If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.

I don't think a monarchy led by 75- and 80-year-old men [Saudi Arabia] in today's modern world is really sustainable.

There is a connection between energy, climate, food and political stability. That has played out in the Arab awakening and is not done playing out.

Saudi hijackers first came into contact with al-Qaeda and went through Terrorism 101 when they signed up for the jihad in Afghanistan.

I think there are different kinds of elites. I think there are venal elites, and self-interested elites, and selfish elites, and I think there are visionary elites.

I have no problem with a war for oil-if we accompany it with a real program for energy conservation. But when we tell the world we couldn't care less about climate change, that we feel entitled to drive whatever big cars we feel like, that we feel entitled to consume however much oil we like, the message we send is that a war for oil in the gulf is not a war to protect the world's right to economic survival-but our right to indulge. Now that will be seen as immoral.

All one needs to do is just to go to any hospital in America and see the number of Pakistani or Indian or Lebanese, or Syrian, or Egyptian doctors, who are either first generation or themselves immigrants, to know, and I'm a big believer - brains are distributed evenly around the world. What aren't distributed evenly are opportunities, stable government, educational institutions, etc.