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.

Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.

When you study history and look at every civilization that has grown up and died off, they all leave one remnant: a major sports colosseum at the heart of their capital. Our fate can be different; but only if we start doing things differently.

The Arab awakening was like watching elephants fly: something you didn't expect, something you haven't seen before, "Wow, elephants fly."

I am always a little skeptical on the water thing because I have been hearing that for 30 years, but one year it's going to be true. With the rising populations, Yemen could be the first country in the world, or Sana'a the first major city in the world, to run out of water, that's from Yemeni hydrological engineers and the United Nations. Sooner or later, all of these people, from 7 to 9 billion, all of them want to live like America, will be consuming so much more water that some of the societies will hit a wall without more sustainable environmental practices.

Never before in the history of the planet have so many people, on their own, had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people.

What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.