From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Tom friedman is here. He is a pulitzer prizewinning author and a foreignpolicy columnist for the New York Times. 2014 presented conflict for president obama at home and abroad. The crises have not deterred him from taking executive action to enact fundamental change in his second term. In beijing last month, he announced a historic climate agreement between the United States and china. This was followed by a decision to unilaterally grant protection to nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants. On wednesday, he made history again with his announcement to do away with the u. S. Estrangement from cuba. I am pleased to have tom friedman here to talk about these issues and more as we look back at 2014 and look forward to 2015. Welcome. Good to be here, charlie. First, it is very interesting. Here is barack obama who suffered a huge defeat in the midterm elections and is now almost liberated and doing things he probably wanted to do from day one. Somehow, some reason, bad advice, tough enemy was not able to do. He is taking advantage. The u. S. China climate agreement is a very big deal. It is very easy to underestimate these kind of things we undertake to try to achieve x, y or z. When china puts into its next fiveyear plan when does that start . I believe it is 2015. That they are undertaking to build up their Renewable Energy by 2030 by 20 . By roughly 1000 gigawatts. 1000 gigawatts that is exactly how much Energy Capacity electrical Energy Capacity we have as a country. They are going to build a United States of Renewable Energy. If they do just half that, the implications of that in terms of innovation, scaling, bringing solar panels down that cost volume curve, that is a huge deal if they do nothing else. You once said you would like to be china for a day. They are going to be china for a day. They like to make the decisions and make sure it is taking place. Exactly. What the president is doing with his executive authority is just that. He is ordering and getting stuff done. The congress can roll it back obviously but you cannot just knock out his immigration bill unless you come up with a real alternative. These are important things he is doing in terms of legalizing people, but also opening the way to some of the really high tech immigration that we need. You want to really reverse this cuban decision when the polls today tell you two out of every three cubanamericans like this idea. I think he has really laid down a gauntlet to the other side. You cannot get away anymore with driveby Foreign Policy. You say syria and everybody laughs. You drive by the white house and you say cuba and everybody laughs. Everybody laughs. You better have an alternative because he is not just talking about one, he is laying one down. Do you think he sat down and said look, i realize this is been a very tough election for me. Perhaps, i made some mistakes. For whatever reason it did not go my way, but i have two years left. This is a very big pulpit. We talked about it a little back in the last president ial election. We had two guys running as im not mitt romney. Barack obama ran as i am not mitt romney and mitt romney ran as i am not the centrist guy who governed the state of massachusetts so we had an election about nothing. Now we just had a midterm that was basically about nothing. It was about whether it was about the fact we dont like that nobody is about nothing that everybody is about nothing. That is a very good way to put it. We had an election about whether isis people are coming over with ebola on the mexican border. It was in outer space. The world is not about nothing. There are big issues out there. Big interests we hav at stake and rising to those interests and challenges. You cannot just have elections about nothing. Im glad the president has this executive authority and using it in exactly the way he is using it. Do you think the politics may change . We look at the early reaction from the republican side on cuba. Marco rubio, jeb bush. How long is that party going to be dragged around by the base . In my next life, i want to be part of the base. They have more fun. At some point lets look at the cubanamerican issue. Two thirds of cubanamericans support this because it is a new generation. They dont carry the feelings of their parents having been exiled forcibly in some cases. I think you have to Pay Attention to that. You cannot just be responding to what Rush Limbaugh is stoking up in the base. You have to actually look at the world. That is what i think has been missing from our foreign and domestic policies that we are not starting the day off by saying what world are we living in . How do we align ourselves with the big trends in the world in order to get the most out of our country and opportunities and talents . Too many times we start the day by saying where is the base . I think a lot of the election was about was disgust with that. I like its boldness. I totally agree. Looking at climate, how close are we to some Tipping Point in terms of years unless we have a drastic action and dramatic reduction of emissions . There is a concept that challenges we need to avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable. That is really at the nice edge we are on because pick up the New York Times this morning. Big story about how the arctic is getting warmer and warmer. When the more ice melts, the less you have the rays of the sun being reflected off the earth. The more those rays go into the water, warm the ocean, the more ice melts. You get into that cycle where there is a strong consensus among scientists that by the end of the century, there will be no ice. You will be able to sail from new york to seattle. Unless or just will . Directionally, that is clearly where things are going unless you get some kind of climate event that reverses that. You have to presume that they are right. Lets say youre a climate denier and i am not. My reaction is lets say i am wrong and we do everything we can to get ready of climate change. What are we left with . Cleaner air, innovative technologies, less support for petrol dictators, stronger country and a more respected country. That is if i am wrong. That is if i am wrong. If you are wrong, we are a bad biological experiment. This is a nobrainer for me. You said the other day that what we ought to do is a gas tax. If we take that money and designate it to be used for infrastructure, think of what we can be and do. We have a real problem. Last time we raised the gas tax was under that president who didnt do ronald reagan, ok . Ronald reagan could raise the gasoline tax, we can raise the gasoline tax, especially when you are talking about five cents or . 10 a gallon. Between gas stations, there are differences. Most importantly, just talk to our secretary of transportation. The Highway Trust Fund is basically broke. We cannot fix our roads. This is not about building some crazy highspeed rail from chicago to los angeles. This is about the roads you ride on. The trust fund that is funded by our gasoline tax to support those roads is going bust because people are driving less, more hybrids. Now is the perfect time to take the money and invest in infrastructure, create jobs. Wouldnt you rather create jobs that way than by building a Keystone Pipeline that brings the worst dirty oil from canada to our country . You have exactly the stimulus you want, you are stronger and you strengthen our productive capacity as a country. One of the things you have railed about is us being dependent on middle east oil. Along comes shale oil and that means we would no longer be dependent on it. Are there risks of shale oil that concern you . There is no question. We see the governor of new york banning fracking in new york state. My guide on this is my friend, an environmentalist. His view is that there is a way to do fracking so you dont get the methane leakage which is so much more potent as a greenhouse gas. That you dont spoil the water and the environment. There is a way to do this right that doesnt cost that much more at all. The problem is we have no National Standard for fracking. The Oil Companies oppose that. There is no epa standard to fracking. That is why the governor of new york cam do what he is doing. If anybody should be militating for a National Standard, it should be the Oil Companies. There are a lot of momandpops in fracking. They are the ones who dont have the resources or even the scientific knowledge to do it right. Big companies can do it right. This is not that expensive. That is where we should be going. They should be leading it so we dont get this local reaction. I turned on the tap and a flame came out. Stop being dumb as we want to be. There is also this factor because of decisions a whole range of factors we see the oil prices declining by the barrel. Some say it will become, if it continues to get lower and lower, it will stymie the development of alternative sources. There is a real danger in that. My friend and teacher on that is a really smart energy economist. Phil said in the column i wrote there may be moores law happening in fracking. Moores law says the speed of microchips will double every 24 months. What if fracking is a kind of technology that keeps Getting Better and making it easier and cheaper and cleaner . You dont just knock out coal, you knock out solar and wind as well. That is why we want fracking to be a bridge to a clean energy future, not a ditch. It could become a ditch if the Technology Takes us there and we dont compensate for that. That could be our undoing. Looking at the front page today, we talked about cuba and climate. There is also a russia and later north korea. Look at putin in his press conference today. What is your sense of what he has accomplished . The challenge he faces because Falling Oil Prices has put his economy in recession and in danger. This is not monday morning quarterbacking. I think putin is a towering fool. A towering fool . I will tell you why. Who got away with the crimea. Exactly. Our friend Warren Buffett likes to say that when the tide goes out, see who is wearing a bathing suit. When the oil tide goes out, you also see who is buck naked. Putin is a guy who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. 110 a barrel oil and thought he was a genius. Suddenly, it is 50 and he doesnt look like such a genius anymore. In my view, putin is a guy who is taking on the market, mother nature, moores law and human nature all at the same time. Therefore, is he a rational man who will do the rational thing . The famous first rule of holes is when you are in one, stop digging. Right now, he is in one. The idea that he would dig it deeper he already cut the net worth of his cronies in half. I think people forget one thing about russia. I have seen some of this in the analysis. The russian people are used to sacrifices. This is not your babushkas russia. Remember, putin built a huge middle class. These are people with cars, jobs, homes, the ability to travel. Hell hath no wrath like a middle class that loses its ability to travel. Ok . You have got all these people, all these opportunities and then suddenly you say no travel. By the way, the ruble the ticket you are trying to buy now takes 10 times as many rubles to buy. And, we will see how into suffering they are for crimea. I always find people who tell me the other guy is ready to suffer, that is the guy that has a secure government job. People telling you about other people are ready to suffer, i am dubious. Also in the headlines is north korea because of the hacking. Somebody said this morning on my cbs program that they had won the cyber war. They intimidated a company to withdraw its movie. It is a hard case because, in my view, incredibly stupid movie. Not that it is bad humor. I dont think we should be making movies about assassinating sitting leaders even the awful, tyrannical leader of north korea. There is enough people killing people today in the world. It is not funny to me. I cannot dispute what you said. They have intimidated sony and our theater operators from showing this film. I find that very disturbing. What is disturbing to me is that they have intimidated them, but if they can do it to sony, who else can they do it to . Why not charlie rose . The Washington Post . We didnt like that editorial, we are shutting you down for a day. I think we are at the beginning of something i find very unnerving. This is not a country that you thought had any technological talent and then all of a sudden a huge hit. They did build a nuclear bomb on their own. With the help of pakistan. There was enough talent and maybe they had other help, too. It could be anybody you mentioned. I did a column a while back where i said there are four words that are disappearing from the english language. Our kids can forget about these words. Privacy. Privacy is over. Number two is average. Average is over. Automation, robots can do so much more. Later. For climate reasons, whatever you are going to save, save it now because later will be too late. Lastly, local. Local is over. If i go out in the lobby here and punch you in the nose look at friedman punching charlie rose in poland in 30 minutes. Somebody will have a camera and tweet it. Privacy, average, local and later are all over. What is the consequence . That is what i really ask. I really i was talking to my colleague the other day. I have to say im really glad i had my journalism career when i had it. Because . Because it was a lot simpler. People were always writing letters, writing about you but physically as a journalist when i was a foreign correspondent, i just had to write my story. I didnt have to tweet, facebook, instagram, update for the web. You could actually sit back and reflect. Hey, what happened today . And then type it out on something called a typewriter. You actually put pressure on a key and it leaves an impression of a letter on a piece of paper. I will take that over what we got today. Lets talk about isis. Where do you see that struggle and is it going to demand more than what we see now . Here is what i think about the isis problem. They are now embedded in mosul and all of these provincial towns in sunni areas of iraq. The better question is who is going to take them out . We can bomb them from the air and have done so quite effectively. But ultimately, who is going to go door to door . I asked myself that question. Are the kurds going to go door to door in mosul to give it back to a shiite government in baghdad . I dont think so. No, the sunnis are going to go door to door to give it back to a shiite i dont think so. No, the shiites are going to go door to door, rescue the sunnis in order to give them i dont think so. Who is going to go door to door . That is the strategic question. To me, the answer is the only way to go door to door are the people now living under isis. Either passively or actively invited them in because they thought the previous government was even worse. For me, the analytical question is what will get the sunni tribes and sunni mainstream residents of a mosul, a fallujah in order to rise up against isis . Here is where i come down i think we have to create a de facto sunnistan in iraq like kurdistan. If you look at the surge and the original uprising during the iraq war, what was our strategy . It was clear, build, hold. We had basically did the clearing with help from the sunni tribes. We hold it and then we turn it over to maliki to build it. Of course, he completely squandered it. That legacy that is a very important part of the story because these tribes now under isis are saying you are going to sell me that carpet again . No, no, no. We bought that carpet once. It didnt end well. I think our strategy is going to have to be build, clear, hold. That is you have to be able to say to the sunnis of that region you are going to have the same deal the kurds have. Youre going to have your own local militia. Youre going to have your own share of the oil wealth. Youll have your own federal rights and powers in a federalized iraq. I think thats the only way create a sunni kurdistan. What happened with the awakening was those sunni tribes turned against al qaeda who they had been supporting and finally said you guys are going way too far. Youre worse than this. Thats what they said at the time. Now, isil is much worse than al qaeda was at the time. You would think so, but let me say this. Go ahead. Google shiite militias and power drills in iraq and youll discover that isis didnt invent barbarism there. But, they have done it in a much larger and public scale. Thats true and im not in any way defending them. We werent paying attention the last two years of maliki. He was bombing, shelling sunni towns. He was letting shiite militias there really terrorize people. Was it isislike . No. But, if you were sunni living in those towns, it was really awful. Thats what made you say when isis showed up i think well take isis. At least theyll protect us from those guys. I think it was a bad decision. I think these guys are psychopaths but it was not without logic. They came from al qaeda in iraq. Thats where they came from. But also, the iraqi army. There was a lot of exiraqi guys there. It is a coalition in a sense. Is there enough sunni tribesmen to build a kind of sunnistan that you talk about and can we equip them and other sunni nations equip them fast enough in order for them to stop . In theory, we can. It is always about the politics. It is never about the fight. Get the politics right, the fighting will take care of itself. You give people an incentive to build a political structure where they know they will be secure and represented, the fighting will fall. The british and french divided up the middle east to create lebanon, syria and iraq. We are now seeing that as the doityourself version. So, back in 1914, 1915, they did it from the top down. Churchill and his pals had a map and they carved it up in funny shapes. What we are seeing almost a century later is the people redrawing the borders. Iraq will not be put back together from the top down. It can only be put together by the bottom up. By the constituent communities. What is the relative population spread between kurds, sunnis, and shia . Shia is the majority. They have not done a census. Some people think as many as 70 . Kurds are about 10 roughly. You have yazidis and christians making up a small percentage. The shia are clearly the majority. It is the flip of syria. The turks do not surpri