>>Peter Diamandis:
It turns out that technology is a resource
liberating force.
It's a chance to change our world.
So in Abundance, I talk about the story of
this man, Napoleon, III who invites guy, the
King of Siam over for dinner in 1840 to the
Palace of Versailles.
And to show his amazing capabilities, Napoleon
feeds all of his troops with silver utensils.
Napoleon himself eats with gold utensils,
but the King of Siam, the royal guest, he's
fed with aluminum utensils.
Because in 1840, aluminum was the scarcest
metal on the planet.
Even though the earth is made 8.3% aluminum
by weight, you can't actually go and dig it
out of the ground.
It's all bound by oxidates and silicates to
literally create bauxite.
And it was so energetically difficult to extract
the aluminum from the bauxite, it was worth
more than platinum and gold.
Which by the way is the reason the tip of
the Washington monument is capped with aluminum.
Built in that same decade.
They the technology of electrolyzes came along
and made it so easy remove aluminum from bauxite,
we literally use it for aluminum foil, aluminum
cans, aluminum airplanes, everywhere.
If you think about the analogy of technology
taking that which was scarce and making it
abundant, I think about it in these ways:
We live on a world -- talk about energy scarcity
-- we live on a world that is bathed in 5,000
times more energy than we consume as a species
in a year.
It's about making that energy available.
And by the way, the cost of solar has dropped
50% last year, 50% the year before.
We are increasing our production rates globally
by 30%.
And if we have abundant energy, a squanderable
amount of abundant energy, then water is not
an issue.
We talk about water scarcity and water wars.
We live on a water planet, the pale blue dot.
Two-thirds of our surface is water.
97% is saltwater.
Two percent the polar caps and we fight about
half a percent.
The same way we extract aluminum from Bauxite
so shall we the water from our oceans.
There is amazing work being done by Dean Kamen
and Muhtar Kent, the chairman of Coca-Cola,
is committed to taking that technology globally.
It will give us a world of abundant water.
This Masai warrior on a cell phone has better
mobile com than President Clinton did when
he was in office.
And if he's on literally -- on Google, on
Android phone, he has access to more access
and information than President Bush did.
On something that they're microfinancing with
a set of applications that literally give
them extraordinary video teleconferencing,
video cameras for no cost.
