Edwards: Free College for Everyone Is AchievableSen. John Edwards answers questions in our presidential mashup.

The following is an unedited transcript and may contain typos or omissions. Click here for more on the presidential mashup.

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Edwards: But I want to caveat it by the other requirement is since private colleges and universities cost so much, this is what I propose requires either a public community college or public university.

Rose: But it's four years?

Edwards: Yes, sir. But I wanted to be clear that what we've done in Green County is not just the first year.

Rose: I wanted to make sure that I understood that. Education today in America. Do we need to rethink education in any particular way as far as you're concerned, beyond the—

Edwards: Yes.

Rose: Go ahead.

Edwards: Yes, I believe we do. I think that we tend to think of education as K through 12, maybe college and in some rare cases, graduate school. We should think of education as a birth-to-death experience in America. That means we get the kids as early as we possibly can, we head start basically 3- to 4-year-olds. That's not young enough. We can start much earlier, much more intensely but particularly focus on at-risk kids. Better training for those who teach in early childhood, better health care and nutrition, support for those kids. I think that there's some very specific things we should do in K through 12 such as provide bonus pay—raise teacher pay, generally. Provide bonus pay to teachers that will go to the most difficult places. And we've got to I think dramatically change No Child Left Behind. I just talked about college. Let me go to the last element which is the one that I haven't heard of, there's talk about. We know if you graduate from college this year that the information you learned, a huge amount will be outdated in five or 10 years, we have to be the most creative, innovative, best educated work force on the planet, so we need an infrastructure for continuing education after high school, college, or graduate school, whichever is the last part of your formal education. So we continue to learn. Now, I wish I could tell you I have a specific proposal on this. I don't, not yet. But I do believe that because—basically it's ad hoc now. We leave it to individuals or their employers the enormous responsibility of ensuring that 45-year-old workers or 50-year-old workers in America are up-to-date and best trained, best educated they can possibly be and I think we have to develop a national infrastructure for making sure people continue to learn as they age.

Rose: Our last question, senator, comes from Bill Maher in Los Angeles. And it is on videotape. Here it is.

Bill Maher: Sen. Edwards, you've suggested that Americans should give up their SUVs for the sake of the environment, but a recent UN study found that deforestation for the purpose of creating grazing land for cattle and methane emissions from cattle generated more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars and planes in the world, so it's not just the SUVs, it's the c-o-w-s. Taking a shot at SUVs was gutsy. Do you want to take a shot at meat?

Edwards: I love listening to Bill Maher. I think he's correct about some of that. He's such a funny guy. The deforestation is a huge issue. He's absolutely correct about that. Obviously, our trees, our plants play an enormous role in keeping the environment appropriately balanced over time. I think we do have to, particularly if we're looking at the long-term consequences of what we're doing to the climate to the temperature of the Earth, those are things that have to be looked at and taken into account. The one thing I would add to that, though, is I actually saw a study just over the last few days. It didn't get much attention in the United States, but I think it was done by American scientists if I remember correctly that suggested the possibility that the polar ice cap at the rate we're going now could melt over the next 23 years. I think that is some indication of how serious the crisis this climate change and global warming is. I want to see both the presidential candidates and myself as the next president of the United States lead the charge on dealing with this crisis in a really aggressive way. Because we have to. I mean, first of all, we have to get off our addiction to oil in America. We use 22 million barrels a day. I've laid out a specific set of ideas about how to do that, reducing greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050 and transforming the way we use and produce energy in this country. But I would add, this goes to the SUV part of Bill's question. I do think we need a president who actually says to America, you have to be willing to sacrifice, who calls on Americans to sacrifice. Instead of making a bunch of promises about what the president is going to do, who says to America if you love your country, you need to be patriotic about something other than war. You need to say I'm willing to drive a more fuel-efficient vehicle and I'm willing to conserve in my home and workplace, because all of us have to do this together. That's real patriotism to say if we're going make America better and bigger and stronger and more independent and if we don't want to be driven by the addiction to oil and we want to actually preserve the planet, we have to do it together.

Rose: One last question from me. Since you first ran for the Senate from North Carolina and served one term and then was the vice president candidate of the party in 2004, until today, what is the most profound change in your political growth?

Edwards: It's a really good question, Charlie. It would probably take more thought than I could give just sitting here. I can tell you my initial reaction is, that the extraordinary opportunity that I grew up with in America that allowed me to come from nothing to basically having everything now, that when I move around the country, as I have as a presidential and a vice presidential candidate—I've been doing it for years now, and I hear people's stories, it feels to me like there are millions of people in this country that no longer believe what my parents believed, which is if they worked hard, their kids would have a better life. It seems to me that the old American dream, it seems to me that that dream is distant and dim for millions of people. Whether it's because they don't have health care or living in poverty or middle class families that are struggling to just pay bills. It seems like things are harder and harder and harder. And at least from my perspective, it's actually the reason I'm running for president. So that those opportunities can be available to everybody, and I think they're really important substantive components of that. I think when I began my political career, which you just made a reference to, I hadn't seen the way I have seen today. How difficult it is for so many people to be able to live the American dream and have their kids have a better life. I want to be the president that restores that.

Rose: I thank you for joining us for this, and we look forward to having you here at the table again.

Edwards: Thank you, Charlie.

Rose: Sen. John Edwards. Back in a moment. Stay with us.

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