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The job's temperature and terrorism are the next generation's greatest challenges according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and the former mayor of the Big Apple was in Albany. This is New York now. Funding for New York now is provided by the New York State Health Insurance Program offering New York State Public employers and employees the employer plan a plan as great as the Empire State.

The New York State Builders Association of Research and Education Foundation we're dedicated to training educational programs and research studies focused on the residential building industry. For more information visit Nisbet dot com United University professions represents thirty three thousand academic and professional faculty on all state operated campuses. UNIVERSITY OF THE UNION makes additional funding provided by New York website comes from Philips Lytle New York's former mayor Rudy Giuliani dropped by the Albany airport this week to pick up several upstate GOP endorsements and his run for president.

Bill Hammond of the New York Daily News and Jim 0.0 of the Albany Times Union will be joining me in just a few minutes with more on this story. Remember Iraq's Oil for Food program. Well the deal the Cayuga Indian Nation wants to cut with New York could be called a land for gambling program reps from the tribe announced they would be willing to trade their interest in acquiring land in the Finger Lakes in exchange for the rights to a smaller reservation and permission to open a gambling casino and other gaming news New York's three biggest racetracks may be split up amongst multiple owners more on this story in a moment. And everyone is talking about green energy lately but no one is doing it with as much passion as the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman. I had the chance to speak with him last week about alternative energy development before he gave the commencement address at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy. He told the 2007 grads that they'll have to be the ones to invent the next generation of clean power. My interview with Friedman which took place on the RPI campus focused on

how the development of clean tech could be the dot com of the 21st century. First of all I want to say Thomas Friedman thank you so much for joining me. Good to be here it's a great pleasure to speak with you. Are we having a green revolution in America. We're talking about having a green revolution. And I guess that's the beginning of it. Green has gone mainstream. In fact if you go into the newsstand today there's the green Vogue issues and the fair issue green here our Time's cover story magazine green card mechanic and probably green soldier of fortune. Everybody's talking about it. So Green has gone to Main Street really hit mean Street hasn't gone down Main Street though because actually go down Main Street to actually scale the kind of green alternatives we need to make a real difference in terms of the challenge of climate change or the challenge of being dependent on bad regimes for our energy. We're not even close. Has the government been honest with the American people

about what we're all going to have to do in order to face the future with alternative energy. Not even close to honest. You know this administration the Bush administration can barely get the word. Conservation out of its mouth. I mean yes if you Google them you'll find somewhere they may happen to mention it but let alone actually talk about the prices the taxes that we need the fees whatever you want to call a regulation to actually stimulate the investment in alternative energies at scale and this is business to get prices where they really will bring us the innovation we need. We're not even close. We just visited in Lowville New York the Maple Ridge Wind Farm and it's the largest wind farm east of the Mississippi. What do you think about when a farm What are your thoughts when it is you know when does hear wind is real. There are a lot of people today making real money on wind. It has a production tax credit so the government is

stimulating a lot of that innovation which I wholly approved because it's actually driving the cost down and drives down the innovation curve. It's critical that we keep that tax incentive there. They tend to be renewed for only two or three years so we want to make sure that stays there. But Windows here I profiled a company in Texas are true city which has a wind farm up middle and they're making money today without subsidies. So winds here wind is real but it's at scale because it is a challenge because as you may have noticed wind doesn't always blow especially when you want it. And so to really have scale wind power you know we need really massive investment in the windy parts of our country where the wind blows the most regularly the Great Plains and then we need transmission wires. We need a global transmission I weigh in for so when the wind blows you can get it from there to the big cities where it's needed the most we still don't have it. How soon until we do have that and what's the investment that

will have to be made in order to get that. Well you know we can do this we know technologically how to do it. It will take I think a different administration. This administration really just isn't serious about I think making the kind of change in prices and regulation that would stimulate the kind of innovation we need. We do think out of this is a we credit but we need a national transmission grid just like we need a national highway system we need a national electronic you know highway system. It takes real government leadership the kind that we saw after the Cold War to face what is I think the challenge of our generation. And you say that America's future is in alternative energy development if we put all of our resources and our brains and box behind this. We could actually lift this country out of its doldrums. Well I think clean tech is clearly going to be the Dot-Com of the 21st century is the next great global industry. It's not hard to see it's a no brainer because when three billion people walk

on to the flat world all with their own version of the American dream house a car a toaster a microwave and a fridge rater. If we don't learn to do more things with less stuff we're going to burn up choke up heat up and smoke up this planet far faster than even Al Gore predicts. And one need only visit some of China's biggest most polluted cities or India's to see that fact that is indisputable. Whether you think global warming is happening or not is a hoax or not. So cleantech the ability to do more things with less stuff less energy thus materials is absolutely going to be the next great global industry. I know that for sure. The only question I have Susan is are we going to be the leaders in that industry or not. Now let's talk about clean tech. What does it take to make a clean tech product was quite interesting. You can't make a product cleaner without making it smarter. OK. You cannot make a microwave a toaster refrigerator fridge or a jet engine cleaner. Not making a smarter smarter materials smarter software smarter design. What do we still do. We can still make things

that cost more but our manufacturing we do knowledge manufacturing knowledge intensive manufacturing. We make stuff smart. What does China do. It makes stuff cheaper. We don't do that very well. Those jobs all go to China. This knowledge jobs are the ones that stay here in Troy New York OK. So if we shift the whole global to bait to green. We actually played to our advantage. We played to the jobs that can't be outsourced. So when I hear the president say we can't afford to do that you know we can't afford not to do it politically. Let's talk about the future when the United States is heading down the path that you're describing. How will the rest of the world be viewing us how well will this be better as an investment for America. Well you know right now we're five percent of the world population roughly we used 25 percent of the world's energy. And they hate us and they hate us. Among other reasons you know. But that's one of them. Now in fairness we also produce you know far in excess of our numbers output

goods and services that benefit the whole world too but the fact is we're energy hogs. If you look at the average size of the cars we drive and compare them to to Europe or any other country. There is nothing I think that could help improve our image more than if we became leaders of this green movement rather than lacquers. I'm a big believer you know a lot of bad things happen in the world without America. We know that some bad things happen with America but few very good things in the world happen without America taking the lead. And if we were to take the lead on this issue I think it would be something that would have an enormous impact because what are we really saying. We're same group we're going to take the lead in creating the technologies that will give the space for you China India Brazil the developing world to realize your full aspirations just the way we did. But in a cleaner greener way that will be sustainable because one thing we can't do is come to them and say. We got to go dirty but sorry it out too late. You're going to have to grow clean and green. That's not going to happen. So

I think taking the lead on this would really give people a second look at America at a critical time. So we started the conversation by saying that we are sort of immersed in this green revolution or starting the green revolution. But what is it going to take for you know me and you and the guy down the street to actually drive less or use less energy. Well it takes two things basically. One is called price and one's called regulations that is if you get the price of energy right whether it's a carbon tax the gasoline tax where people actually have to pay the full cost of the carbon they emit will cost the society future generations in the world. You will see tremendous innovation. Jeff Immelt I interviewed him the head of G.E. told me something remarkable he said Look Tom in the 25 years I've been in G.E. I've seen seven generations of innovation in health care products. CAT scans MRI and X-rays in an electric car in power generation. I've seen one generation.

I've seen one generation GTD basically sells the same coal fired power plants a little cleaner more efficient that is still 25 years ago. Why. Because there is no price incentive for anyone to innovate. You got to get the price up where there's a huge incentive that questions quiz time. I'll turn the chair in the chair I now look at which countries are among the highest gasoline taxes I believe the highest in the world. Japan which country has the highest energy efficiency standards in the world. Japan which country has the richest car company in the world. Japan called Toyota just this year just last month and became the biggest car company in the world. Gosh I wonder if there's a connection. You were talking about the real cost of energy. How much is the real cost of a gallon of gas. It's hard to say because it comes from different location some easier some harder to extract.

So people are moaning the fact that we're seeing almost $4 a gallon but that's very low compared to other countries. Norway premium is over $6 a gallon I believe you know. And by the way Norway is a oil exporting country so they understand they want to actually drive innovation get their people to be more efficient. Look at California as the highest building and appliance efficiency standards in the country have for many years since the 70s 70s oil crisis California. On a per capita basis energy consumption in California has been flat for the last 30 years. It's up 50 percent in the rest of the country. It's about a lot of things. It's primarily about standards set really high standards. Let the market meet them. Raise the standards. Let the market meet them. That's what government's role is. But when we have a government this is not and wouldn't impose anything hard and use. Well what is it do we say I don't want to innovate. Why should be you know making money on the same coal fired power plant I've been selling for 25 years. Another test turn the tables

questions is when was the last big scale innovation in energy in America then I mean time is up now. 55 to nuclear power that was the last great you know vacation and energy in the country. There's a reason for that low prices. Two more questions in the 2008 election is coming up we are going to have a new administration whoever wins. Thank god my MTV What is it that this administration has to do to get this ball rolling. This is ministration is not going to do it now the next the next iteration. You've got to get two things right. We have to have a carbon tax or gasoline tax or a floor price on oil that says oil is never going to be sold in this country for less than $50 a barrel which says to all these incredible innovators out in the country now you're telling me I've got a sure thing that I'm never going to get whipsawed bio pic again. I'll bet on that. Then you'll see a huge investment in all these alternatives. And not by

the little people in their garages just they're important to buy the Duponts and then you'll start to get innovation at scale. That's really the key and you need higher standards. Every building you know should be a green building LEED certified. You should be able to build a building in trying to your proposed Maryland that's not lead certified that isn't a green building. So Thomas Friedman do you think that this is a moral issue going green like Al Gore says I think it's a moral issue I think it's a strategic issue I think it's a jobs issue. Look the three great challenges that face our kids are jobs temperature and terrorism and green is the answer to all three. THOMAS FRIEDMAN What a pleasure. Thank you. Next week in the second part of our look at alternative energy development we're going to show you what the largest wind power project east of the Mississippi. It's in a loud bell New York and it's called the Maple Ridge Wind Farm. Here's our poll question of the week do you think as Thomas Friedman does that the three greatest challenges facing our children are jobs temperature and

terrorism. You can respond on our blog. Org slash New York now. And I would love to hear from you. Joining me for the Reporters Roundtable this week are Bill Hammond of the New York Daily News and Jim 0.0 of the Albany Times Union Welcome to New York now. So you guys who do you think would be considered the biggest name to come to Albany this week. That would be Rudy Giuliani. I thought so too. I'd say so. GOP presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani received endorsements this week from many of his fellow upstate Republicans. It was a whirlwind pit stop for Giuliani who flew into the Albany airport spoke to supporters and left all in the span of 30 minutes. The crowd may have been smaller than Hillary Clinton's but it was equally enthusiastic assembly minority leader James to desk told the crowd that Giuliani's political chops would serve him well pretty much anywhere.

To have Rudy Giuliani as governor of this great state wouldn't that be wonderful right now. Thank you. However as unselfish as we are we we realize that our country the entire country needs Rudy and today we proudly endorse and present to our fellow New Yorkers and fellow Americans the next president of the United States of America. Rudy Giuliani Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno reminded the audience of Giuliani's leadership on 9/11. Talk about a man who stood up after 9 11 led New Yorkers led America lead the free world. Almost the first words out of the candidate's mouth were about terrorism as well giving us a preview of how his candidacy will be shaped by the tragedy that brought him worldwide attention and praise to terrorism. We cannot put our heads down and retreat and be defeated.

I learned that I learned that not just from September 11. I learned that as the lessons of the 20th century when you face terrorists when you face bullies when you face dictators and when you face tyrants the worst thing to do is to show them weakness. When you do they take advantage of you. And if we haven't learned that we haven't learned much. So fun event Jim 0.0 any surprises. I don't think there are surprises no there was great enthusiasm for this fellow. Just as when Hillary Clinton came to town a week earlier she was embraced by her partisan crowd. Rudy Giuliani was incredibly embraced. Let's move on to the leaders meeting that took place early in the week. Jim what were they talking about and did they achieve anything. Well Cheeseman in Albany is incremental and maybe if some steps were taken toward a couple of measures there's a thing that measure that.

Governor Spitzer is really wedded to and that is trying to improve the health of youngsters and he wants to for instance make sure that school vending machines have healthy foods. It's called the Healthy Child measure. And they were talking about that for a while and what the percent of the pros and cons relative to that kind of legislation they also talked about expanding the DNA data bank so that it could be used for criminal investigations. But Joe Bruno the Senate Republican continues to be unhappy with the proceedings. He would like the agenda set on things that he thinks are much more important to New Yorkers such as a death penalty for cop killers such as capital project funding for economic development purposes. And he's increasingly frustrated at the what's happening at these open meetings. This is a different process than what Albany has been used to having when the leaders got together for many years it was always first of all it was just the governor and the two top leaders. These

meetings include the minority leaders from each house. And also it was done behind closed doors and so they could get into horse trading they could say I'll give you the DNA databank if you give me some you know some funding for capital that's going to be tough for them. It's clearly it's uncomfortable. They say surely why. Well and that's a little embarrassing I mean you'd almost wonder why they do that instead of sort of suppressing that and trying. But I think it's because they feel uncomfortable doing this in public. I think there's Senator Bruno and perhaps to some extent Assembly Speaker Silver would be more comfortable working things out in private which has been the tradition. And in fact that's how they worked out the budget this year Governor Spitzer went with the leaders in to a private room and they haggled and they got it done it's it can be a very efficient process in terms of saving time. But the governor took a lot of criticism for doing it that way and so he's he's trying to keep as much of the process in public at this point.

So why don't we move on to a few gambling stories Jim. You're sort of our gambling expert here at this table. Well the New York State thoroughbred racing franchise is on the table right now. The governor is about to get reports from the inspector general's office on the backgrounds of four bidders who would like to take over this this franchise including the New York Racing Association which which wants to retain the franchise in the next few weeks is going to be making a very difficult decision in terms of which franchise bitter he prefers. It was due this weekend. Well yeah as a matter of fact in his own timetable they were trying to get. Some of the decisions are arrived at by around Memorial Day. I have a feeling that it's going to take a little longer into June and there's a lot of rumors swirling right now that the governor might have different ideas as to what to do with the franchise perhaps break it up. The Spitzer administration is somewhat backing away from these rumors but they haven't totally denied them.

You were talking about the three the three horse racing tracks thoroughbred tracks and Saratoga aqueduct in Queens and Belmont in Nassau County. And one of the rumors that came out and it gives you an idea of how unsettled things are even at this late date is that the governor was thinking about splitting up the franchise giving one giving Saratoga to one player giving Belmont to another player and then selling off aqueduct maybe redeveloping it as something new because it's not it doesn't draw a lot of people to racing. It goes empty a lot of the year. And at the same time if you're interested in gaming news The New York can you get tried out in the Finger Lakes. Announced that they have arrived at a deal with Seneca and CU counties in which they would get 10000 acres to set up a reservation around the lake and in exchange for doing this they would drop their ability to apply to the federal government to put land into trust to create to

build up to a sixty four thousand acre truck lot more like reservation and their agreeing to drop that ability in exchange for a 10000 up to 10000 acres that they would acquire over time in Congress and it would identify that as Indian Territory in exchange they would get the rights from the Spitzer administration to set up a casino somewhere in New York State. The state would would benefit by sharing in revenues from that casino. The counties would benefit from sharing revenues from those casino. But it's really a big question as to whether the federal government the state government and the local governments will indeed vote in favor of this. Do we have a timeline on this yet. The timeline is that we think that senate and county boards of supervisors will vote in June to see if they they will ratify this. And then it's up to the Spitzer ministration of course Congress to create legislation to support it. We're going to move on to a final topic and this is something called the Working

Families TIME TO CARE Act which hasn't gotten a lot of ink but Bill you wrote a very personal column about it this week. Tell us about it. Well the basic idea is we already are guaranteed by federal law most of us are guaranteed the right to 12 weeks off for a family health crisis including having a baby or a close relative is seriously ill. It's time off without pay however it's unpaid leave. The proposal that surfaced from the Spitzer administration says we should give people at least a small amount of money 100s up to one hundred seventy dollars a week under the disability system for the 12 weeks. This would apply to small companies. I guess I should say that the unpaid leave requirement doesn't apply to small companies if they do Gray leave you would get $170 So this would be it would be a way for. People when they're when they're become a parent they could bond with their child if their father has

a stroke they could be there for their father and not have to worry so much about paying the rent. This is what you wrote in your column in The New York Daily News the 14 best days of my life were the ones I spent with my wife and newborn son and two years later with our baby daughter. That's terrific. You know it's I mean it's hard to imagine having to make a choice between and you know buying groceries or paying the bill. Yeah. And an impossible decision. Well I want to thank you both for joining me Bill Hammond of the New York Daily News Jim 0.0 of the Albany Times Union thank you very much. Coming up this week a New York State's political calendar the Memorial Day holiday and other leaders meeting. And oh yeah legislative ITL members of the New York state legislature who think they have talent will be showing off their stuff for charity at Jillian's bar in Albany on Tuesday night May 29. The list of sand wannabes includes Bill Parminter of Chautauqua County Ellen young of flushing and Jim Conti of Huntington Station among many others. The event is open to the public for more

information just contact Jillian's or call this number 9 1 7 8 3 8 3 3 9 5. Again this week's poll question is do you think as Thomas Friedman does that the three greatest challenges facing our children are jobs temperature and terrorism. You can respond on our blog. Org slash New York now. I hope you have a happy and safe Memorial Day holiday. I'll see you next week. Funding for New York now is provided by the New York State Health Insurance Program offering New York State Public employers and employees the employer plan a plan as great as the Empire State.

The New York State Builders Association Research and Education Foundation were dedicated to training educational programs and research studies focused on the residential building industry. For more information visit Misbah dot com United University professions represent thirty three thousand academic and professional that not all state operated campuses at the State University of New York with the union make SUNY with additional funding provided by w o any t support for New York now his website comes from Philips Lytle.