>> from our studios in new york city, mrs. charlie rose. -- this is charlie rose. >> he is the author of foreign policy begins at home. prior to that he was director of policy planning at the suez state department for president bush 43 and was a close adviser in powell. i am pleased to have him back at this table. in yourd is going what characterization? rex you think about the current -- metaphor for the correction. if there were a share of stock called world order it would have lost 10% of its value. clearly the value is not what it was. >> is this one of those times that henry kissinger talks about where the world is reassessing the -- relationships or relationships are changing? >> we are at a time when relationships are awfully complex. they are neither allies nor adversaries. is spreadingthis around the world to defuse it into many hands and many forms. this is decentralized. we have moved along, next month anniversary.- 25th that is nota world tightly controlled in which many people are making consequential decisions. >> after the end of the cold war and the collapse of the soviet union, did the u.s. ms. an opportunity? to act as a catalyst for a new world order that would have had more sustainability? >> the answer is yes and i wrote a book -- it didn't sell very well -- called "the opportunity." there was a moment where the united states which had unprecedented power -- >> the sole superpower. >> an uncharacteristic historical moment. could we have done more to integrate more countries? i think the answer is yes, particularly after 9/11. the united states had opportunities and we pushed countries away. we saw multilateralism as constraining. what it have been peace and harmony for all time? no. could we have created more of a world order? the short answer is yes. >> in response to 9/11, first afghanistan and then the decision was made to go into iraq. that was the crucial mistake? >> it helped set into motion some of the events we are now seeing in the middle east. it is not solely responsible, but partly responsible. it weakened the appeal of the united states and made americans more weary about continuing global leadership. for lots of reason, i think the decision to go into war in 2003 will be picked apart by historians. >> everyone knows radical islam and jihadist groups who many say are kidnapping the religion are an agent of change today. what are the other agents of change? >> it is destructive agents. you can say there are other militias, pirate organizations, drug cartels -- those are nonstate actors. you can say it is a larger number of states. corporations, media organizations, large multinational corporations -- the catholic church is an agent of change. the gates foundation. the conversation recently about health issues. >> the rise of asia? >> agents of change and a reflection of change -- the fact that so many more of the world's wealth is concentrated there. so many of the world's people are concentrated there. >> the obama administration made a public declaration of a pivot to asia. was that a mistake? >> in some ways, it was the framing idea of this administration's first term in foreign policy to dial down what the united states was doing in the greater middle east and dial up to asia because that was recognized as the part of the world more likely to shape 21st century history. >> the president wanted to dial down and get us out of wars. >> the problem with the pivot is not the idea, it is the implementation. when i taught at the kennedy school, we used to argue that 90% of life is execution. pivot is a good idea. it reflects the fact that china is a big challenge. we have important alliance obligations. asia is where the wealth is. military powers rising, nationalism is rising. we are not doing it. we not increasing our air and naval presence. diplomatically, we are spending less time in asia during the second term of the obama administration than the first. >> is that because we were pulled away by events we could have forecast? >> the part of having a discipline foreign policy is not allowing the urgent to drive out some of the strategically important. i don't see signs the president is preparing congress and the american people to approve a major new transpacific trading agreement. that will take an awful lot of political work. >> i don't understand why you can't do two or three things at the same time. deal with the crisis in the middle east, deal with a trade agreement, deal with a relationship with our natural allies in asia. >> if one of the chief lieutenants was sitting here, that is what they would say they are doing. the balance is off. the priorities are not exactly right. i don't see us doing nearly enough in asia. what we seem to be doing more is going from crisis to crisis. some of the areas we have chosen to invest time and energy in. secretary kerry's investment in the israeli-palestinian situation. you would say that was an odd choice. it did not look particularly right. >> if he was successful, it would have had a huge impact. >> i don't think so. we have reached a moment in history where the israeli-palestinian crisis matters a lot to israelis and palestinians, but i don't think it would have affected the dynamic in syria and iraq. the whole dynamic of the larger middle east. >> with that respect -- it seems to me, if you could remove that as an element. it is not that those problems would not be there standing alone. people pay lip service to them. it is on everybody's agenda in the region. if you can take that off the table as an issue of conflict, you could make more progress on these other areas. >> i am not so sure anymore. i think the answer -- >> they will say it is true. every leader over there. no single leader in the middle east who does not believe or at least say do something about the israeli-palestinian conflict. >> if you had a two-state solution, it would involve compromises. the same people that are driving a lot of the dynamics are opposed to this. they don't want to have two states in the middle east because one of them would be israel. they have no interest in that. >> we are not arguing they are happy with the circumstances. >> it is not the principal dynamic that is driving events. would it be a positive? of course. i don't think it is nearly as essential as a lot of people argue. >> that is the israeli point of view as well. if iran says that if the conflict is an issue here, it is not. iran's ambitions is the issue and their place. >> i disagree with the israeli government on a lot of issues and on this one i think their analysis is essentially right, but because israel and the palestinians have a lot of stake in the outcome, it is still both in their interests to have progress regardless of what the consequences might be. >> is there some great theory of how to fix everything? is there some magic formula that can bring world order, that can bring a new age? if so, tell me. >> [laughter] at the risk of reinforcing my reputation as debbie downer, i don't think so. i think it is a little more of a situation to be managed. >> is there some powerful idea we are missing? >> it is the idea of trying to integrate other actors in the major states to get them sign up to certain rules and enter into certain agreements whether it is for trade, climate change, what to do about infectious -- >> every one of those issues we are trying. they are trying. cuba is trying. >> that tells you something. the fact we are trying and it is not working. we have very different agendas, different stages of development. someone like china might say you are right on principle on climate change but we still have 500 million people that are living in rural poverty. we don't have that luxury. >> it took you a while to get there too and you want us to play by the rules that you want to play by having already become a major industrial state. >> you have the big outliers -- the north koreas and irans and others. even china, india, japan, europe -- they have different ideas than we do of what they want to have happen or, in some cases, they are not prepared to put a much in the way of resources or calories to bring it about. even in our country, we have domestic politics that limit what we can do. we have never signed up, ratified the law of the sea treaty which is one form of international -- people are worried about anything -- some people are worried about anything that seems to abridge or compromise full american sovereignty. it is a somewhat ideological argument. >> is europe signed up? >> yes. we have not ratified. >> no, europe. >> yes, sir. you have people who would say we cannot sign up for that trade agreement. it would disadvantage this american worker or bad for environmental issues. there are people that disagree about how to govern the internet. every single issue you can think of in the united states you have a debate and then you have an even bigger debate between the u.s. and others. it is the absence of that consensus that explains the fact why we cannot structure the world in a highly-organized way. >> what do you think the ambitions of the chinese are? >> i think they are caught in a contradiction. >> you have this story called china's imperial president. >> china still needs a stable external environment so they can focus on their internal economic and political development. >> so they can have peace and prosperity for them. >> as the chinese economic growth slows, you are beginning to see them crack down at home, but you are also beginning to see greater signs of chinese nationalism and activism in the neighborhood. china is actually living out a contradiction between its more traditional foreign policy restraint of the last few decades and now a more activist foreign policy. >> wouldn't history say to you or me that if you would become the world's most economic power, with that power will be a current sense of how do we exercise that power in the world. it is inevitable. that is nationalism. >> partially, psychology. china still thinks it is a so-called "developing country." when we say to them, hey, you have to belly up to the bar and share with us some of the obligations and responsibilities in making this world work in ways that are good for you. the chinese say they are not ready. >> they view the last 200 years as an aberration from history. they were a great nation and always have been a great nation and what has happened in the past 200 years, leading them to say they are still a developing nation is an aberration. >> they are a great nation. they develop in extraordinary ways and they have reached the point where in some ways their own foreign policies do not serve their interests. how is it served by having a reckless north korea that they are subsidizing to the extent they are? in the interest of regional order, they need to grow economically and do more to rein in north korea. look at their chinese environment. if any society is vulnerable to climate change, you have to say china is high on that list. >> if you talk to chinese leadership, they are focused on two things. one is climate and two is corruption. >> they have to work it out in the way they maintain political order. there is tensions and trade-offs. one of the real questions for china is how they will deal with these tensions and trade-offs. my hunch is in the next 30 years for china will be much more difficult than the last 30 years. coming back to the conversation we are having -- what it means to me is the alternative to this world we have had where the u.s. has been dominant, it is not a world where china steps up and takes our place. that is the classic model of history. athens, sparta, all that. i don't think it is working out that way. i think if we reached a world where the united states does less, and i think that is a world we are in, we will have a world where nobody steps up to take our place. >> you are sounding exactly like barack obama. that is exactly what he would say. >> [laughter] >> am i right or wrong? you know what he says. >> it is not the analysis, it is the prescription. in some ways, i think the president analysis is spot on and i think some of the prescriptions are spot on like doing more in asia. >> why aren't we doing more with partnerships? that is what you worked on during the time of the first gulf war. >> that was a real coalition. the problem now is the coalition -- there is not much substance. you cannot get anybody to put in ground forces. we cannot get the turks to adopt a set of goals that many are replicating -- >> does that say something about how -- does that say something about the power we have as a nation or the power that this president has as a persuader? >> i think it reflects the fact the u.s. share of world power is less. i think the rest of the road looks at us through somewhat more jaundiced eyes. they are not impressed by our domestic example. government shutdowns, near defaults has not impressed the world. the iraq war clearly did not impress. i think this president paid an enormous price for what happened in syria. we are seeing the wavering first by not helping the opposition then the red lines and not acting on them. i think that was consequential beyond the middle east even in asia and elsewhere. people looked at that and said can we count on the united states in the way we used to? the answer they made is no. >> because it is the new reality of the way the world works? >> it is a little less deferral to the united states, little less reliance. that makes for a messier world. >> does china want to be a stakeholder? >> they are not there yet. the day may come. their priorities now, particular for the next eight years while he is still president, is still very much focused on managing this period of reduced economic growth, retaining the political primacy of the party. doing something about the environment and corruption. i don't think china thinks they have the luxury to be an international stakeholder. >> where you put a vladimir putin and russia as a disruptive force in the new world order? >> they are something of a spoiler. russia has decided for one reason or another its future does not lie heavily on european integration. putin will try to basically have a smaller canvas rather than play on the global canvas. >> the possibilities of pandemics is something that has no respect for national borders. >> it is globalization at its most violent. it again shows you the inadequacy of the world health organization and other arrangements. we were not up to the challenge. we have largely uncoordinated national responses. it shows you this gap between where the world is and where it needs to be. meantime, we are vulnerable to the disease, but also to the consequences. say sierra leone or liberia becomes a failed state because of this. it becomes another place where terrorists set up shop. they are national security consequences on top of health consequences.. >> back to one specific thing -- turkey and isis and the threat to the city on their border. i would like for the president to go, and i assume he has done this multiple times, to the prime minister and say, ok, what is the problem here? what can we do to allay that fear so you can do the right thing here? >> i know we have had many conversations with the turks. i heard the president has talked to the turkish president. the concerns go beyond the pkk. when turkey hears talk about kurdish nationalism and independence, they look at basically the dissolution of modern turkey. the kurds distributed among four countries -- iraq, syria, iran, turkey. the turks worry both about terrorism and the pkk. they're worried about sending in the motion a political dynamic that threatens the territorial integrity and unity of turkey itself. could the united states persuade them? i know the arguments, but i am not sure they're listening. we can say we support kurdish independence say in iraq or syria. we are not extending it. the turks see more concern about resisting any sign of kurdish nationalism and getting assad out of power. they may technically be in the coalition. but, in any meaningful sense of the word, they are not. >> i always wonder the nature of the conversation. i don't sit here at this table and think why aren't they doing this and not assuming that perhaps they have tried to do this. and for some reason they were not successful. the people surrounding the president are bright and experienced. they can be on the phone to you and others to solicit ideas. >> in this case, this turkish leadership is clearly moving the country in a different direction. they have a different image of turkey's future. domestically, it is a very big difference from the old model. he sees himself as a counterpoise. he sees himself just as critical to the creation of modern turkey. >> not necessarily having the same sense of -- >> coming up with a new compact about the role of islam in turkish society. it is very different foreign policy. he articulated this idea of no problems with any neighbors and now it has not worked and they don't have any neighbor with whom they don't have a problem. the real question is whether the turks do a stock taking about their own difficulties in the region and, so far, i have not seen it. it is not so much an american foreign-policy failure. i don't put this at the president's door. it is another example of how american power does not necessarily translate into american influence and this is one of the reasons why the world is not in the shape we want to see it. >> at the same time, you hear foreign countries come to this table -- prime ministers and presidents saying what we want from the united states is leadership. i don't know how to connect those two things. our power is less and at the same time they want america to step forward and lead. >> most people want us to lead when it's directions they approve of. all things being equal, that is the world they are familiar with. he has a different agenda than turkey has followed for the past 50 years. he is a slightly different case. we are seeing different countries greater nationalism like in japan. we are seeing greater assertiveness. i do think countries are unnerved by our domestic inability for congress and the executive branch to work together. it creates new questions about american liability. i think this administration with all of its talk about limiting america's involvement in the middle east, calendar-based withdrawals first in iraq and what we are doing in afghanistan. >> or whether we will never use ground troops. >> it is too much of the emphasis of what we will not do. they read the polls. these foreign leaders read the polls about americans turning away from the world. they are beginning to build a narrative. that is the narrative they are beginning to build that the united states cannot be counted on to be there quite as much as in the past. this is a self-fulfilling dynamic. one of the things the president and his successor will have to do is change that dynamic. >> there is always a question about foreign policy. on one hand, hard power and on the other, soft power. economic weapons or using aid and elements like that. what is the power of a steep decline in oil prices in terms of a disruptive agent in the world order? >> it is largely from we are sitting is pretty good. the main reason it is going down besides lower economic growth rate is american production. the extra few million barrels a day we are putting on the market. it has made us much less vulnerable to energy supply cut-offs and price changes. it is bad for countries like russia, iran. it is much more powerful than the sanctions we have put in place -- lower oil prices. it is going down to the low 80's. we can probably change some of our export policies, change the policy of petroleum reserve. the basic direction -- we could not have engineered anything better. >> what would it do to iran if in fact oil prices went down to 60? they were several years ago. >> for countries like iran and russia, it puts them in extremists. the budget in russia is based on oil being around $105 a barrel. i'm not sure the irani one. it has to be close to that. it makes them extraordinarily vulnerable and make the sanctions that much more -- >> they are more likely in that case to agree to a nuclear deal? >> absolutely. >> what can we do to drop the price? >> it is happening. >> it is at 80 and went a little bit. the saudis could contribute. >> they have by not reducing production. what is interesting about opec is it is not have acted how cartels should act. the fact that oil has gone down in price -- as the saudis and others are willing to swallow harder in order to see countries like iran pay a price. >> you conclude your piece with this thought. the question of not whether the world will continue to unravel, but how fast and how far. if we don't -- this is your argument -- if we don't get our domestic house in order is unraveling inevitable? >> it is inevitable. it is simply in the structure of things. the rise of others. not the decline of the united states, but our problems in translating our power into influence. questions about us. again, to some extent, it is inevitable, but a lot of history is about extents and degrees. even if this gradual decline of world order, the gradual decline of american influence -- the question is what is the slope and what do we put in its place? it is a difference if america's role goes down and we put something good or better in its place and we don't see that. >> and we develop new relationships as it is declining. >> if nothing happens then we have a situation which is frightening. the future starts getting messier and messier and that is bad for us and everybody. the problem is i don't see who the partners are anymore. europe is unwilling and unable to step up. the chinese are not ready. japan has its own concerns. americans are saying we don't want to pay the price. what worries me is i don't see where the partners come and i don't see us willing to do it as we used to be.. >> if you at the council of foreign relations or if you were running this table were to convene a group of people to figure out how do we find a way to stop this? who would you convene? i am assuming you start with kissinger. you have to include him. who else? >> in this country, you got a number of people who think hard about foreign-policy from henry kissinger to some people who know the economic side. the larry summers and others. people who understand the domestic economics as well as the foreign policy. you also want to internationalize the conversation. people from germany, france, russia, china. you don't want to start excluding people. the whole idea of integration, to admit together a world where people sign up to some of the same rules and build some arrangements. by definition, it involves bringing in others. in some cases, compromising. we may have to make some difficult decisions. where we are willing to dilute or compromise some of the things we want in order to get others to play ball. we cannot just set the rules and say you have to sign up. it has to be a real consultation about what are going to be the rules. >> shared interests. >> also, we also have to give them a chance to play if they are going to pay. for someone to be a responsible stakeholder, china or anyone else, it is not going to be a stakeholder in an american-designed system. we have been be willing to sit down and say, ok, what are your preferences? >> and what are your definitions? >> it has to be a bit of a give and take. >> i think you should start doing that over at the council of foreign relations. >> [laughter] >> consider a theory for the future. all right? >> duly noted. >> richard haas from the council of foreign relations. back in a moment. stay with us. ♪ >> e.o wilson is here. backpleased to have him of the table. you're how old now? >> 85. i am beginning to slow down but i do not feel that yet. >> it seems like you're just here not long ago with another three inyou said to me two years and i said is there some sense of urgency that you have these things that you think is important for you to say now? >> yes. i said that. 10 morear-old may have years. i am not counting on it. i want to make sure that if i have anything worth saying i get it out. >> tell me how you came to the meaning of human existence. >> over a long route. i started my career as an evolutionary biologist. i invented that term. that is another story, very interesting. in the course of studying every aspect of the biology of ants, i became interested in the broad subject of social behavior, the origins of social behavior. i wrote a book called sociobiology and other related books. >> that became a bit controversial. >> it did. in the 1970's. now it is not controversial. after all, we are social animals. eventually, it just seemed logical, where i found myself positioned, to think about some of these big questions that philosophers and even religious scholars have largely abandoned, which are where do we come from? where are we? and where are we going? >> and what does it mean to be human? >> correct. from the point of view of combines science and eumenides, i think we are approaching a time now where the appropriate disciplines of science have learned enough and are moving enough in the right direction so that they can connect with the best of humanities to create a much better picture of who we are and where we came from. in fact, i would like to refer to it as the new enlightenment. >> define a new alignment. -- enlightenment. >> i think we are ready now. >> define what it might be. >> the original enlightenment was from the late 17th bend throughout the 18th century in which philosophers and scientists -- they didn't call them that at that time, but those who were called natural philosophers were in agreement that in short order we would be able to combine all of our knowledge and understand humanity in the light of knowledge we could acquire ourselves. >> there was time to step back and say what have we learned and what do we make of it? >> what happened is the old enlightenment faded away because of two developments. one was the romantic era of literature that came to dominate a lot of the english language, but also, science could not deliver in the early 1800s. so, the promise of actually contributing something fundamental to the question of what is the meaning of human existence frittered away, and we had to wait two centuries. i think we are ready to ask those questions again. >> science has roared ahead and challenged traditional definitions of what it means to be human. >> that's exactly right. let me just say about this, too, it isn't just science that holds the promise of connecting humanity in renewing the quest. i think we are close to finding the grail, but not just through science. you are not going to get anywhere if you ask a natural physicist or an astronomer, a chemist or even molecular biologist, they are too far removed about where humans came from and where we fit as a species that evolved from something prehuman into our present self glorified form. >> so, where do we find the answers? >> let me list five disciplines where we are finding the answers. we are finding them in evolutionary biology, which is advancing with the help of genetics and other disciplines. advancing very quickly. the next one that is contributing and will contribute big time is brain science. that is now the subject of immense interest and intense research. the third one is, as anyone would want to list, paleontology. archaeology. segueing into each other. then come the two surprises. artificial intelligence and robotics. these are the branches of science and technology which are attempting actually to understand how the human brain works and thereby just what evolution has produced. >> i know a little bit about this because we have conferences that i asked people to participate in and we have done to complete years of conversations about the brain. but when you get to artificial intelligence, there are some people, very wise people, who are scared about the consequences. does it bother you? >> not in the least. i can tell you about meeting with six of the key figures in artificial intelligence and robotics. we arranged for a roundtable discussion on the present status of those subjects. in my case, we were bringing in dialogical diversity. how was this going to affect the living environment of the world when we started building robots and changing our consumption patterns? >> and the answer is --? >> the ancillary subject is are the robots going to take over. that's a great story of hollywood loves a great story, so they tell that story over and over again. the short answer is no. >> because? >> because we have control. we are not going to allow even advanced humanoid robots. >> you are saying we will control it because we will not allow it to cut as we will understand the danger and therefore put -- >> a barrier. we haven't even begun really to understand the emotional centers that are the core of human nature. >> there has been rapid progress. >> rapid progress, but we are just beginning to find out where all those centers are and how they feed into the imagery and the white-hot intense area we call the conscious mind. we are not likely to be able to duplicate or try to duplicate that in robots, but if we were to try to duplicate it, we are certainly not going to give robots the chance to evolve. >> if we could, we are not going to give it to them. here is the question with that. that is nice to say, but there is probably somebody who says i do not particularly want to follow e.o. wilson's definition of where we let the robots evolve too. i want to see how far we can take it. >> that is the mantra of the techno-scientific age. there will be no halting of any scientific investigation or potentially useful technology because it is our human nature to want to explore and keep exploring always, but there is a big difference between a mad scientist inventing a neutron bomb on his own in a laboratory and the teams of scientists needed to produce the ability of robots or artificial intelligence of any kind to communicate and to go through natural selection. i think those who make up the good stories for us in hollywood don't appreciate exactly what selection is, natural selection and artificial selection. >> you listed evolutionary biology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and robotics, paleontology. is that one or two? >> they segue into one another. when you get far enough back, you're not dealing with the artifacts of culture so much as you're with anatomy and physiology. >> when i picked up this book, before i read it, i thought, here we go. the revered e.o. wilson has decided to say we are creating human life into many ways. we are trying to design human life and that is not a good idea. somehow molecular biology and the capacity to do all the things we have learned about gene therapy and the capacity to tinker with human evolution has put real power to change what it means to be human in the hands of people with certain skills. that's what i thought you were going to say. >> i didn't. >> that's not an issue for you. >> i am glad you brought this up because this raises the importance of the humanities which you might have noticed, readers might notice, i touch on in a chapter called the all importance of the humanities. the reason i do that is because, consider that rational abilities and rational process and the engineering and the technology that emerges from that nevertheless is not human of a fundamental human quality. the capacity is unique to humans but what is fundamental to human quality, what makes us a distinctive species, what gives humanity to us, may i use even the word metaphorically, but our soul is in our emotions, and we are not going to tinker with those. that is the core we are trying to save, and we are dealing with all the technology -- >> can we avoid tinkering with that? is it impossible, the idea of the soul? >> i am saying if we finally settle down before we wreck this planet, we are going to come to understand that it is the conglomerate and complex interaction of our emotional process that makes us distinctive and is the core of our humanity. >> our emotional process. >> yes. >> and what it advances are we making in terms of that emotional process? >> just studying. >> there are no landmark teams. >> neurobiologist, you can't really tell where they are one month to the next because they are moving so rapidly, but right now they have succeeded in locating quite a few centers for emotion as well as centers for subconscious decision-making. the idea is to learn about this as thoroughly as possible as was evidenced by the nobel prize given for judging and quick learning centers and where that is. center by center, linkage by linkage, we are beginning to get a map of the mind, and then we will be able to map the emotions and move through the next phase in -- well, there is a nice term being used, and that is whole brain emulation. emulate the human brain but don't try exactly to duplicate it. >> what is the difference? where would we go if we emulate it and do not duplicate it? >> that's a good question. the emulating means the computing that depends upon decision-making has emotion like components to it is one of the goals to artificial intelligence. there is a kind of technology that is being developed that is secondary in importance to digital models and that is called narrow more fixed. -- neuromorphics. that's computers that actually design to be analog and work a bit like the brain. i suspect that in time neuro-morphic, that is analog computers, will be smart enough to perform complex tasks in the service of wars or the middle of volcanoes. but we also want them to make judgments that are appropriate for human need, so that is about as far as i think we would want to take it. >> did you ever know michael creighton? >> yes, i got to know him pretty well. >> that's what i thought. >> i thought for once you might let me escape. i had dinner with michael cried in and i thought of an -- michael crichton and i thought of an experiment i could perform right then and there. i had fossil ants, an entire colony, in amber. i probably could have extracted turpinoids and extracted the alarm substance they would emit to alert the danger was coming. i said to michael crichton, would this satisfy you if i did that and cooked the chemical signal from 15-20,000,000 years ago. if i delivered that to the colony in my lab and alarm to them? and he liked that. >> i bet he did. >> he said, could you do it? and i said no. that would not be science. that would just be a circus trick. that is all it would be. he would not be science. you'd be just a circus trick. -- it would be just a circus trick. >> how do you know all that you know and follow all of these spheres of knowledge? you just let your mind take you where you are interested? >> as you brought up early, or maybe i did, i am getting old enough now that i am worrying about the time i have left, but basically i feel young. i have the same excitement over science and discovery as i did when i was a kid. >> to we appreciate science more today? >> more but not nearly enough. i wonder how many real scientists you interview here. probably not many compared to leaders in other branches. >> i will make two points on that. i don't do enough, but i do more than anybody else. >> you do. if it weren't for you, i wouldn't be sitting anywhere being interviewed about this. >> let's assume you were thinking of doomsday. is it more likely to come, as you have talked about often, because of what we do to the planet, or are we going to unleash something beyond our comprehension which will have a velocity of change that we never imagined? >> both. it's a race among doomsday's as to which will come first. in other words, now we are about critical level in the concentration of the planet change components in the atmosphere. and scientists who are experts on the subject, real scientists, wonder and worry if there is some kind of turning point -- >> a tipping point -- >> a tipping point that could be catastrophic in nature. and there are night mare scenarios that can occur. we are allowing the central cause of that to go on and on, so we should be careful about climate change because that could create a catastrophe. but the other way is by the means of a whimper. and that is when i am beginning to concentrate all my energies on, and that is conservation of the biosphere, not letting species slip away and become extinct as they are 1000 times faster than before humans came because we don't know what would happen with the biosphere as we destroy it. it could mean that we are just lying down to a less controllable, less interesting, less productive planet, and that would just be a dark age we could never emerge from. >> if you are coming out of college today, what field would you go into? >> i named that field in my autobiography. that i thought was toward the end of my career and life in 1996. i said if i had to do it all over again i would work on microbes. we are microorganisms by nature. we know that a single gram of soil can have in the billions of bacteria and as many as 5000 kinds, almost all unknown to science. here is a virgin area, biology. i would love to do that if i could start at the beginning because that is a major area that is going to open up. but i do wonder if i started there, would i end up thinking about humans? maybe not. or would i be thinking about i can't wait to get those samples back from the aqueous layer of mars, drilling through europa and getting the first stuff. that is what i would be thinking. they deal with all sorts of things from dealing with ebola to figuring out how life got guarded spontaneously. >> it is a pleasure and great to see you. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪ >> live from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west," where we cover innovation, technology, and the future of business. i am emily chang. first the check of your bloomberg u.s. stocks rallied top stories. u.s. stocks rallied today with all three of the major indexes finishing higher. the rise following a slew of better-than-expected earnings reports and data that shows consumer confidence hit a seven-month high in october. a federal trade commission lawsuit accuses at&t of deceiving 5.5 million customers. agency claims customers paid for unlimited data plans but had

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