>> rose: welcome to our program, tonight, iran and increasing tensions between that country and t westover nuclear pls and economic sanctions we begin with nazr, vali nasr, and david ignatius of the washington pt, a national security columnist and also best selling author of spy forms and jay solomon of the wall street journal. >> i think within the administration is a sense that, you know, we have got them where we want them to be. you make a good point that the regime feels it is threatened, that this is an existential threat to this regime and so it is going to fight back and, you know, i do hope the administration thought through

carefully what it would do if suddenly you were in a much more serious crisis next week, a month from now, whenever. >> rose: we continue with ian bremmer of eurasia group and his listing of the top risks to peace and economic progress in 2012. >> fear is actually the single biggest risk in 2012. it is not that the big things are blowing up, the euro isn't going to blow up, the united states is actually doing better than people think, china is not going to have a hard landing yet all of the headline risk around political volatility is keeping money on the side lines, it is keeping people investing in gold, and it is stopping the global economy from developing the way it probably should be. >> rose: these are things you call red her rings. >> that's right. >> we continue with jeremy rifkin his book is the third dustrial revolution. >> what happened in the last two years which is really interesting is this internet communication technology is just now merging with the new energy regime, distributed energy, and when they come together we create and infrastructure for a

completely new economic paradigm. >> rose: and finally this evening a bit of culture with a great italian novelist umberto eco. >> it was important for me to keep the character far away from the reader and far away from us in a way, at that point, well, as a writer it was also a pleasure to invent this disgusti character and i did my best in doing that. >> rose: iran, top risks, third industrial revolution, and umberto eco when we continue. funding for charlie rose was provided by the following.

additional funding provided by these funders. >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia and news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: tonight we turn to the growg concerns over iran, a report issued by t united nations in november stated there

is new evidence iran is carrying out activities that suggest it is developin a nuclear device. the u.s. and other major western powers have responded by imposing increasing economic sanctions in late december iran threatened to block the strait of hormuz the world's most important point in transit of oil since iran continued to sharpen its tone toward the united states, joining me now from washington, vali nasr of tufts university and ignatius of the washington post and jay solomon of the washington post. >> vali, let me start with you, where do you think iran is headed with this increasing type of response to the threats of onomic sanctions against oil which is a primary revenue source for that country? >> well, i think iran is wried about the next set of sanctions, because it already was hurting economically, the next set of sanction accounts cut into the government's revenue, it could

make it much more difficul diffr the government to meet payroll, to be able to subsidize many programs and it can also create political instability. until now, sanctions have been about things that iran couldn't buy, you know, preventing them from buying aircraft parts, consumer goods, industrial products, now the sanctions are going to be about cutting government revenue and i think iranians think the sanctions are moving into a whole new arena and therefore that is a problem. >> rose: jay, add to that. >> i think what we are seeing, i know there is a lot of fear amongst a lot of people that the financial war now on iran really is in some ways unprecedented, i mean, basically the their entire financial system is being cut off from the global economy and as of the end of this month there is going to be a european, basically embargo on all oil sales and i think there is a concern that you can have like a situation like japan, going into the second wor war where you had a full eargo on japanese

oil comi in from indonesia and lashed out with pearl harbor, a lot of people forget that this was kind of what happened before the japanese move, but the amount of the financial pressure on iran is so intense now and like vali is saying it is not what they can't buy, can they do any kind of global transactions when you target someone's central bank a lot of people think that is an act of war and what, how the iranians, are they just going to sit back? is this really just bluster because we had it before or sort of entering a new phase where the financial war is so intense that they almost feel that they have no choice now respond in some way and possibly in the investigates of zero hormuz or in the gulf would be the most likely place. >> rose: david there your own sources from the government and europe is there a growing concern about iran being a bit might do something crazy in a momentf conict? >> .. >> yes, i think there is concern

that ira might act in a provocative way, might try to stage a crisis, in part because it files backed into a corner. i think within the u.s. government there is a feeling that the policies that the obama administration has adopted are working, that this policy of ever tougher sanctions is really having a effect. what we have seen over the last couple of weeks in iran is something, the beginning of a real financial panic where pele are rushing to sell rials, the currency, the dollars are suddenly scarce, u.s. is working hard to make sure that they are as scarce as possible, and iran is feeling cornered, lashing out, making statements that are very strident, warning that the u.s. shouldn't send aircraft carriers back into the gulf, making other warnings. at the same time, interestingly, this week, the iranians signaled

with the turks who often have been their diplomatic partners that they might be interested in going back to the negotiating table, that they might be interested in rejoining the so-called p 5 plus 1 talks about some diplomatic resolution of this question of their enrichment. so on one hand they are lashing out with threats and on the other they are sending peace feelers and i think in t administration it has a sense they are responding to the pressure that is being put on them. there is concern, i think, charlie,bout the next step as sanctions get even tougher, making sure that that doesn't end up hurting the.s. and its allies more than it hurt iran, there is a lot of thoht going on now how to make this next set of sanctions work in an effectivway, to some extent deal with the problem of china, iran's most important oil customer. rose: you see that with respect to italy too, asking for gradual ratcheting up of the

sanctions because they have contracts with italian companies and things like that. >> this gradual ratcheting up that the europeans seem to be moving toward, i think is quite advantageous, again, from the standpoint of the u.s. and its allies because you don't have a sudden dramatic change, you have one contract runs out an does not renewed, another contract runs out and is not renewed and gradually just fewer places for iran to sell its oil and i think what the obama administration is trying to say is, iran has to choose, is it going to be an oil power with the oil revenues that go along with that and the solid economy, ois it going to be a nuclear power? increasingly the message is, you can't be both. >> rose: jay -- yes, go ahead, vali. >> i was saying david has it it right in the sense that sanctions are working and biting but whether they will change iran's behavior is a different

question, largely because you have a situation where the sanctions are now going to dermine, a new set of sanctions are going to undermine the stability of the regime and that actually encourages the iranian government to double down on the nuclear power there is a libya scenario here, if you are going to give up your nuclear power and also you are going to face popular unrest, the regime has no way of protecting itself against outside intervention and right now, there is no pathway before this regime in terms of how they would climb down from the tree, so in some ways, you know, the sanctions are being over successful, they are putting so much pressure on the iranian government it is actually taking away the incentive to participate in the -- to give up thr nuclear program. >> rose: david, go ahead, yes, please. go ahead. >> part of it too is like the question is do we end up hurting ourselves as well as david was saying, you know, the oil markets are very jittery and in some ways people think the

iranians want to cause these lets to cause the oil prices to spike up but also incredible diplomacy going on with saudi arabia, the united arab emirates, qatar and ghana and libya to jack up their oil production as a way to sort of keep the markets, and that is a big part of what igoing on in the diplomic fro, okay, we are going to get our allies like south korea and japan, italy to wean off of iranian oi but to do that they have to be assured that someone else, whether it is saudi arabia or the uaeis going to step up and fill that void. so it is very delicate and i think the iranian arsort of in a position they see what is going on and know this could hit them badly and in some ways the provocations are a way to make people realize this could go very badly if there is a huge global oil spike and it rebounds back into europe and the united states whic wii just seems to be coming out of an economic malaise so there is so much going on internationally with japan, south korea to try to get

these guys off and make sure other countries can fill void and it doesn't cause this spike you know, i just would note that one interesting thing for me this week with all the tension with the barbs being shot back and forth, the oil market was pretty stable, the oil went up only a fraction today and hovered around $100 for a while and i think what that tells us is the oil market has already discounted a lot of the danger of closure of the strait of hormuz, that is not to say if it actually happens it wouldn't spike again but if you look at the actual oil markets, charlie, this week with all of the noise, thethey were pretty calm. >> i agree with you but istill,e playing this is they have made a decision clearly to try to meet threats with threats and to up the ante and try to use the oil

markets to put preure on the united states and the west, and currently, the way this is playing out is tt the sanctions are not -- are not showing encouraging signs of iranians actually backing off, but rather, of the them trying to find a way to create trouble, so you the strait of hormuz they y take other action but a key decision has been made in iran that the best way of managing the west is to be preemptively aggressive and until and unless you have a situation where the iranians decide to back away from that strategy, you are running a danger and i think we are in a situation where the obama administration talks of sanctions as an alternative to war but the economic sanctions are almost putting us in a situation of greater risk of the iranians -- >> may choose to do something provocative and to go to war force military action, but, again, i think within the administration, there is a sense

that, you know, we have got them where we want them to be, you make a good point that the regime feels it is threatened, that this is an existential threat to this regime, and so it is going to fight back, and, you know, i do hope the administration has thought through carefully what it would do if suddenly you were in a much more serious crisis next week, a month from now, whenever. >> rose: vali you were part of the administration working with former ambassador holbrook, the late ambassador richard holbrook. do you believe there is a lack of an assessment of the damage they are doing to iran with the economic sanctions and what it might produce in terms of a reaction from them which might include doing something in the strait of hormuz? >> well, i think they understand that they are doing a lot of damage to the iranian economy and that is intentional as david said, they want to put pain on iraq, i think what they might be underestimating is that the iranians may not react in the way that the sanctions are

designed to do. secondly the sanctions and particularly on election year are designed to also for dealing with the domestic pressure on the president to be tough on iran, and -- but the iranians are not seeing the sanctions in a way as merely punitive. they are now seeing them as a much more of an existential threat, issues that jay mentioned for instance if you go out and get countries like ghana, saudi arabia, et cetera, to make capital investment in order to be able to produce more oil and bring it to the market, basically could cut iran out of the oil market for a much longer period of time so the iraans eier have to come to the table right now, tomorrow to stop the ghana or the saudi arabias to make this investment, otherwise down the road it would be much more difficult so the iranians have decided that if they came to the table right now, third not going to get as much, without being aggressive they may be able to deter the

european american action. >> rose: there is this dilemma it seems to me in terms of consequence. if, in fact, it is often said there is some military strike, that it would unite the iranians out of a sense of nationalism. is it possible that there will be some kind of uniting of the iranian populace, both reform and conservative, whether e government or the ayatollah and those forces around response to economic sanctions which are hurt the people, not just the governnt? >> charlie, i will take a first shot at that. the iranians will have parliamentary elections in march, so there will be a chance to have some reading, the iranian politics is so fragmented now with president ahmadinejad and the supreme leader ayatollah practically at war with each other, let alone the united states, and in a sense, it is -- if ever there

was a time to put pressure on iran, you could argue it is now because internally they are so divided. i found interesting this week this sense from the reports from our correspondent, in washington post has a resident correspondent in tehran, reports of a kind of bank run psychology there, i mean, people really getting nervous that war or something close toit is ahead, and reacting and, you know, if that continues or escalates, then you have a situation the government is going to have ouble controlling tehran and then things i think really get complicated and a the policy choices r the u.s. are in a much tougher -- i mean they are going to have to decide the thing they wouldn't decide i 2009, when the elections were, should we intervene to help the iranian opposition? >> i mean, too on the economic front because i was there in july, and i mean, ahmadinejad has over the last year has taken

some pretty radical economic policies and the imf was lauding him but he basically cut almost all price subsidies at the beginning of last year and it caused a huge spike in basically everything, because iranians were getting energy for free, basically, so you had, you know, evything from bread to water to electricity spike and now you have got the sanctions on top of that so when i was there in july most people were much more focused on ahmadinejad like why are you cutting these subsidies you have made our life so much more difcult, so the focus was more on the government than it was on the foreign, you know, the foreign impact of the sanctions but now with these other things i think you cod have as david wow said a very unstable situation and i mean do they blame the west now for this or do they focus on their own government? i don't know, but what has happened in the last week is feeding what already has been a very unstable economic situation. >> rose: some argue that iran -- go ahead, vali, you go ahead. >> i was going to say that also

we don't know how long itakes for this kind of economic pressure to translate into street protests, food riots, et cetera. the iranian government now sees the race of getting to the point of no return on the nucle program and facing street protests and riots caused by sanctions, so in an ironic way the tougher sanctions can give them an incentive to double down because if iran given its relationship with the west now wants to have street protests without a kind of nuclear capability to keep us out, wrong the administration or the europeans would make the mistake of 2009 as david said, they would intervene and i think ayatollah, ahmadinejad, the revolutionary guard understand this very well .. so the race to nuclear capability now is arace to survival, an iro ironically,i think maybe we are encouraging that. >> rose: here is what interests me as swell this

phenomenon. iran and its arab neighbors and iran and its relationship with syria and what happened in syria, what impact does it have on iran? what is iran's posture towards the shia and what is happening in iraq and are they using that as an opportunity to extend their influence there? do they have the capacity to support hamas and hezbollah as they have in previous times? take a crack at that, somebody. >> well the arab spring provided iran with some opportunities and some challenges, syria clearly is a headache for them, the regime was a close ally, syria was the main conduit for supplying hezbollah but iranians would feel if this thing is going to be played out over the next four or five years, a military strike with sanctions, et cetera, there are also strategic challenges in the region for the united states.

you know, egypt, you could look at the situation the in bahrain, iraq obviously has not turned out the way we thought, as soon as we took our finger off of it it is falling apart and having trouble with pakistan, afghanistan, et cetera, so there is a fluid regiol situation as well and we shouldn't look at just the iranersus israelor iran versus the united states as if this doesn't matter. i mean, the ability of the arab governments to support the united states is greatly contingent on how some of these things will play out, and iran and syria and then i think the iranians are also watching this carefully. i think a big mistake we might make is to try to sort of disassociate what is happening in the broader middle east with how do we handle iran, they then we may have some unexpected outcome. >> charlie, i would say in answer to the question that you posed, an and that vali was talg about, the iraans have in the part of the revolution guards,

what many people think is the most effective covert action arm in the world. it is very well deployed, it operates through surrogates like hezbollah, it is deeply embedded now in iraq. it is in a position to cause trouble in the eastern province of saudi arabia, where the oil resources are. so they are in a position to cause trouble. with tt said, i can't remember a time since i have been covering this over the last decade when iran's position has been as weak as it is now. >> rose: right. >> iran's key ally in the arab world, siri can't i mean that regime is --ooks like it is about to go. the sunni world has been energized by the arab spring all of the momentum for a while was with the shia movements, with iran as their patron, iran was the demand guard, that is past. the energy is elsewhere and i think the iranians feel it so

again. looking at this, it seems to me the iranians are on their back foot and their actions show it. this combination of bluster and peace feelers sit is fascinating but to me, i think it is not a strong iran in the way that it was. >> i don't disree with you, but there are also opportunities, just because you have a fluid circumstance, like if iraq begins to disingrate into much greater sectarian violence and provides them in ways to maneuver in a way they wouldn't if iraq has a stable government. iran could fall in different ways. the foreign minister at one point says if syria falls apart there are no winners that jordan or israel or lebanon would also be equally losers as iran might be. and so, you know, they are going to basically gain this, and as this sort of unfolds over a

period of time, the diplomatic forces, et cetera would provide them with some opportunities as well as with some hindrances. >> i think syria in at that lot of ways is going to be the mt interesting barometer because the blood, the number of deaths has gotten so high there, there has been this kind of push in some ways for some sort of intervention, and the arabs have never loved as sad because he was such a close ally of the iranians but there is a fear if there is any sort of movement by the arabs or the turks or french or some sort of coalition that could spark a wider conflict, what would iranians do if there was some intervention in iran, what would hezbollah do? and also as molly was saying, vali is saying, it is not clear, definitely if as sad goes down they lose a key patron but if you suddenly had a new government that had some muslim

brotherhood leanings the syria may come to accommodation, they seem to have a better relaonship with the egyptians than under number rec and i don't think a new government in syria would suddenly say we are not interested in getting the golan heights back let's have a peace deal with the israelis there could even be me of a highine that the as sad had and i think syria is going to be very kind of interesting barometer as far as who is up and who is down as this thing moves forward. >> rose: i have to leave it there, thank you, david, jay, thank you, vali. good to have you here. >> thank you. ian bremmer is here and president of the eurasia group, this week the group released its annual top risk report, identifies the upcoming years key political and gentleman political areas to, geo political areas to watch, i am pleased to havian bremmer here for the first time in 2012. >> gd to be here. >> tell me what topisk means

to you. how do you define top risk? >> the top risks are sort of the places that are going to cause volatility, and the way we rank them, the first, the likelihood of them having an impact, secondly, the size of the impact it is going to have and third how eminent, you put the three of those things together, pakistan is very likely to flow up but won't have great impact on the global economy so you havhave you have to push it dow. >> rose: i will come to other things but the end of the 9/11 e.r.a. is here, what do you mean by that. >> it is clear we are done with bin laden, al qaeda has been degraded significantly from a global perspective and we are t of iraq, we have pulled troops out of afghanistan, to it is not going well but we have a definable end date, talk about 9/11 it is done, that is in principle a good thing but what are we actually focused on? focused domestically our governments on our economies and the united states, europe and japan and also, of course, we are pivoting away from the middle east toward asia and the

markets don't like the fact that economics are on top of each other this year and make them more scared than ey should be, in other words, fear is actually the single biggest risk in 2012, it is not that the big things are blowing up, the euro zone isn't going to blow up, the united states is actually doing better than people think, china is not going to have a hard landing and yet all of the headline risk around political volatility is keeping money on the sidelines, it is keeping people investing in gold and it is stopping the global economy from developing the way it probably should. >> rose: these are things you called red herrings. >> that's right. >> they are not going to have the potential for explosion that we might presume, let me list them here .. because i have them. they are 2012 political transitions, elections in mention mexico, venezuela, kenya, and maybe egypt, political ansitions in the u.s., russia and france so you don't think -- you think that is a red herring to believe that will bring dramatic change or certaiy accelerated risk?

>> everyone is talking about 2012 as being the year where there is massive political transition, in fact, about 50 percent of the world's gdp is having political transitions in 2012, they are scheduled and yet won't have a very significant impact in the united states, we are not gointo have any legislation this year, in france, even if polan wins over sarkozy whic looks likely, they have the same view on the euro zo, many want putin out and they are not going anywhere and in china we have known the next leaders for some time so no major instability in these transitions. >> rose: and no mayan apocalypse. >> no mayan a pock lis lips and if i am wrong we won't be talking about it so that is safe. >> rose: so if you had to look at those things where history is getting better, where is that .. for example number 2 here as a risk is g zero in the middle east which is something i assume means there is no great sense of coming together on the middle

east. >> >> there isn't and there is no international capacity to maintain stability but the local forces are either not paying attention or they are fighting each other. so for example, the united states pulls out of iraq, china is not going to be in there, russia is not going to be there, the euro zone is not going to be there bhorks is going to help iraq put itself together and the answer is nobody and what is happening as a consequence is we are seeing maliki is under a lot of threat and starting to go after the sunnis, there is an explosion of sectarian violence that could accelerate. >> that is right, the g zero in the middle east is one of the biggest risks out there, it is not just in iraq, the syria, the arab league has shown itself to be ineffectual so the arab, the transition is not going well, and it is not likely to, so, you know, therare lots of -- the united states is absolutely not critical leadership and not indispensable in every part of the world, the euro zone doesn't

have geithner bailing them out they will mulled through themselves but the middle east absent any international intervention and absent effective regional powers that have leadership that can coordinate, we have got saudis, we have egyptians, we have got turks, we have got iranians, they are not playing well with each other. >> rose: all right. we also saw this week, the united states sort of announced at it is redirecting its focus. both in terms of its military focus as well as bringing some austerity to the pentagon, does the world welcome that? do they believe at long last the united states should be preoccupied with asia and with change in asia? >> well, publicly in the middle east, of course, they will say they welcome it, privately a lot of pokes don't. in asia, the america's asian allies have en begging for it, and singapore and japan, of course, and vietnam and indonesia, they have all been saying, look, we wantsome

commitnt. >> rose: we e worried about the china being our partner. >> i tell you, shin with a, the chines state media came out a few hours agand said the united states, that this new peagon speech, america was going to be a wl in,ull in a china shop, i can't imagine they meant that intentionally, asia ashe china sp but nonetheless the chinese clearly are feeling very, very insecure and defensive about the fact that the americans are now focusing laser like on asia as the key area for security. >> rose: how about north korea? >> i mean, i can't see how king jill un is going to run this country, the guy is 28 years old and groomed for less tn two years. there has been a series of high level accidents of party leade in the next 12 months they don't have that many cars there, this is not going to be a smooth transition what concerns me in the next month or two north korea is going to be relatively quiet because no one is going to suddenly move against this guy and we are going to forget about

it and leave the headlines but the transition will not have been affected there is the world's most totalitarian rime and one of the world's poorest and run by someone who is not capability capable of running it that is the single biggest country risk out there in 2012. >> you saw saw a program i did on iran that preceded you. >> i did. >> rose: what do you make of where iran is going? >> well, i think there are two things that are driving iran more in at that in a corner right now, the fixis that they are losing geo politically in the region, assad is on the wrong side and eventually forced out with civil war. >> rose: sooner rather than lar? >> he still has capacity, the arab league is ineffectual there is no libya option on syria right now s so he could hold on for a while it is going to be bloody and horrific. >> rose: there is no turning back on it. >> there is no turning back i think that is right and i think in bahrain the iranians are the losers supporting the shy a majority there, maliki has been

sort of the -- the sunnis are looking to move away from him so if you are iran, geo politically you are on the back foot, also more sanctions are going against iran and it is startinto bite, and there is new energy sanctions from europe because the countries that are getting oil from iran have all changed their governments recently, greece, spain, and italy all have governments now that are much less well disposed toward working with tehran and in the united states we have tougher sanctions coming though there are big holes you can drive through on the central bank. all that is making t iranians tweak quite a bit, they are not going to shut down the straits of hormuz, you know that it is economic sue sid but going this is going toe a provocative environment. >> there is the arab spring and there is the coming of islamic governments in which islamic parties have a majority the government. should we worry abt that? >> well, i think in a question, if you are talking about egypt of course, i think what we are

seeing right now is that the muslim brotherhood and the military both of whom have said they are not going to stand a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, they are going to work together, and they are going to work together to come up with someone that is going to run that country now, clearly, the odds on favorite in there, who everyone in the root is gng to root for is -- although he is not kind to the israelis because he used to be foreign minister folks can deal with him. >> rose: they know him. >> they know him and he is not going to be overtly offensive to the folks on tehrir square but if they go with someone else more attached to mubarek and the military regime you won't see legitimacy and so many of the folks who lost so much in the past month to bring about this transition are going to feel like they have knock to lose. and that is a danger. >> we have close ties to the military there there, i assume we are cautioning them not to overreact. >> we can caution them all we want but if you think we were not very effective in cautioning the europeans with too much

austerity, look, we are a taker and not a maker o foreign policy in the middle east and obama's speecmade that even more clear, we are trying to get something done in asia, i think that is right and it is over due, but it does mean that the middle east is going to be much more fractious. >> rose: finally this, tell me how america's relevancy in the word is changing. >> well, overtime, there really only, there are only real two options, either china is going to do well i which case the united states and china together are going to be coming up with some form of what the world is going to look like and maybe be cooperative and maybe it won't be. >> rose: g 2. >> or china is going to fall apart. >> rose: really? >> well senate the other option,. >> right and if china falls apart you don't get a g 1 because that would be very bad for the u.s. economy, what i am trying to say the world we had r the last 50 years, it isn't coming back, the only question is, who are we going to be sharing the sthaij with? and how are we oriented towards

them? that is a very different kind of world and kind of projection of power for the u.s. and what is very clear it is not fundamentally about the area that we have clearly dominated everyone else, the military side, it is primarily on the economic side, one we will have to focus a great deal more as our own government. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> go to see you, charlie, have a great day. >> rose: thank you, plus one. >> rose: ian bremmer. >> rifkin is here and president of the economic trends, the third industrial revolution is his new book and looks at the convergence of internet technology and energy i am pleased to have him on this program, welcome. tell me what the third industrial revolution is. >> well, it is based on a premise in how the great economic revolutions emerge in history and that is the great economic shifts really occ when two thingcome together en we create new energy regimes and new communication

and energy come together they really do change the way we organize society, very fundamental ways, for example the 19th century print technology became really cheap with steam power and put in public schools and created a very literal work force with the media skillings to work with comb and rail infrastructure. we couldn't have done it with illiterate work force and the 20th century centralized electricity, especially the telephone and later radio and television became the communication vehicles to manage the complexities of an auto oil culture in a suburbansociety and mass consumer society. now obviously that revolution, second industrial revolution is on life support, you know the fossiluel energies are getting expensive, the technologies are old, the infrastructure is dying but we are now on the cusp of the third industrial revolution which could rejuvenate the global economy we had a powerful communication revolution in the last 20 years, the intern, in whh interesting about the interesting is that it is organized so it is distributed and collaborative, i it scales

laterally so 2 billion people can now send their own video and text to each other with far more laterapower than the centralized telecommunication tworks of the 20th century. what happened in the last two years which is really interesting, is this internet communication technology is st now merging with a new energy regime, distributed energy, and when they come together we create an infrastructure for a completely new economic paradigm. >> rose: what is the best example of that where the merge has taken place. >> the best example is germany, i work with the chancellor since she came into office and they are working on all pistons, remember they started the second industrial revolution with the internal combustion energy. >> germany has targeted 20 percent green energy, renewable energy by 20-20, germany now exceeded that that's and going to 35 percent green electricity way ahead of the united states, piar 2 is interesting how do you collect

renewable energy because it is found everywhere, the sun, the wind, the heat under the ground, garbage backed energy, ocean tides tides so pillar 2 what germany is doing is converting every single building in germany to your own green power plant so you can collect sun on the roof, wind all the walls, geothermal heat under the ground and t new buildings they are putting up a actually positive power this jump starts construction, this gets thousands of smes moving, small to medium side size businesses and millions of labor hours think of think way, 1970, centralized mainframe computers, controlled by a few companies, they shared the information. steve jobs comes along, creates a desktop computer, now the internet, and now 2 billion people create their own information and share it, so in germany the same idea, pillar 2 you are going do have your own power plant and now thousands and thousands of buildings creating their own power, pillar 3 you have to store this energy because the sun isn't shining all the time and sometimes the

wind isn't wloag when you need it so the idea is to create a storage carrier with hydren, hydrogen will store these energies soive sun hits the roof of your house you generate a little green electricity, add surplus you don't need, you put think water, hydrogen comes out in a tank when the sun is not shining on your roof in berlin you convert that hydrogen back to electricity, pillar 4 is where the communication technology comings together with e energy. we use off the shelf internet technology, and we trance form the power grid, the transmission grid of europe, germany and europe into an energy internet that actually, that acts exactly like the internet so when millions of buildings in germa are storg their own energy, storing hydrogen like you store media and digital and if they don't need some of that energy they can share it like the internet to the door steps of russia and five is plug and transport, fuel cell vehicles in three years so you will be able to plug in your vehicles anywhere, get green electricity

from the grid or sell your own back. >> rose: at is the time line for this? in jeremy theyre moving quick and testing the energy internet in six regions and created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, i would say on infrastructure in place, by 20-20 five, and they are definily leaded the world into this new e.r.a. >> how long will we immediate fossil fuel is. >> the problem is the crisis we are facing i think we haven't come to grips with and the real earthquake was july of 2008, remember when oil hit $147 a barrel and everyone stopped purchasing because all the other prices went up, because everything is made out of fossil fuels, fertilizers. >> rose: of course. everything, yes. >> and that was the earthquake and the collapse of the financial market was the aftershock related but what we have learned in the business community now is tha we know outer limits how far we can glalize the wld bed on fossil fuel about $150 a barrel and every time that happens all the other price goss up, purchasing power goes down and

shuts down. so what i think we are seeing here is the beginning of a long tortuous end game over the next 225 years and try to start to te engine again. >> you change the economic model what do you do. >> you put in these five pillars in every city and region this and this is what they did in the 20th century, first they came up with the car and put in the pipelines for the oil and then put in the highways and the interstates and then put in the suburban shopping centers and housescross the interstates and all went together as a package, and what germany does well is public private partnerships, they realize that to lay town an infrastructure for a new economic revolution requires government at every region has to work with the buness community to create these nodes, these infrastructures and then you create all sorts of new business opportunities, and lots of jobs, and germany is the most robust industrial economy in the world today and leading exporting power in the world with china,

it only has 80 million people so what i have been saying to my colleagues here in the states is, we ought to take a look at what they are doing, german business, they are very smart and if they think the third dustrial revolution has long legs we ought to take a deep look. >> rose: where is the technology coming from? who were the pie in other words in terms of creating alternative energy sources? because, you know, you look at the enormous amount of capital that china is pouring into alternative energy sources at the same time enormous amount of pollution china is creating because it is engaged in its own kind of industrial revolution. >> well, you know, the long and the short of it is a lot of the solar operations in the united states and wind operaons are coming from europe, somebody of the companies in my group are european companies. >> rose: and the scanned nature companies several that have been very, very -- >> very successful. the wind companies, the solar companies so if you go out west and where you haveanchers that are leasing out their land to wind farms, those are european companies by and large and same

with some of the large solar operations out west we should do it here, what has hapned is, we created silicon vali, that was the internet part of this revolution and brought universities together with companies, what europe is doing is creating putting their internet technology together with green energy and they are creating all sorts of new business practices and models. what is critical here is you take these five pillars, separately they are nothing, when you put them together they credit a node as we say and it ishat node, it is a synergies between those pillars that creates all the new business opportunities and if you don't do that you are los i hope i don't step on toes but where president obama made his mistake here he really wanted a green economy and his heart was in it but he sidined all of the projects that they spent money on so you would get a battery factory over here a they financed the solar company over here, they didn't connect them , there was no narrative, there was no vision, so we ended

up waste ago lot of the taxpayers dollars actually. >> rose: do you favor cap and trade or tax on carbon >> well, i think that some kind of carbon tax is inevitable, but really the reason i wte the third industrial revolution it is an economic model it is not an energy plan, not a climate plan, it is an economic model to transform this society, but it more effectively addresses climate change and energy security than all the targets and taxes you can put together because it is about business and creating millions of jobs and thousands of new opportunities. and i think that is what european companies are picking up on. especially germany. >> the book is called a third industrial revolution how lateral, lateral power is transforming energy, the economic and the world, thank you. >> tnk you very much. >> rose: good to see you. >> nice to be here. umberto eco is here and a philosopher, he a novelist and best known for his book the name of the rose. his latest novel is called "the prague cemetery, it is about

anti-semitism and conspiracy theories, the spanish newspaper said the novel restores the irreverent and provocative spirit of great literature i am pleased to have him back at this table, welcome. >> hi, charlie. >> rose: let's talk about the book you have cread a despicable, terrible, hateful character. >> yes. >> tell me, who -- how did you go about this? what was it you wanted to do? >> well, first of all, i was not the first one to think of shakespeare. >> right. >> these disagreeable characters. i certainly exaggerated for it. i wanted to design a racist, and among the other forms of racism, and anti-semitic person, so i was maneuvering such a dirty,

material that it was important for me to keep the character far away from the reader, and far away from myself in a way. at that point, well, as a writer, it was also a please your invent this, it was also a pleasure to invent this disgusting character and i did my best in doing that .. >> rose: to the moral imperative here is what? in other words, you have said that this book was a moral imperative. >> no. i think that being a book about forgeries, the book -- >> rose: conspiracies. >> conspiracies, and the book about the biggest -- the most tragic of the forgeries, is the protocols of the -- that they inspired even hitler. >> rose:.

>> for doing what he did. the was a more im, a moral imperative that is it is not necessary to have a moral imperative to write a novel but this time it was to make evident how a forgery can be concocted and produced, how forgery, how the protocols, like the protocols are very difficult evolution, because they affect many hands, they are something like the frankenstein monster made up with different -- >> frankenstein monster with different corpses. >> and to make the reader aware of the self contributoriness, the scandal of the protocols, they are so naively sel contradictory that you could think that it is impossible to take them seriously. the scandal on the protocols that after they proved to be a

fake in 1921, by their own -- they were republished and then republished and still believed more and more, an incredible phenomenon, i triedto explain what sort of swamp was beneath the growth of this text. >> rose: the chacterwhere did you get his name from? >> that is a historical, because the grandfather of my character simon was allegedly a historical person, at the end of the 18th century, he had a book of the paranoia of general conspiracy saying that the french revolution had been planned by the knight o tell particulars,

the philosopher of -- and many other people and it was received, he was saying, ha, ha, you have forgot. and thisletter contains all the cliches that then in the 19th century were used against the jews. did captain simon really exist? was that a forgery or a real letter, we don't know. we know as a historical evidence that this letter was used and published and republished many times in the 19th century, so it got a certain affect in order to produce -- it was not the only anti-semitic attacks produced in that century, but in part it heed, step by step, to arrive to the protocols. >> rose: he is the only fictitious character in the book?

>> yes, all the other ones are true, and that's why they look so fictional, there is nothing morphickional than history, studying characters that really existed, you though, there is a character there that everybody believed it was invented by me and i was a genius. no. he was really existing. he was a professional liar, changing the kind of lies, opinions, positions, every season with a sort of erotic taste for fakes. an incredible character, and he existed. >> rose: he is driven by the desire for food and the hatred of jews? >> food is another story. i gave to my character an enormous quantity ofood as a stut f sex, and i thought that the reader could have been

disgusted for such an amount of food, but since i worked to find the typical dishes of that period, the names, the french names of those dishes, so fascinating that people believed i was making this up. and i said, no, i am a mcdonald person, they thought i was a chef. >> in writing this book, you hoped it would be a remind to all of us to be vigilant about anti-semitism? >> y, i think so. you know, there was a position in the jewish community, at least the two articles, that maybe somebody can take seriously or argue anti-semitic arguments, but the response you can find on the internet, so it is not that -- but another rabbi in the a meeting said sometimes

for political correctness we try not to mention those cliches, those stereotypes, and so we tend to forget them. why they are still alive, they are still circulating, there are still people sharing those ideas, so it is important to spell it loud and to remember that they are there and they are still very strong. >> rose: there is also a lot of lists in this book, lists of this, lists of that. >> i have written an illustrated book on lists. i think that in the history of literature, lists are an important stylistic device, i used a lot of lists in my own novels, and, therefore, there are lists ao there. it is part ofeofon -- one - y styles. >> rose: and so you started

writing thoferls because you had stories you want to tell? >> i discovered not to have a definite answer to this question, because i can give numerous answers, for instance, the fact that i told stories to my children and i grew up -- >> rose: yes. >> but the real -- the real answer is that i wish to do that. it is -- it is like falling in love. there is no explanation. it happens. but i was a great narrator in my childhood, simply i start many novels and i stop them at the first chapter, so i was the author of many unaccomplished masterpieces. >> rose: one chapter masterpieces. >> yes. >> rose: what is theuture of the novel? >> i think, first of all, what is the future of narration?

because there are many forms of narrative which are not necessarily the genre of the novel, because there are what are called natural -- what comes from outside, i tell you oh i have seen somethi extraordinary, there was an accident, we are always telling stories, the mothers, so the narrative is a fundamental human activity. >> will you immediately start on another novel or wait until the idea -- >> my novel took six years at least and the next in eight years, in one month i will be 80. >> rose: in one month you will be 80? >> yes. 80 years old so if i survivor until 88, maybe. >> rose: the pragu "the prague , umberto eco, thank you. great to see you. pleasure. upporting this program

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