The root cause of the looming energy problem - and the key to easing environmental, economic and religious tensions while improving public health - is to address the unending, and unequal, growth of the human population. And the one proven way to reduce fertility rates is to empower young women by educating them.
And so to those who suggest that we are somehow 'harming' young women by encouraging them to take charge of their health we say this: We are not harming young women by educating them. We are arming them with information that they will carry with them throughout their lives.
Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down.
I was really educating myself on the environment, but I didn't realize it was so connected to politics, connected to globalization.
Higher educating has so many challenges, and private higher education has a special challenge of ever rising tuition costs.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the rest of the Ivy League are worthy institutions, to be sure, but they're not known for educating large numbers of poor young people.
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
There is no question in the world that educating a girl is good for her country and good for her. The challenge is, is it good for her parents who are living in extreme poverty, who need the girl's help to take care of getting firewood, water, taking care of young children?
Teach love, generosity, good manners and some of that will drift from the classroom to the home and who knows, the children will be educating the parents.
Population growth is straining the Earth's resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights.