep liept sceeps is over one had been years ode and it was 1896 about what higher co2 would mean for the atmosphere and the depends the the planet. he just got it brilliantly. >> rose: what about the actions or successes on the part president? >> i think the successes have been modest. we haven't passed legislation. we don't have a legal framework other than the regulatory initiatives being taken. we need a lot more. one thing i'd really like to see from the u.s. government is a pathway. how should the u.s. decarconnize, up to the

mid-century, but how are we going. >> rose: is there a model for that? >> there is. i am working on goals-- you need to think ahead. how are we going to tap wind. >> rose: you saw also raw capitalism is too powerful for its own good and also suggest our current economic lovely. >> i'm a macroeconomy by trade and trade for many decades now pand the power of the profit motive is absolutely extraordinary. you just have to take your hat off and hail it. it makes the whole economy-- i consider it a juggernaut.

it just grows and groiz and grows. but here we have reached boundaries, boundaries of safety, and that's what the market economy by itself. we need to say "stop we need to put some limits on this and theor true. >> some powerful economic sources have to make shaargument, that wasn't all. in essence, a very powf scrugger naught, globalization pot one han. >> jeffrey sachs, "the age of sustainable development." thank you for joining us. see you next time.

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this is "nightly business with tyler mathisen and sue herera. they corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to enrich themselves. soccer scandal. the world's most popular game and the most lucrative sporten broiled in a massive decades long embroiled corruption sche sauce, why mcdonald's is becoming more secretive as they try to turn the business around. pay for performance. tieing cancer drugs to how well they work. all of that and more for the "nightly b" for wednesday, may 27th. i'm tyler mathisen sue herera is off