I think the best way to control a population is to urbanize and to educate women. We have seen historically in many, many countries that once women are educated and have opportunities, and that happens when they live in cities and once they improve their economies, they no longer want to have eight kids.
Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.
The United States is not longer going to be the world's policemen and our days of determining you're in or you're out around the world no matter what the level of direct American interest or connection are going to be very limited. Increasingly, Africa will be doing that.
The two world wars boosted American power and devastated potential rivals to an extent that could not have lasted more than a few decades.
I think graffiti is part of Berlin culture. You think about what the Berlin wall meant and how visible that was in everyone's life. How it was a part of their very identity.
Berlin is a very edgy place, a very cosmopolitan place. It's a place where completely different ideas and cultures come together and clash in a very warm way. In a very warm-hearted way.
We live in a fantastically wealthy country. We don't have to worry about food. We don't have to worry about clothing. We don't have to worry about our safety. It's very easy for me to be an environmentalist. It's very easy for me to care about making sure that we protect the forests and the whales, and all that stuff.
I think that the environment is very a complicated question. I am very sympathetic to people who support the environment who live in the United States. I am very sympathetic to people who don't support the environment who live in a very poor country.
I absolutely am an environmentalist. I am probably more of an environmentalist than most people who live in the world, but I think that comes from my position in the world and that doesn't make me a better person.
It's very hard for someone who makes $1,000 a year or some who makes less than $1 a day to care about the environment.
I would rather people not smoke. I certainly appreciate the fact that smoking is not legal in restaurants and bars. That used to stop me from going out at night because you'd go someplace and your clothes would reek and you wouldn't enjoy the experience and that affects your rights. It's always a question. Whenever you are talking about these issues, it's not a question of restricting rights. It's a question of restricting whose rights, and providing for whose rights and that's a tricky balance.
In environments where corporations become too interventionist and capture regulation themselves, the government must be able to battle back so that the people have a chance.
I would rather people not smoke. I certainly appreciate the fact that smoking is not legal in restaurants and bars. That used to stop me from going out at night because you'd go someplace and your clothes would reek and you wouldn't enjoy the experience and that affects your rights. It's always a question.
There is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
In the nearer term, the likeliest source of risk is a conflict between China and the U.S. These are now the two largest economies in the world, and the combination of their economic interdependence, the sharp differences in their political and economic values, and the growing divergence in their interests makes this relationship potentially dangerous for everyone who might be affected by it - which means pretty much everyone.
It’s foolish to talk of an “Asian century” or an “emerging market century” because events move at a pace that renders this degree of durability obsolete.
Whether it is gun control lobby, health care lobby, or abortion, pro-choice lobby, whatever it is, people are always trying to say that it is about restricting rights and they are never really prepared to talk about what the honest tradeoffs are. One of the things we need to do a better job of is actually painting those tradeoffs.
I don't see a coherent global order anywhere on the horizon.
Climate is a global issue. Coal is still the energy that is being used more than anything else to make electricity. The United States is using less as we're turning more to gas. But, around the world, that's what they're using.
