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If you want to get an advance machine tool job today, you need to know calculus. We know a lot of people don't, we can't expect everyone to know calculus, what do we do? We created a huge bubble that created a huge number of jobs to build houses and to be in retail. You don't have to have a lot of skills to work in the new Gap store that opened, at the latest Starbucks branch, or to hammer a nail for a new house.
Something really big happened in the world's wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I'm always struck that Facebook, Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, high-speech broadband, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago.
I think no country is going to be immune from the Arab awakening because the Arab awakening is driven by deep human longing for dignity, for justice and for freedom. I think that applies to young people in Saudi Arabia as much as to young people in Egypt, Tunisia, or Yemen, or Libya, or Syria. If I were in Saudi Arabia, I would be getting ahead of this and looking for ways to appreciate those aspirations and align my country with them.
There is definitely global warming, and man is definitely contributing to it. Go out to, say, Montana and talk to some pretty conservative people, hunters and fishermen. They know that in the trout stream they fished when they were growing up, the trout are stressed because the water temperature is going up. They know the hunting season has been delayed because the snows are coming later, and therefore the elk aren't coming down from the mountains.
I'm a radical pro-immigration advocate. I'm not saying we just look at the Muslim world or we just look at China, we just look at India as a source of our talent. But, one thing we know... first or second generation or new immigrants or children of immigrants have started about 40% of the Fortune 500 companies. For me it's always been a really very important issue that I want America to be open to the most energetic and talented people from around the world.
What I want is natural gas to be a bridge to a cleaner energy future, not a dam against a cleaner energy future, not a dead end. To get this right, to get the most out of it, we not only have to make sure we exploit natural gas in a clean way - it's a challenge - but we also have to make sure that we are instilling and implementing all the incentives to win solar, nuclear energy efficiency that will make them continually competitive with natural gas in the future.
I have no problem with a war for oil-if we accompany it with a real program for energy conservation. But when we tell the world we couldn't care less about climate change, that we feel entitled to drive whatever big cars we feel like, that we feel entitled to consume however much oil we like, the message we send is that a war for oil in the gulf is not a war to protect the world's right to economic survival-but our right to indulge. Now that will be seen as immoral.
America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products.
If I were advising President Obama, since he's the one running, I would have made his campaign very simple. I promise that in four years, I will get more Americans, as many as I possibly can, the opportunity and access to some form of post-secondary education. I want more of them to graduate high school with the skill-set of post-secondary education and I want more of them to be able to obtain that post-secondary education. This is the only way we are going to close the income gap.
Oil is a tangible commodity, so there is a global market. The fact that we may need less may affect the global price because we're big consumers: we probably take about a quarter of global demand. But if suddenly, let's just use a crazy example, fighting in the Middle East led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and no oil could get out through the Strait of Hormuz, well that would affect China, India, Europe, it will affect the whole global economy. It will affect us, too, then.
I think that the drama of people rising up demanding their own freedom is one that resonates very deeply with America. I think that President Barack Obama has tried and would like to find a way to relate to the Arab Spring, but I think he also wants to be, rightly, very careful that we don't take it over. It is very important that they own this. He is trying to influence it this way but without, "We're so never going to go to the extreme of Iraq and putting boots on the ground again."
Today, natural gas now outstrips coal as the leading provider of electricity in America. If this is as big as people believe it is, natural gas will soon be powering trucks and marine ships. Maybe even standard commercial cars that people use at home through compressed natural gas, other gas to liquids. The potential is there for more energy independence by America and a reliance on cleaner fuel - natural gas emits half as much as coal, in terms of carbon emissions. That's a real bounty.
I am being very humble about the Arab Spring. There's kind of a competition out there, you might have noticed, of who can be the first to say the Arab Spring is going to fail. Everyone says, "I told you so, I told you so about the Muslim Brotherhood." I have no desire to tell anyone anything. I don't know. I'm just listening, watching. It may turn out all these people are right, they may be wrong. They may be right this year and wrong next year, by the way. I'm just trying to listen day to day, figure it out.
You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?
If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you're not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say "it is a 401(k) world." Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it.
I am always a little skeptical on the water thing because I have been hearing that for 30 years, but one year it's going to be true. With the rising populations, Yemen could be the first country in the world, or Sana'a the first major city in the world, to run out of water, that's from Yemeni hydrological engineers and the United Nations. Sooner or later, all of these people, from 7 to 9 billion, all of them want to live like America, will be consuming so much more water that some of the societies will hit a wall without more sustainable environmental practices.
At the end of the day, no amount of investing, no amount of clean electrons, no amount of energy efficiency will save the natural world if we are not paying attention to it - if we are not paying attention to all the things that nature give us for free: clean air, clean water, breathtaking vistas, mountains for skiing, rivers for fishing, oceans for sailing, sunsets for poets, and landscapes for painters. What good is it to have wind-powered lights to brighten the night if you can't see anything green during the day? Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.