In Atlanta, a split over the plan for civil rights museum

from the November 15, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1115/p03s03-ussc.html

Atlanta wrestles with finding the proper location and presentation for the museum.

By Patrik Jonsson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
ATLANTA

Atlanta's plan to build a civil rights museum is stirring debate about which venue would best tell the story of that turbulent and inspiring time: downtown, among sleek corporate buildings and cultural institutions, or Martin Luther King Jr.'s old stomping grounds on Auburn Avenue, known as "black Main Street," with its housing projects and fried fish joints.

A decision about where to put a civil rights museum is likely to inform how the story about the civil rights movement is told - and is as important as the papers and artifacts that the building will house, say experts.

For some, the museum should focus on how the movement of the 1950s and '60s succeeded in transforming a segregated society into a publicly integrated one. Others want the new museum to emphasize that race relations are a continuing struggle - and they note that the poverty and social segregation evident along Auburn Avenue are proof that Dr. King's dream is only half-fulfilled.

"It's going to be a tough discussion, especially when you ask the question: Why not spend tens of millions of dollars to build upon the living museum that Auburn Avenue still is, where you can see the barbershop where King got his hair cut?" says Claybourne Carson, director of the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in California.

This summer, Atlanta borrowed from SunTrust bank to buy 7,000 pages of King's personal papers for $32 million. They include everything from divinity student marginalia to handwritten notes for his "I have a dream" speech.

The debate has surged anew in the three weeks since Coca-Cola Co. offered the city a piece of land next to its new and expanded World of Coca-Cola museum, located a few miles from the site on Auburn Avenue. That offer accelerated a leisurely, 20-year effort to build the museum. "Six months ago, we didn't have content, and we didn't have a site, and now we have both," says museum committee member A.J. Robinson.

The city's size and its number of tourists mean that the Atlanta Civil Rights Museum is likely to become the nation's largest and busiest. Indeed, King's legacy is very much alive. Presidents Bush and Clinton were on hand for the groundbreaking of a $100 million National King Memorial on the Mall in Washington Monday, the first memorial for a nonpresident.

In Atlanta, Mayor Shirley Franklin says the challenge is to differentiate the city's civil rights presentation from some 100 other African- American collections and three major civil rights museums in Birmingham, Ala.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Cincinnati - in addition to the Smithsonian Institution's planned African-American History Museum in Washington, scheduled to open in 2016.

"Other cities like Memphis and Chicago have told the civil rights story and that of Dr. King in relation to their cities," she says. "We now finally have a chance to tell the Atlanta story."

The museum committee will present a proposal to the mayor about the museum's location and contents by the end of the year. There is concern that building the facility downtown may draw people away from the King memorial on Auburn Avenue, says Mr. Carson. Though no parcels have been identified, two of King's children have said they believe the museum should be on Auburn Avenue, near King's mausoleum.

Others say the high number of black panhandlers along the Avenue would deter some from coming. "We haven't come so far that a lot of white folks are going to feel comfortable going down to Auburn Avenue, and that's very sad," says Randall Burkett, curator of Emory University's African-American collection.

Meanwhile, the committee is figuring out how to present the museum's contents. Mr. Robinson says the proposal will likely try to push beyond the '60s period of racial segregation.

One way to thread the past with the present is by tracing the racial history of one specific area and its people up through today, as was done with a rural Georgia county in the book "Praying for Sheetrock, says Brian Landsberg, author of "Enforcing Civil Rights: Race Discrimination and the Department of Justice."

Yet many Americans today see the civil rights struggles as disembodied from their own lives, says Mr. Landsberg. "The attitude now is that the race issue is solved, the civil rights revolution is over. But if one actually takes a close look at one place and kind of moves forward through time, one can see that's not really true."

King Center visitor Denise Merrell from Jacksonville, Fla., agrees that "history can be hard to handle." But she says an Atlanta Civil Rights Museum would be most effective if it shows both differences and similarities "in what things were like back then and what things are like now."

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Africans are already facing climate change

from the November 06, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1106/p04s01-woaf.html

Is Darfur the first climate-change conflict? In Kenya, a UN meeting begins Monday to set new fossil-fuel emissions targets.

By Scott Baldauf Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

As delegates gather Monday in Kenya for a United Nations conference to set new targets to reduce fossil-fuel emissions after 2012, climate change is a present reality for many Africans.
In Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Chad, people are already seeing the repercussions - including war. The conflict between herders and farmers in Sudan's Darfur region, where farm and grazing lands are being lost to desert, may be a harbinger of the future conflicts.

"You have climate change and reduced rainfall and shrinking areas of arable land; and then you add population growth and you have the elements of an explosion," says Francis Kornegay, a senior analyst at the Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg.

On Sunday, a new UN report predicted that by 2080, global warming could lead to a 5 percent fall in the production of food crops, such as sorghum in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Zambia; maize in Ghana; millet in Sudan; and groundnuts in Gambia.

Between 25 percent and 40 percent of Africa's natural habitats could be lost by 2085, according to the report produced by the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It also said that rising sea levels could destroy an estimated 30 percent of Africa's coastal infrastructure. Coastal settlements in the Gulf of Guinea, Senegal, Gambia, and Egypt could be flooded,

Ironically, Africa produces the smallest amount of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

While it's risky to reduce any conflict to a single cause, a growing number of aid workers, government officials, and experts agree that climate change could certainly stretch the tense relations in many regions to the breaking point. Whenever there is less land available, and less water to make that land productive, then competition for that land can turn violent.

"[Climate] changes make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely," said British Home Secretary John Reid last March. "The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur. We should see this as a warning sign."

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol - aimed at capping greenhouse gas emissions - expires in six years.
Many countries, notably the US, have opted out of the Kyoto accord, which called for higher gas taxes and more regulation to reduce the global consumption of fossil fuels by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Many scientists say the use of fossil fuels has raised the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which in turn has begun to raise global temperatures.

Some world leaders, such as President Bush, argue that uncertainty over the cause of global warming does not justify the economic costs of switching from fossil fuels to alternatives, such as solar power or fuel cells. But European leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, call for drastic measures, such as a 60 percent reduction in carbon emission by 2050.

But climate change is already hurting people here in Africa, according to a report issued last month by a coalition of British aid groups. The number of food emergencies encountered each year in Africa have tripled since the mid-1980s, the report says. This year alone, more than 25 million Africans faced a food crisis.

Even though temperatures in Africa have only warmed by an average of 0.5 degree C. over the past 100 years, desert lands are advancing into once arable rain-fed areas, and wetter equatorial parts of Africa are getting wetter, often leading to devastating floods.

According to another British report released last week, by former World Bank economist Nicholas Stern, current weather trends suggest that greenhouse gases will boost overall temperatures by 2-3 degrees C. over the next 40 years.

In the West, conflicts such as the fighting in Sudan's Darfur region are often chalked up to ethnic or religious differences. But equally important is the competition for land, as water sources dry up.

"The fighting in Chad, and the fighting in Darfur are the same," says one North African diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The problem is resources, especially water. On one side you have herders. On the other side you have farmers. And with the spread of weapons in the region, it becomes very dangerous and hard to control."

Indeed, in Niger, the government halted its planned expulsion late last month of nearly 150,000 refugees from neighboring Chad. The refugees, many of them Arab cattle herders, had fled fighting in Chad, but their encroachment on the farmlands and water resources in Niger has increased tensions and led to sporadic fighting with natives.

Jason Stearns, an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Nairobi, says that the competition for basic resources are behind many African conflicts.

"In Burundi, climate change, together with population growth and shrinking arable land is tightly linked to conflicts," says Mr. Stearns. He says that Burundi will have to work hard to meet the expectations of a population that has doubled since the early 1970s and where there are 400,000 refugees expected to return home after years of civil war.

But as bad as things are in Burundi, Stearns says, "it's even more true in the Horn of Africa, in Kenya, Somalia, as well as Ethiopia and Sudan."

Claudia Ringler, a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, says Africa is more vulnerable to climate change because so much of it's agricultural lands rely on rainfall, rather than irrigation.

"All these lobbies say it's bad to build all these dams, but all the dams have been built in Europe, in the US, in Australia, not in Africa," says Ms. Ringler. She has a long list of things that would enable African farmers to better feed their people, including access to paved roads, better weather reports, higher yielding varieties that can survive in times of drought. But above all, Africa needs access to water.

"Water is the most variable input in a changing climate situation," she says. "Strangely enough, on a per capita basis, water availability is not that bad in Africa. In Ethiopia and Somalia, the water's there, but it's not getting to where it needs to be."

• Material from the wire services was used in this report The Stern Report

The Stern Report, issued by the British government last week, calls for drastic cuts in carbon emissions.

The former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern warns that:

• The world's overall temperatures could rise 5 degrees C (9 degrees F.), causing sudden glacial melt, severe flooding of low-lying areas, and displacement of some 200 million people.

• Warming of 4 degrees C or more is likely to seriously affect global food production.

• Warming of 2 degrees C could leave 15 to 40 percent of the Earth's species facing extinction.

• Global economic consumption per person will drop between 5 and 20 percent. But reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would only cost 1 percent of global gross domestic product by 2050.

• By 2050, markets for low-carbon technologies could be worth at least $500 billion.

• Deforestation is responsible for more emissions than the transport sector.

Mr. Stern's recommendations included:

• Carbon pricing, through taxation, emissions trading or regulation, will show people the full social costs of their actions.

• Funding for energy research and development should at least double; support low-carbon technologies should be increased five fold.

• International funding should go into researching new crop varieties that will be more resilient to drought and flood.

• Large-scale international pilot programs to curb deforestation should be started now.

While there is growing consensus among scientists that global climate change is occurring, there is still sharp disagreement on what to do about it.

Bjorn Lomborg, an economics professor at the Copenhagen Business School, and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Group, says that spending 1 percent of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions, as the Stern Report suggests, is likely to cause more harm than good .

"This is a 100 year problem, so you don't try to solve it in five years," says Dr. Lomborg. Instead, he calls for the world's rich nations to spend a fraction of that amount - $75 billion - on developing clean drinking water, combating the spread of AIDS and malaria, and providing universal basic education, and creating affordable energy alternatives, such as wind, solar, or fuel cells.

Noting economic studies that eliminating malaria alone would boost the global GDP by nearly 1 percent, Lomborg argues that the world should spend money where it knows it can do some good. A healthier, more prosperous population will be better able to solve its problems, than an unhealthy and overtaxed one.

"Look, Kyoto makes prices higher so that people will consume less energy, but 99 percent of the money will go into getting current energy sources, and only 1 percent of the money will go into finding alternative clean energy," says Lomborg. "Do we want to have 1 percent for research and development, or 100 percent?"

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Ethical questions add new twist to climate-change debate

from the November 09, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1109/p14s01-lire.html

Report seeks stronger focus on ethical issues in negotiations on greenhouse gases.

By Jane Lampman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Recent news on global warming is not encouraging:

• Concentrations of human-caused carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached the highest levels ever recorded last year, says a World Meteorological Organization report issued Nov. 3.

• Another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, also posted a record in 2005.

• Not only summer but also winter sea ice in the Arctic has retreated in a pronounced way, says a recent NASA study.

• A global recession is a probable outcome if rapid action on climate change is not pursued, says a major report released last week by the British government.

As delegates meet in Africa this week for a United Nations conference on climate change, they aim to set targets for dramatic cuts in fossil-fuel emissions beyond those set by the Kyoto protocol for 2012, and grapple with how to allocate those cuts. Yet the big economies of the United States, China, and India are not part of the Kyoto treaty.

These efforts call not only for the best scientific data and economic analyses, but also for explicit consideration of the ethical issues involved, says a multinational group of climate change, development, and ethical research organizations. To make its case to delegates and policymakers, the group released a white paper on the ethical issues in Nairobi on Nov 8.

"Climate change not only raises ethical questions, but the most profound ones - literally matters of life and death, who's going to survive, the fate of nation states, obligations of one nation to another, of the rich and the poor," and who is to be involved in the decisions, says Donald Brown, coordinator of the Collaborative Program on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change (EDCC).

It is widely recognized that damage from climate change is affecting the poorer countries - those least able to manage it - the hardest. Rising sea levels, for example, may devastate large portions of Bangladesh, the Nile delta, the southeastern coast of Asia, and many Pacific islands.

According to Dr. Brown, an environmental lawyer at Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State, the scientific and economic discourse often hides the ethical questions, making it difficult for the public and policymakers to see what is at stake. For instance, he says, there are strong ethical issues posed by two US positions: that action can be delayed because of perceived scientific uncertainty, and that cost to the US economy is a sufficient rationale for not accepting targets.

The white paper analyzes the ethical issues in eight areas, including atmospheric targets, allocating global emissions among nations, the cost to national economies, responsibility for damages, and potential new technologies.

"We are trying to help people see the moral and normative problems with the way climate change is being discussed," Brown adds. "If you only appeal to self-interest and not to people's sense of ethics and justice, you aren't going to get the responses necessary to make needed reductions."

Under way for two years, the collaboration involves ethicists, scientists, economists, legal experts, and negotiators from several continents. The paper's authors come principally from the US, Brazil, Britain, and Sri Lanka, but more than 100 people from around the world are engaged in the discussion.

"The launch of the white paper is a landmark event," says Prof. Mohan Munasinghe, vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "EDCC is important because it focuses on key equity issues."

Brown offers a vivid example of how challenging these will be: The world is emitting about 7 billion tons of carbon, which is going up each year as the economies of China and India grow. To prevent serious warming, countries must cut total emissions to 3 billion tons and divide that up.

"With the world having to reduce by 60 to 80 percent, the cuts are steep," he says, "but it's the allocation that creates enormous ethical questions. The US has 25 percent of the 7 billion tons; as we cut to 3 [billion], the US share would be much greater than 60 to 80 percent if it were to take equity seriously."

But the developed world has the capacity and technologies to respond, says the British government's recent report and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which works closely with businesses that have already signed on to the challenge.

"The US is the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, and we are also the wealthiest country in the world, so obviously the US should play a major role in addressing this challenge," says Vicki Arroyo, Pew director of policy analysis. The government is not doing what it should, but business can be developing technologies to export to the rest of the world, she adds.

Ethical issues have played a role, she continues, in deciding who acts first. The white paper, which she hasn't yet seen, "is another example of a group seeing the magnitude of this challenge and discussing what our responsibilities are.... It's an important component."

The EDCC hopes to convene an international conference on the ethical issues, and it plans to develop people-friendly resources that will help the general public engage in the debate.

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New sermon from the evangelical pulpit: global warming

from the November 09, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1109/p13s01-lire.html

By Jane Lampman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

As a deeply committed pastor in Atlanta's African-American community, the Rev. Gerald Durley had long thought of himself as enlightened and involved when it came to issues that hurt people's lives. He felt he was fulfilling his responsibilities to others. Until, he says, he saw the film "The Great Warming" last May.

"My total perspective on environmental issues and life in general was drastically altered," says the pastor of Providence Missionary Baptist Church. "This went beyond any political, racial, or gender issues - it is a moral crisis."

Dr. Durley has since shown the documentary on global warming to his congregation and invited ministers, rabbis, and imams to see it. He has gone on radio to discuss the crisis and is promoting sermons on the subject. A discussion he held with Atlanta children has been edited into the latest version of the film.

"The Great Warming" - a documentary made in Canada and narrated by actor Keanu Reeves and singer Alanis Morissette - tells the same disturbing story as Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." But it has become a strategic vehicle for reaching out particularly to Evangelicals, many of whom were unlikely to rush to see the Gore production. Some hope it spurs a tipping point in the attitudes of grass-roots Christians.

Many conservative Christians have held a negative view of environmentalism, some even calling activists "pantheistic tree-huggers." Along with the Bush administration, they have insisted that the scientific evidence isn't yet in.

The dramatic film travels the globe from China to Peru, Bangladesh to southern California, depicting the impact of climate change on human lives and detailing the scientific evidence. It also presents the voice of a new Evangelical leadership "converted" to the movement, in language the faithful can appreciate.

Richard Cizik, Washington spokesman of the National Association of Evangelicals, urges action based on the biblical demand for "creation care." Rev. Cizik had his own change of heart after listening to an Evangelical scientist from Oxford University lay out the scientific consensus.

The movie has been previewed in more than 220 churches in recent weeks, and last Friday opened in Regal Cinema theaters in 34 cities. Ads are being run on Christian radio and in church bulletins, and Evangelical leaders have provided the film's website with Bible study and discussion guides.

"We pray everyone will see 'The Great Warming,' " says the Rev. Paul de Vries, president of New York Divinity School, who prepared the materials. "Science has given us an extraordinary wake-up call, but scriptural teaching gives us direction to be responsible for God's world."

Another website was created in early October to enable those who have seen the film to question political candidates running for Congress about where they stand on the issue (www.questionsforcandidates.org).

The film has support from a broad range of groups, including the National Council of Churches (NCC) and Jewish organizations, which have their own global warming initiatives. The NCC, for example, recently released a report on how member churches can reduce carbon emissions and overall utility expenses. The American Jewish Committee provides cash incentives to its employees to purchase fuel- efficient vehicles.

A "Call to Action" statement on the film's website has gathered dozens of signatories from a broad range of faith leaders, environmental groups, scientists, policymakers, and celebrities.
But converting and galvanizing Evangelicals is a major goal. "Too often Evangelicals have focused on just one or two issues," says Dr. de Vries.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, a Florida pastor who is the new president of the Christian Coalition, agrees. Speaking just for himself on a recent "Call to Action" teleconference, he said, "I'm part of the religious right, and am one of those leaders who wants to expand the agenda." After viewing the film, his 12,000-member congregation formed a team to consider how to become more ecologically responsible.

The shift within Evangelicalism gained some momentum earlier this year when 86 Evangelical leaders issued a statement on global warming, saying climate change was not in doubt and human action was required. They were immediately criticized by other Evangelicals, however, and still are. Yet they can point to growing support.

"In a survey earlier this year, 66 percent of Evangelical people favored environmental legislation to address global warming, even if it cost as much as $15 per month per person," De Vries says.

Younger Evangelicals, in particular, are getting on the bandwagon, working on a draft statement of their own.

Some Evangelicals recognize the problem as a moral issue but still see it primarily as one of individuals taking action. Others insist it's long past time to call for policy changes.

"It's not just individuals turning off the lights, but whether industries continue to pump pollution into the atmosphere," says Tony Campolo, cofounder of a nonpartisan group, Red Letter Christians. "Unless government starts controlling industry better than it has, we are not going to have a solution to this problem."

With global warming affecting poor countries more than the developed world, Dr. Campolo says, there is a biblical imperative for a wealthy America, responsible for at least 25 percent of global carbon emissions, to act.

Such Evangelical leaders remain under fire from colleagues, but they are counting on the film to change minds, starting with pastors.

"Spiritual leaders are waking up to this broader responsibility, and congregations really respect what their local pastor says," Dr. Hunter adds. "Just as all politics is local, all spiritual growth is local. As more pastors are aware of this challenge, it will gain traction - and quickly, I think."

Durley is equally optimistic about the black church community. "There has been a raising of the veil of ignorance around this issue. As we talk to people throughout the South, they ask, 'How can we get mobilized?' "

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How to keep New York afloat

from the November 09, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1109/p13s02-sten.html

With sea levels rising, once-a-century floods may become once-in-20-years events. One solution: huge storm-surge barriers.

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK

Like many New Yorkers, Radley Horton often frets about tomorrow's weather. Unlike many, it's his job. A scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and coauthor of a forthcoming study on the effects of climate change in New York City, he is particularly concerned about an often-overlooked aspect of global warming: bigger, stronger storms.

"It's not a linear relationship," he says on a subway ride to Manhattan's South Ferry station, which would be mostly underwater in a Category 2 hurricane. "A little bit warmer sea surface equals the potential for a lot stronger storm." And feeding off the greater ocean warmth, full-blown hurricanes may arrive at New York City with increasing regularity.

By 2050, stronger storms and rising sea levels may make the flood that previously hit once every 100 years a once-in-20-years event, according to GISS. With a possible three-foot sea level rise by 2100, flooding could occur every four years. "Our old ideas about climate may have to change," he says. "We need to be open to all possibilities."

Even as high-profile politicians like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Gov. George Pataki pledge to reduce their states' carbon "footprint," cities like New York and London - and entire countries like the Netherlands - are moving to adapt to long-term climate change.
With slogans like, "Why should you worry about a hurricane? It's not like you live on an island" and a tripling of storm shelters since Katrina, New York City's Office of Emergency Management has prepared for at least some of the short-term possibilities.

But even before Katrina, the city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which manages the city's freshwater supply and wastewater - 13,000 miles of pipe, total - formed a task force with GISS to look at the long-term effects of climate change.

Among other things, the DEP was concerned by the damage storm surges might inflict on a city surrounded by water. Although city officials declined to discuss concrete solutions for this article saying they were still in the "assessment" phase, scientists foresee potential fixes ranging from raising key infrastructure and building dikes, to flood gates and temporary seals over tunnel entrances. One group proposes raisable flood barriers large enough to protect all of Manhattan Island.

Sea levels have risen almost a foot in the past century, partly because of ice melt and thermal expansion (warmer water has more volume), and partly because of naturally occurring land subsidence of the Northeast. In the same period, area temperatures have risen nearly 2 degrees F. About two-thirds of that increase occurred in the past 30 years and sea-level rise has accelerated in the past decade. "The core body of knowledge has solidified" on climate change, says Cynthia Rosenzweig, the lead GISS scientist on the climate-change task force. "We're moving into a solution phase."

But possible solutions - and how to pay for them - are still "big question marks," says Gary Heath, director of bureau operations and environmental analysis at the DEP. Although antiflooding technologies are basic and well established, implementing them in a city as old and crowded as New York is no simple task.

Elevating roads, for example, sends more runoff into subway grates. Water pumped out of subway tunnels - already some 14 million gallons daily - goes into sewer systems that might be overtaxed by rainwater. "You solve one problem and you create another," says Madan Naik, chief structural engineer of New York City Transit. "It's got to be a collaborative effort, whatever we do."

Much of this city of 8 million, the largest and most densely populated major city in the US, is only 10 feet above sea level. The potential 30-foot storm surge accompanying a Category 3 hurricane would flood large swaths of south Brooklyn, parts of Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan below Canal Street, including the World Trade Center site - 100 square miles total.

As happened during a 1992 northeaster, floodwater might pour into the city's tunnels and subway system, many of whose entrances are but 10 feet above sea level, short-circuiting public transportation and stopping traffic. The city's wastewater treatment plants - all 14 of which lie at the water's edge and have outfalls at mean tide level - could back up, sending raw sewage into basements and bathrooms citywide.

Klaus Jacob, a special research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, estimates the cost of such an event up to $100 billion. That's one-tenth of the $1 trillion gross regional product of the New York metropolitan area, embracing three states and 22 million people. (Some estimate that Katrina will cost Louisiana and Mississippi up to $150 billion.)

Rather than individually shoring up the city's many vulnerabilities, the better solution is to use the region's topography, say engineer Douglas Hill and Malcolm Bowman, head of the Storm Surge Research Group at Stony Brook University. Three barriers placed at strategic "choke points" - the Verrazano Narrows, Throgs Neck, and the Arthur Kill - would protect all of Manhattan and half the entire flood-prone area, they say.

Similar smaller barriers already protect Providence, R.I., New Bedford, Mass., and Stamford, Conn. Completed at a cost of £535 million in 1982 ($2.1 billion in today's dollars), the Thames River Barrier, about the size of the one proposed for the Arthur Kill, has been raised more than 90 times. Italy plans to finish its MOSE project, a series of inflatable pontoons to protect the Venice Lagoon, by 2011.

And then there's the Netherlands: Half the nation is below sea level. Its colossal Eastern Scheldt barrier, nearly two miles long and often called the "eighth wonder of the world," most resembles the one proposed for the mile-wide Verrazano Narrows.

Human nature being what it is, Mr. Bowman doesn't see construction beginning any time soon. Without exception, the aforementioned barriers were built after - not before - major floods. The British and Dutch barriers were built after a 1953 North Sea storm caused major loss of life in both countries. The New England barriers rose after the "Long Island Express" hurricane of 1938.

In fact, in the 1960s the Army Corps of Engineers proposed something similar to block storm surges from Lake Pontchartrain, which abuts New Orleans. Never built, the barriers "might have made enough of a difference" during hurricane Katrina, says Bruce Swiren, a mitigation specialist at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The disaster has led him to reconsider Bowman's idea. "I used to think that it was a complete pie in the sky," he says. "After Katrina, I'm starting to think maybe it's not such a crazy idea after all."

But Klaus Jacob, author of several papers on New York's vulnerability to flooding, opposes such large-scale solutions not on engineering but on philosophical grounds. They lend an "illusion of protection" that will only prove catastrophic in the end, he says. "The higher the defenses, the deeper the floods that will follow," he says.

Commonsensical preparations such as raising houses; putting electrical infrastructure in the attic, not the basement; and formulating clear contingency plans will go much further. In the end, however, Jacob sees only one viable, long-term option: Retreat from low-lying areas.
"That's the lesson learned," he says, the "price to be paid for pumping CO2 into the atmosphere."

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Governors' mansions go blue

from the November 09, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1109/p02s01-uspo.html

Now holding a majority of the posts, Democrats will take the lead on policy innovation.

By Alexandra Marks Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK

For the first time since 1994, the majority of the nation's gubernatorial mansions now have a distinct hue of blue - a development that could have a major impact on the 2008 presidential race.

Democrats picked up six seats from Republicans, including in the key swing state of Ohio. Massachusetts elected its first black governor. New York voters put an end to three terms of Republican rule. In Maryland, the Democratic mayor of Baltimore ousted the incumbent Republican.

There was some good news for the Grand Old Party. California reelected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, making the famous Terminator this year's most surprising "Comeback Kid." The GOP also held onto two hotly contested seats in Minnesota and Nevada.

But overall, it is Democrats who are smiling about their gubernatorial triumphs - and for two good reasons. For one, states are involved in a tremendous amount of policy innovation in areas including healthcare.

Now, much of that innovation, which often is the foundation for later federal reform, will have a Democratic angle, says Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University in Rhode Island. He also notes that parties in control of the governors' mansions are much better able to help their prospective presidential candidates.

"Governors get a lot of media attention, and they really set the agenda in their individual states," he says. "So if you have a strong party base in the governor's office, that's half the battle."

That was evident in Ohio in 2004, one of the nation's most competitive states. Republicans controlled both the governor's mansion and the secretary of State's office. Both state political leaders strongly supported President Bush. Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who ran for governor this year, was cochair of Mr. Bush's reelection committee in the state. His dual roles led to conflict of interest charges, particularly when people had problems voting in mostly black and Democratic areas. Voters filed 16 lawsuits charging they'd been disenfranchised. Still, Bush won the state.

But now some analysts say Mr. Blackwell paid the price. He garnered 37 percent of the vote, while Rep. Ted Strickland (D) took 60 percent.

In California, voters were more forgiving of their Republican leader. A year ago, after losing a slate of ballot initiatives viewed as highly partisan, Governor Schwarzenegger's popularity dropped to an all-time low. But he took the voters' message and began working with Democrats, reviving his political fortunes. He was reelected by a nearly 20-point margin.

In Nevada, Rep. Jim Gibbons won despite what became known as the "Friday the 13th" cocktail waitress debacle, in which he was accused of assaulting a woman with whom he'd been drinking.
But Democrats' pickups mean that 28 governors' offices are in the blue category.

"It means they have immediate executive control of the tens of millions of Americans," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "I think that can help out the Democrats in 2008, but it may also be only marginal, say 2 or 3 percent."

But as 2004 showed, just a few points can make a difference.

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New blue goals on Hill: tax cuts out, higher wages in

from the November 10, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1110/p02s01-uspo.html

The consensus among analysts is for modest growth in the coming months, with the unemployment rate rising slightly.

By Ron Scherer Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK

With the blue shift in Congress, lawmakers' priorities are likely to change in a way that touches both Main Street and Wall Street.

Look for attempts to raise taxes on the rich, instead of an extension of President Bush's tax cuts. Keep in mind that guest-worker legislation, opposed by conservative members of Congress, may become doable. And be ready for the possibility that Congress will put the spotlight on the bulky trade gap and competition with China.

Although the election outcome will probably spell policy shifts for certain segments of the economy, benefiting some and disappointing others, it's not likely to cause an appreciable shift. The consensus remains for modest growth, with the unemployment rate rising slightly.

"The outlook is for subpotential growth through the spring as the housing correction unwinds and for a small rise in unemployment, putting [the jobless rate] closer to 5 percent, through the summer," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

In any event, international markets will be watching the action in Washington carefully, Wall Street analysts say.

"The biggest issue is to watch how the dollar reacts," says Joe Quinlan, chief market strategist at Banc of America Capital Management in New York. "With all the foreign purchases of our debt, this is still very important. Foreigners don't want tough talk on trade or isolationism."
However, many of the new Democratic members of Congress were elected from districts that have lost jobs to China. At the very least, these lawmakers are likely to get hearings to draw attention to the weaknesses and flaws in current trade policy.

In fact, on Wednesday, a coalition of labor groups and newly elected Democrats held a news conference to talk about their desire for new trade policies. Rep.-elect Joe Donnelly (D) of Indiana's Second Congressional District recounted how a large auto parts plant in Kokomo is threatened with closure unless the workers take steep wage cuts.

"Trade is a huge issue in my district," he said. "We are shipping jobs overseas." Mr. Donnelly defeated Rep. Chris Chocola, who voted for NAFTA and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Deals with Peru and South Korea

The new legislators will make it more difficult for the Bush administration to get congressional approval for bilateral trade deals, including a US-Peru agreement that needs approval to be implemented. Mr. Bush is still negotiating agreements with Colombia, Thailand, and South Korea.

These lawmakers will also fight Bush's attempt to renew "fast-track authority" - the right to present a trade bill to Congress, which can only vote for or against it, with no changes. This may doom future trade agreements, such as the multinational negotiations known as the Doha Round.

"Doha is more dead with the Democrats than the Republicans," says Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington. "But it probably doesn't matter who takes over. It was dead regardless."

Still, Democrats are far from united over trade. "Congressman Charles Rangel, who [is likely to] become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is a strong supporter of current trade policies," notes Alan Tonelson, a research fellow at the US Business & Industry Council, which represents smaller companies in Washington. "He has said in recent weeks he thinks trade is one issue he thinks a new Democratic House can cooperate with the president on."

While some trade legislation may wither, Mr. Quinlan is even more concerned that with Democrats leading committees, the result could be opposition to foreign companies buying US firms. "There could be more scrutiny and there could be a longer process, which by itself could keep foreigners out of the US markets," he says.

Back to a 39.6 percent tax rate?

In terms of tax cuts, it is now unlikely that Congress will extend them past their expiration date in 2010. This could result in the maximum tax rate moving from 35 percent back to 39.6 percent.

"The Democrats won't want to give the Republicans a victory," says Stan Collender, a budget expert and managing director at Qorvis Communications in Washington. "But it's likely Congress will do a one-year fix on the alternative minimum tax so it doesn't cut so deeply into the middle class."

Proponents of raising the federal minimum wage think it's likely to happen if Democrats are in charge of both the House and Senate. The presumptive new speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has said it is a priority for her. On Tuesday, voters in six states approved minimum-wage increases indexed to the inflation rate.

"The next step is at the federal level," says the Rev. Paul Sherry of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, a nonpartisan group in Cleveland. "We want to be ready to move when the new Congress convenes."

Quinlan worries that Washington may become gridlocked as Democrats seek to position themselves for the 2008 presidential race by passing laws that will be vetoed. "We can't afford two years of dithering," he says. "We have a low savings rate, energy-dependence issues, and the need to pay for mounting healthcare costs."

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In this election, swing voters make comeback

from the November 10, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1110/p01s01-uspo.html

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON

Ever since the contested election of 2000, when the presidential race resulted in a near tie, pundits have pointed to the polarized, 50-50 nature of American politics.

Now, with a chastened President Bush talking the language of common ground and Democrats owing their takeover of the House and the Senate to political independents, the center is back.
The GOP strategy of the past several elections - of mobilizing its most committed voters at the expense of appealing to swing voters in the middle - is fading fast.

It may be a fleeting moment, and it does not spell the end of polarization. According to national exit poll data, more than 90 percent of self-identified Republicans and Democrats voted for candidates of their own party for the House, as they did in 2004. But among independents, who represent about a quarter of the electorate, there was a decided tilt toward Democrats on Tuesday: 57 percent voted Democratic, and 39 percent voted Republican. In the 2004 House race, the independent tilt toward Democrats was 50 to 46.

An examination of exit polls from Senate races that proved key to the Democrats' apparent takeover shows a similarly strong tilt toward Democrats among independents.

On Thursday afternoon Sen. George Allen conceded defeat to Democrat James Webb, which gives the Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate.

Nationally, "the independents won this election for us," Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told a Monitor breakfast Thursday.

The Republican strategy of turning out "base" supporters and just enough independents to win the White House and Congress - which worked in the past three elections - could not withstand the wave of voter discontent over Iraq, ethics, and the economy that swept the nation this year.

Many longstanding Republican members representing swing or Democratic-leaning districts, such as Jim Leach in Iowa, Clay Shaw in Florida, Nancy Johnson in Connecticut, and Anne Northup in Kentucky, lost their seats. None were tainted by ethics problems, or significantly less well-thought-of by their constituents than in previous years. But they had R's after their names.

Then there are the Republican districts that fell to Democrats, largely because of scandals, such as the seats once held by Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, and Rep. Mark Foley of Florida. Holding on to those seats in the next election will be an uphill battle for the Democrats who won them, but analysts do not rule out the possibility that they can perform well for their constituents and hang on.

One turnout question that can now be answered centers on white evangelicals and born-again Christians, who represent 24 percent of the electorate and form a critical part of the GOP base. Despite predictions that their turnout might be depressed on Tuesday, because of discouragement over scandals and a sense that not enough progress has been made on their social agenda, they turned out just as strongly as in 2004. Seventy percent voted Republican for the House versus 72 percent in 2004.

In other ways, though, America has shaken off its 50-50 moorings. "But there's no guarantee that [the Democrats] will do better than 50-50 two years from now," says Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. "It was an extraordinary election in which we had the most unpopular president at midterm since Truman, with an unpopular war and a public that is fed up. The voters had a unified Republican government for a target."

The only sign of anything permanent developing in the electorate as a whole, Mr. Jacobson says, is that throughout the six years of Mr. Bush's presidency, younger voters have been going disproportionately Democratic.

On a regional level, though, analysts say that Tuesday's wave had its biggest impact in parts of the country that have been undergoing a political realignment, particularly in the Northeast. In Pennsylvania, the Democrats took over four Republican seats. In New Hampshire, the state's two House seats fell to Democrats in a late-breaking surge. In Connecticut, Ms. Johnson, a 12-term congresswoman, went down, and another incumbent, Rep. Rob Simmons, is slightly behind in a race still too close to call. Several Republican-held seats in New York also went Democratic.

Just as with the 1994 midterm elections, in which the Republicans swept the Democrats out of the majority in Congress in part by defeating southern Democrats, so too was the 2006 "wave" election an opportunity for Democrats to advance the political realignment of the Northeast.

The mountain West has also grown increasingly competitive for Democrats. Come January, Montana will have two Democratic senators, and it elected a Democratic governor in 2004. Colorado and Nevada have grown increasingly competitive for Democrats, in part owing to demographic shifts. Libertarian sentiment in that part of the country has also alienated some Westerners from the Republican Party's social agenda.

Perhaps most interesting in Tuesday's shakeout vote are the Republicans in swing or Democratic-leaning districts who managed to hang on this cycle, such as Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut.

"I can only assume [he won] because of hard work, big spending, and an image of real independence," says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.

Mr. Shays had been one of Bush's strongest supporters in the House on Iraq war policy, until late in the campaign. Shays might have been helped more by his independence from the White House on other issues, such as campaign finance and ethics.

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Congress's sci-tech agenda to shift under Democrats

from the November 13, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1113/p02s01-stgn.html

Global warming and stem-cell research are topics that will give bipartisanship on the Hill an early test.

By Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For clues to whether bipartisan cooperation in Washington will take root or disappear from the table as quickly as the china after last week's get-acquainted lunches at the White House, watch how some key science and technology issues play out.

Ordinarily, broad science goals - such as better science education or the American Competitiveness Initiative - draw bipartisan support. But there are some divisive science topics on the Democrats' early agenda - namely embryonic stem-cell research - and these highly charged science and environmental issues will be one barometer of the durability of cross-aisle cooperation.

"If this stated spirit of bipartisanship is to occur, one of the best places to look is going to be in the area of science and technology," says Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "If it doesn't occur in science and technology, I wouldn't expect that it's likely to occur elsewhere."

The potential for fractiousness exists in a number of policy areas where the ideas of the new Democratic majority differ from those of Republican lawmakers or the Bush administration.

Among them are funding for research into alternative-energy sources, what to do about global warming, the future of the space program, and charges that the Bush team has muzzled federal scientists and ignored scientific results in crafting environmental and public-health regulations.

Players who say they felt disenfranchised when GOP lawmakers dominated Capitol Hill view the Democrats' post- election ascension as an opportunity. Several environmental groups are slated to hold a joint press conference Monday laying out their collective agenda to address issues ranging from grazing on public lands and the state of national parks. They are expected to push for measures to curtail global warming that are tougher than the voluntary approaches the Bush administration has offered so far.

In the House, Democrats are identifying a series of hearings they want to hold that deal with these themes. In the Senate, Barbara Boxer (D) of California is slated to take the helm of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee. Last Thursday, in a briefing with reporters, she said she aims to draft legislation that contains elements of a California-like approach to curbing emissions of greenhouse gases. The state aims to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The midterm election, which unseated several moderate Republicans, gave the GOP delegation a more conservative tone, analysts say. And several incoming Democratic freshmen take conservative positions on a number of issues.

Still, some environmental groups are optimistic that their issues will at least get a hearing. At best, they will find allies among the more-conservative freshmen.

"At least on some of the environmental issues - energy security, environmental health issues, even global warming - these are not always liberal versus conservative issues," says Karen Steuer, vice president for government affairs at the National Environmental Trust in Washington. "In the last Congress, we could frequently work in a bipartisan fashion [with individual Republican lawmakers] on a fair number of environmental issues." The barriers came at the doorstep of the GOP leadership, which "refused to bring our issues to the floor for a vote," she says. "We couldn't even get an honest debate and a vote."

With a presidential election only two years away, it may be unrealistic to expect large-scale changes in science or environmental policies, several analysts say. Instead, they continue, look for oversight hearings that are more robust.

One issue expected to receive more scrutiny involves what has come to be called the GOP's war on science. Inspectors general at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are investigating allegations that political appointees have tried to muzzle scientists whose views, based on their research, run counter to Bush administration policy. In other cases, critics charge that political appointees at regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency have disregarded the best available science in crafting environmental regulations that are weaker than critics say they should be. Many states are in open revolt against the EPA's rules for emissions of mercury and particulates, for example, opting to set up their own tougher regulations.

Another area ripe for tighter oversight is NASA and the president's Vision for Space Exploration, adds Ray Williamson, with the George Washington University Space Policy Institute. In hearings before the House Committee on Science, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have expressed support for the effort in general. But, he notes, they worry that the White House isn't giving NASA the money it needs to do the job without sacrificing other important activities.

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In new Senate, the middle rules

from the November 13, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1113/p01s03-uspo.html

With Democrats holding the majority, moderates will be driving policy in Congress.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON

For Democrats, who swept back into power in both the House and Senate last week, the pledge to govern in a bipartisan way may not be postvictory rhetoric. At least in the Senate, it's a mandate of the math.

While an effective 51-49 majority allows Democrats to organize the Senate - Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernard Sanders of Vermont ran as independents - it is still nine votes short of the 60 votes now needed to advance controversial bills on issues ranging from taxes to the Iraq war.

"Nothing can be accomplished in this town unless it's on a bipartisan basis," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, after meeting with President Bush and Vice President Cheney at the White House on Friday.

"The only way the American people will know if President Bush is sincere, the Democratic Congress is sincere, is with results. And we're willing to give it a try," he added.

The terms of the Democrats' narrow victory make a politics of the center even more imperative. Most of the new Democrats in the Senate won by running as moderates or fiscal conservatives.
"They were carefully chosen not to reflect the liberal mainstream of the Democratic Party, but to reflect the more conservative mainstream of their states," says Rhodes Cook, a political analyst in Washington.

"It might be a return to the days when Democrats were technically a majority party, but when you put Republicans together with southern Democrats, they were the majority," he adds.

Then, there's Ben Nelson. Last year, the Nebraska Democrat voted against a majority of his party more than half the time, according to a survey by Congressional Quarterly. But so did Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R) of Rhode Island. The two men often canceled each other's vote.

However, this year, Chafee lost. If past is prelude, that means a 50-50 Senate on many votes, with Vice President Cheney, as Senate president, breaking ties.

New coalitions

While Senate Democrats are expected to lock arms over issues such as the minimum wage, there may be a new centrist coalition on issues including immigration, national security, and privacy rights.

Incoming freshmen Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, Jon Tester in Montana, and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania defined themselves as moderate, independent voices, often at odds with Democrats in Washington. A former Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, Jim Webb upset Sen. George Allen (R) of Virginia on a campaign that showcased independence.

Rep. Benjamin Cardin (D) of Maryland, who will succeed retiring Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D), was one of the few House Democrats willing to work with Republicans on issues such as pension reform.

Conservative activists say that the centrist base of the new freshman class will limit how far the national Democratic Party can advance a more radical agenda.

"If people ran as liberals, I would be afraid for my issue [cutting taxes]. But there are very few Democrats who won running as liberals against conservative Republicans," says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

For six years of the Bush presidency, Democrats have focused on blocking GOP initiatives. The next two years will showcase that Democrats can also govern, say party leaders in both the House and the Senate.

Democrats' legislative agenda

Democrats plan to advance a legislative program in the first 100 days of the 110th Congress that includes increasing the minimum wage, passing all the 9/11 Commission recommendations, cutting the cost of student loans, lifting the 2003 ban on negotiating lower drug prices for seniors through Medicare, and promoting energy independence. They're also gearing up for hard-hitting investigations on issues ranging from the Iraq war to the nation's energy policy.

Beware of intraparty disputes

If the party can deliver only gridlock in the next Congress, they will quickly lose those moderate and independent voters who delivered last week's victory, say activists with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a centrist think tank.

"If Democrats are smart, they can make these new and 'returned' Democratic voters part of an expanded party and an enduring national majority," argues a DLC position paper, "What's next for Democrats?" released Nov. 10.

"That's why we should all be wary of intraparty arguments that Democrats did well simply by 'fighting' or maximizing partisan differentiation from the Republicans, or that they can paste together a majority by insisting on ideological unity and ignoring parts of the country or parts of the party - e.g., 'red states' - that call for a more diverse and inclusive message," the paper states.

"Make no mistake: Our joy today will vanish if we can't produce for the American people," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York, who, as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, recruited and helped fund Democratic candidates in the 2006 election cycle.
"If we can keep our focus on the average American family, we will stay the majority for a generation," he added.

Senate Democratic leader: Nimble on his feet

As a boxer in high school, Harry Reid - now in line to be majority leader of the US Senate in the 110th Congress - trained for the boxing ring by running up steep grades, with his coach following behind in his car.

"They knew that if they stumbled or fell and did not promptly get up and continue, there was a good chance they would be run over," says Senator Reid's coach and mentor, former Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan.

It's good practice for his next job: leading what its members like to call the world's greatest deliberative body. Two former majority leaders describe the job as "herding cats."

"The election is over. It's time for a change. It's time for open government. It's time for transparency. It's time for results," Reid said after Republicans conceded the seat in Virginia, giving Democrats their majority last week.

It's a job he didn't expect. When it was clear that then-majority leader Tom Daschle had lost his reelection bid in 2004, Reid summoned the stunned caucus to regroup. "We've got to talk about the future of our caucus," he said to Deputy Democratic leader Richard Durbin of Illinois, who credits Reid with "patching up some rifts in our caucus that had been around for a long time."

Known for his grasp of highly complex Senate procedure, Reid has always functioned better behind the scenes than in front of a camera. It was Reid who led the secret negotiations with Vermont Sen. James Jeffords over his defection from the GOP, which flipped control of the Senate to the Democrats in June 2001.

As minority leader after the 2004 elections, he often set majority leader Bill Frist back on his heels with surprise parliamentary moves. He famously called the Senate into "secret" session in November 2005 to demand that the Senate intelligence committee complete its stalled probe into whether the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had been politically manipulated.

In the past two years, he has repeatedly derailed Republican initiatives, including holding Democrats in line to block a GOP bid to tie a permanent repeal of the estate tax to a bill raising the minimum wage.

He's also one of the few senators who still practices the art of the filibuster. On Nov. 19, 2003, Reid stunned Frist and Senate Republicans by holding the floor for nine straight hours in a bid to defend the right to filibuster judicial nominations. Sustained by judicious sips of water, he read from his book about his hometown, "Searchlight: The Camp That Didn't Fail."

Reid has also made some celebrated errors, such as publicly boasting that Democrats had "killed the Patriot Act."

While critics have tried to link Reid to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff - Reid accepted nearly $70,000 in contributions from Abramoff's tribal clients - so far, charges of wrongdoing haven't stuck. But a disclosure last month by the Associated Press that Reid had violated Senate rules by failing to report a 2001 land transfer that later netted him $700,000 prompted Reid to amend his financial disclosure statements.

Fast facts about Harry Reid

• First elected to the Senate: 1986

• Senate Democratic leader (2005-present)

• Senate Democratic whip (1999-2004)

• Chairman of Nevada Gaming Commission (1977-1981)

• Nevada Lt. Gov. (1971-1975)

• BA, Utah State University

• JD, George Washington University

• Wife; five children; 15 grandchildren

Source: The Associated Press

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Movies all over the map

from the November 03, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1103/p11s03-litr.html

As movie tourism booms, cities both big and small are offering tours of film locations.

By Ethan Gilsdorf Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
BOSTON

Pop quiz: Name a movie or TV show shot or set in Boston. "Ah ... 'Mystic River'?" answers Matt Lambek of Cambridge, Mass., settling into his seat before a showing of "The Departed," the new Martin Scorsese juggernaut partially filmed here. " 'Good Will Hunting,' " adds his date, Alex Wenger.

Other movie patrons round up the usual suspects: "Boston Legal," "Ally McBeal," and that stranded-in- syndication favorite, "Cheers."

Cities such as New York and Los Angeles are associated with movie magic, not Boston, and countries such as New Zealand and Scotland are supposed to attract tourists eager to retrace the footsteps of Gollum or Mel Gibson - not Massachusetts. But movie tourism is such a thriving business - witness the planeloads of pilgrims to New Zealand in the wake of "The Lord of the Rings" - that tourist offices from Hawaii to the hinterlands are leveraging their connections to Hollywood.

Boston is the latest city to exploit movie tourism as a revenuemaker. A company called Boston Movie Tours offers a new attraction: a three-hour bus tour synchronized to on-board movie clips.

"Ready to see the celebrity and movie side of Boston?" chirps the company's enthusiastic cofounder Jeff Coveney who, with his wife, Rachel, launched their weekly bus tour this summer. While sightseers careen from the North End ("The Brink's Job") to Charlestown ("Blown Away") to Beacon Hill ("A Civil Action"), 58 DVD clips play, interspersed with Mr. Coveney's cheery banter.

Coveney estimates that over 400 movies and TV shows were shot in Boston. Still, his business must overcome two hurdles.

First, movie tourism's relative obscurity outside of, say, Beverly Hills.

Second, audience memory is fleeting. The glow of "Good Will Hunting" has begun to fade. So Coveney is counting on newly released "The Departed," shot around gritty Fort Point Channel and South Boston, to put Beantown back on the map.

Still, Massachusetts is no Middle-earth. The annual tourist influx to New Zealand jumped from 1.7 million in 2000 to 2.4 million today, a 40 percent surge, largely due to the "Rings" phenomenon.

"You can argue that 'Lord of the Rings' was the best unpaid advertisement that New Zealand has ever had," remarks Bruce Lahood, US and Canada regional manager for Tourism New Zealand. "In the last decade New Zealand has been the most successful country to benefit from movie tourism. We've been looked at and case-studied from many angles."

In September, the first-ever International Conference on Impact of Movies & Television on Tourism took place in Hong Kong as other nations rush to capitalize on the international popularity of cinema.

Buoyed by interest in "Harry Potter" and "Pride & Prejudice," British tourism officials created a "Movie Map" corresponding to "Closer" and "Match Point" locations. Paris's Le Meurice and Edinburgh's The Balmoral hotels offer "Da Vinci Code" packages. When "Casino Royale" is released later this month, Visit Britain's travel itineraries will show "how to experience Britain like Bond."

In the US, individual states have launched elaborate websites such as www.enjoyillinois.com to promote movie-linked tours, events, and giveaways.

"German backpackers would wander through our office looking for places where 'The Blues Brothers' was shot," says Richard Moskal, director of the Chicago Film Office. On Location Tours, which already runs "Sex and the City" and "The Sopranos" tours of New York City, just launched a Washington, D.C., version for fans of "Wedding Crashers," "Forrest Gump" and "The West Wing."

Alleluia, Tom Hanks lovers, that the well-known movie-hub of Monterey, Calif., has finally recognized a forgotten star in cinema's firmament: "Turner & Hooch."

Sometimes a single movie, be it high-brow or lowbrow, will transform an unlikely location into a mecca for movie fans. The Santa Ynez Valley wine country of California is overrun with "Sideways"-inspired oenophiles. "Witness," 20-plus years later, still lures visitors to Pennsylvania's Amish country. And 65,000 people a year visit Dyersville, Iowa (population 4,000), home to the "Field of Dreams" farm and baseball diamond.

"In the millions," says Julie Kronlage, assistant director of Dyersville Area Chamber of Commerce, assessing the economic impact of the 1989 Kevin Costner film. "You know, people have been married out there; people have spread ashes in the cornfield." During the playoffs, she adds, "Someone came to do a dance or a chant so their team would win."

Preston, Idaho, held its second Napoleon Dynamite Festival this July, featuring dance contests and tetherball games in homage to key movie scenes. The town's website sells T-shirts and tote bags, and the Idaho legislature commended local filmmakers Jared and Jerusha Hess "for showcasing the positive aspects of Idaho's youth, rural culture, education system, athletics, economic prosperity, and diversity." (The legislature failed to mention Napoleon's contributions to fashion or choreography.)

North Carolina's Chimney Rock Park was a location for 1992's "The Last of the Mohicans," resulting in a manageable 25 percent increase in park attendance.

But sometimes locals wish someone would yell, "Cut!" When Home & Garden Television's "Dream Home 2006" featured a house nearby Chimney's Rock, 30,000 tourists in just four months shelled out $20 each to tour the house. "That exposure from the HGTV show has resulted in an explosion of development here," says Valerie Hoffman, public relations director for Chimney Rock. "The world discovers how incredibly beautiful your place is, and everyone wants to live here."

Back on the Boston Movie Tour, four women from Wisconsin and Illinois are curious to glimpse the law firm buildings from "Ally McBeal" and "Boston Legal."

For some, though, seeing the actual locations is an anticlimax.

"I wanted to see which bench was used in 'Good Will Hunting,' " Erin Paske wrote in an e-mail, recalling the Public Garden chat between the characters played by Robin Williams and Matt Damon. "I was pretty neutral when I saw it."

Mary Ann Schmitt was slightly disappointed. "The 'Cheers' bar let me down," she wrote, once back home, "because it looked so different, and they charged you to go in."

As for one of the last stops on the Boston Movie Tour, "Good Will Hunting" hangout L Street Tavern in Southie, no one knows your name here, either. After Hollywood rolled into town, the place got a face-lift: a gleaming sign, new furniture, and plasma-screen TVs.

And if you're looking for the Harvard bar where Damon dressed down the snobby college brat, try Toronto. Now that's Hollywood magic.

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Backstory: The British right to roam - or get lost

from the November 06, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1106/p20s01-lihc.html

England's footpath civics connect walkers and landowners.

By Lee Lawrence Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

Set out on any of Britain's long-distance trails and you're soon climbing over stiles, walking through pastures past grazing sheep, cutting across fields as farmers bale hay, or trudging through the mud of newly plowed earth. It's hard for Americans to fathom that they, perfect strangers, have the legal right to walk this meter-wide strip of land no matter whose property it cuts through. But the little arrow on the gatepost says so, as do the green dots and dashes on Ordnance Survey maps.

Today, 140,000 miles of public rights of way crisscross England and Wales, a legacy of days when laborers walked to work, young men took shortcuts to see their girls a village over, and women made their way to the market town, basket in hand. Now used mostly for recreation and exercise, these rights of way are an accepted part of British life - as is the occasional grousing by some landowners and walkers alike.

"I reported an obstructed path the other week," says Patrick Lonergan, looking not a little delighted as he leads a group of four on a rainy 10-mile walk south of Oxford. He is general secretary of the Oxfordshire branch of the Ramblers' Association, a nationwide group that promotes walking. Mr. Lonergan's complaint, he adds offhandedly, was even reported in the Oxford Mail.

Slow news day, was it? Actually, thorough crime reporting. Since the passage of the Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Act of 1949, public paths form part of the country's highway system; obstructing them is a criminal offense.

Nigel Curry, author of numerous books on the subject, explains that the law effectively gave legal status to paths that the public had long used. It made local authorities responsible for providing working stiles, and it mandated that landowners not prevent access by, say, parking a tractor across a gate or planting crops in the path. For their part, walkers had to stick to prescribed routes, close gates behind them, and leash their dogs.

As time went on, regulations grew increasingly precise - really precise. Farmers cannot, for example, put adult dairy bulls in fields with paths, but can have bulls of certain other breeds as long as those bulls are "accompanied by cows or heifers." The regs don't specify exactly why - perhaps bulls don't bother human interlopers when there are females around to distract them.

The 1949 legislation did not, however, produce a definitive map of all public rights of way. But the CROW Act of 2000 decrees that, by 2026, local authorities must have charted every public path once and for all. And the race is on.

"The definitive map is constantly being updated," Lonergan calls over his shoulder, without breaking stride. "You can claim a path for the map if it's been in continuous use for 20 years," along with any documented historic paths. And, he adds, landowners, who've been allowing access to their land through a so-called permissive path, can "prevent it from being legitimately claimed by blocking it once a year." His tone indicates that, as far as he's concerned, that's acceptable. As for those who try to get paths deleted - "pretty cheeky," he exclaims.

For the Country Land & Business Association, however, deleting little used paths makes sense. According to the association's national access adviser, Caroline Bedell, it would make the system easier and less costly to manage while ensuring the upkeep of popular routes. She estimates it can cost landowners up to £4,000 pounds ($7,500) a year in lost income due to land they can't cultivate and in such costs as fencing - for those dairy bulls, presumably.

For many nonfarmers, however, paths don't cost a penny. Near the Cotswold village of Ascott-under-Wychwood, Nigel and Anne Braithwaite rely on the county to maintain their stiles, and welcome walkers as an opportunity to catch up on village gossip. And, adds Mr. Braithwaite, "When you buy, you know jolly well that there is a footpath, and if you're sensitive to people walking through, then you wouldn't buy a place like this."

Indeed, the right of way runs up the Braithwaite's driveway, past the front door of their converted mill, and into a field split by a fast- moving stream spanned by a narrow footbridge.

"Without the footpath," Braithwaite says, "we would feel quite cut off." Moreover, having "eyes in the countryside" means environmental problems like polluted streams get spotted and reported.

As for the advantage to walkers themselves, "It's terribly important, isn't it, for people to be able to find space and peace and get closer to nature," says Braithwaite, echoing the sentiments of William Wordsworth who, with others of the 19th-century Romantic Movement, spearheaded efforts to preserve and enjoy Britain's countryside.

Yes, occasionally the Braithwaites look up from Sunday lunch to see noses pressed against their window. And, yes, there have been times when they've left the door open and walkers' dogs have run through the house. But only once in 23 years has a walker failed to close a gate, and never has anyone deliberately caused mischief.

This is a testament to the fact that walking is not everyone's cup of tea - Mr. Curry's research reveals that more and more people spend leisure time at home - and to educational efforts on the part of the Ramblers and similar groups keen to see the system survive. Their latest campaign is to promote walking for health reasons - the '80s mantra was "social inclusion" - and this is one reason Josephine Lister joined Lonergan's walk, rain notwithstanding. Also, she says with a smile, "I live on my own and this is good company. Pat, he's preserving the English way of life."

For the Ramblers and like-minded groups, that way of life would allow all to roam freely across the land. And already, they have scored victories: Across the whole of Scotland and in designated areas totaling 3,300 square miles in England and Wales, the public has "the right to roam" wherever they wish. Or, as one headline warned, the "right to get lost."

Not that this would ever happen to Lonergan. Even on a relatively straightforward route, he stops often to check the map he keeps sheathed in clear plastic, carefully aligning the marks on his compass with the angle of the path. At the edge of a large field, a footpath sign points straight across. Lonergan's eyes flicker from field to map and back until he spots a slight break in the hedge. "That's the stile," he announces and heads for it, humming a Dixie Chicks tune.

Suddenly, he stops dead: "Ask me why some paths cut across the middle of a field." The answer? "Because," he says, "there was once a hedge that ran along here."

For the American visitors it's suddenly clear: They're touching history by walking this path. They want to say something, but Lonergan has already resumed his mile-gobbling pace.
After negotiating the stile, Lonergan pulls pruning shears from his daypack and snips a thorny branch growing into the path.

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Liquids allowed on flights, but bring patience, too

from the November 07, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1107/p03s03-usgn.html

Airlines expect a healthy holiday season. But that means long lines and higher prices for travelers.

By Alexandra Marks Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK

Flying home this Thanksgiving? There are two things experts say are essential to bring: patience and a sense of humor.

Planes are expected to be fuller, prices higher, and security lines longer than ever.
The good news is that means some major airlines are finally turning a profit in the post-9/11 world. The bad news is passengers are paying for it with their time and comfort.

"It's a very strong travel season. We're looking at some of the highest load factors we've ever seen at one of the busiest times of the year," says Darryl Jenkins, an aviation expert in Marshall, Va. "Go to the airport early, and go with excessive amounts of humor."

Load factor is aviation jargon for the percentage of seats occupied by paying customers. Usually, 65 to 75 percent of seats are filled, so it wasn't unusual in the past to expect that center seat to be empty so you could spread out a bit and relax - but no more.

This summer load factors were 90 to 100 percent, and that's where they're expected to stay this holiday season. The reason is major airlines have cut back on the number of planes flying so they can increase the amount of money they make on each one that goes aloft.

A recent scientific poll for Expedia.com also found that of people who plan to travel by air this holiday, 80 percent plan to travel as much or more than last year. So, to that full center seat add winter coats and presents for your mother, and you'll be prepared for what to expect: discomfort and inflexibility. Experts say if you're late to the airport, unlike in the old days, don't expect to be able to hop on the next flight.

"If you think, 'Oh, there are 10 flights a day to New York, I'll just get on the next one,' the likelihood of that happening is much, much less now," says Chris McGinnis, editor of Expedia Travel Trendwatch, a quarterly report on the travel industry, based in San Francisco. "That can really botch a trip if it's only three days, so I would say always err on the side of being early and just hanging out at the airport."

Then, of course, there are those vaunted Transportation Security Administration security checks - the other major reason experts are urging travelers to get to the airport as early as possible. During the holidays a lot of people fly who usually don't. So many may be confused about what the TSA will and will not allow on board.

For instance, did you know that some liquids and gels are now allowed? But they have to be in three-ounce containers inside quart-sized sealable baggies, not gallon- or a sandwich-sized. All lighters are banned, but you can bring on four books of matches. TSA's website, at www.tsa.gov, details these rules and is a must-see for anyone who hasn't flown in recent months.

"To make it more understandable to people we've launched a campaign called 3-1-1," says Ellen Howe, a TSA spokeswoman. "It's a reminder of three ounces or less, one quart-sized bag, one bag per traveler, and that bag needs to be pulled out of your carry-on and placed into the bin."

But even with all of the efforts the TSA is making to ensure passengers are informed and its employees are abreast of the current requirements, experts across the board say there's still too much inconsistency.

"You go there one day and one thing is OK, and then the next day you're told that is no longer OK," says Mr. Jenkins. "That's the biggest problem we have with the airlines, is that nobody knows what's kosher."

Knowing what's kosher is crucial because just a few seconds of delay per passenger can add up to very long lines with delays stretching as many as two hours.

"A delay of 10 seconds per passenger, in fact, could back up the line to the point where people could start to miss their flights," says Mike Callinan, president of Productivity Apex Inc. in Orlando, Fla., which did an analysis for the Orlando International Airport.

Some analysts contend that those wait lines and the hassle of security could have been greatly reduced if the TSA had been more efficient in getting the Registered Traveler and Secure Flight programs up across the country. The Registered Traveler program is designed to speed frequent fliers through the screening process once they've volunteered biometric and background information and paid a fee to a government-approved private company. So far, only the airport in Orlando is operating a pilot program, although 13 others have applied to run such programs.

The other program, Secure Flight, is designed to simplify the manner in which passenger names are checked against the federal government's Terror Watch List. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars, the program has been scrapped and sent back to the drawing board because of privacy concerns.

The TSA's Ms. Howe defends the decision, saying, "We'd rather get it right than fast." And some travel experts agree. Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition in Radnor, Pa., says the current screening system needs to be improved before any new layers are added.

"If you're going to put new processes on top of things that aren't yet operating at an efficient or proficient level, then you can actually complicate matters, and customer service can suffer more," he says.

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In Spain, dismay at Muslim converts holding sway

from the November 07, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1107/p04s01-woeu.html

'New Muslims' have gained prominence as mediators between politicians and Islamic groups, but now they face new scrutiny.

By Geoff Pingree and Lisa Abend Correspondents of The Christian Science Monitor
MADRID

When Abdennur Prado adopted Islam in 1998, he had no idea that he would become a spokesperson for the Spanish Muslim community. As a young writer, Mr. Prado, whose parents were non-practicing Catholics, was a confirmed atheist. But during a spiritual crisis in his early 20s, he came across the Koran.

"I was struck by what it said about the unity of all creation," he says. "Institutional religions, including sectarian Islam, erect barriers. In the Koran, I found a religion without barriers."

The tolerant Islam that moved Prado has propelled Spain's "New Muslims," as many converts here prefer to be called, to a position of relative power. Although their numbers are small compared with foreign-born Muslims, Spanish converts have wielded a significant mediating influence in both the country's institutions and its public discourse.

Yet as countries across Europe struggle with the question of how to assimilate a Muslim population that for many symbolizes the growing threat of Islamist terrorism, Spain's converts have come to occupy a difficult middle ground.

Some Spanish politicians fear they make easy targets for terrorist recruiters, while some more traditional Muslims distrust their liberal approach to Islam.

Historic model of moderate Islam

Inspired by the social harmony achieved among Jews, Muslims, and Christians under al-Andalus - as Spain's Muslim kingdom was known during the Middle Ages - today's converts oppose fundamentalism, promote women's rights, and reject violence.

Such principles - espoused on the popular WebIslam site run by Junta Islámica, a convert organization - have reassured Spain's recent governments, particularly in the wake of 9/11 and the 2004 Madrid bombings.

And on the first anniversary of the Madrid attacks, the Islamic Commission - set up in 1992 as a liaison between the government and the country's burgeoning Muslim population - issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden that was warmly received in the Spanish press.

"To both the Muslim community and the government, we have emphasized that Islam and democracy share the same values," says Mansur Escudero, a Junta leader and the first secretary-general of the Islamic Commission. "The government doesn't even use the term 'Islamic terrorism' because we have explained on many occasions that one cannot characterize as 'Islamic' something that is totally prohibited in Islam."

Today, Spain has an estimated 1 million Muslims, roughly 20,000 of whom are converts. Many of those New Muslims adopted Islam in the late 1970s, led by their perception of Islam as a religion of the marginalized.

They soon became a leading voice for Spain's Islamic community, negotiating with the government in the late 1980s to obtain for Muslims some of the privileges granted Spanish Catholics.

These days, the Junta still works closely with the government on social issues. The Justice Ministry helps finance the group's annual conference on Islam and Feminism; the publicly funded National Distance Learning University offers a course, partly created by Junta members, to train experts in Islamic civilization and culture; and several of the public schoolteachers offering classes in Islam to Muslim students in regions like Andalusia are converts.

Converts: probable terrorist recruits?

Such liberalizing efforts have not convinced some in Spain who, fearful of immigration and Islamist terrorism, view the once-privileged convert community in a different light.

Three converts were among those arrested in the British planes plot this summer. And in Spain, two recent books have raised alarms about the influence of Islamic converts in Spanish society. Popular Party congressman Gustavo de Arístegui argues in "Jihad in Spain" that New Muslims threaten to spread extremist ideas.

"Jihadist groups were once suspicious of converts because they feared that they were intelligence agents trying to infiltrate their cells," says Mr. Arístegui. "But someone with blue eyes and a Western last name raises fewer suspicions, and the jihadists realized they can be effective cannon fodder for suicide missions. They are almost impossible to detect, especially if they have not revealed their conversions to their families."Criticism from politicians, Muslims
Arístegui acknowledges that only a small percentage of converts are jihadists. Indeed, of more than 200 Muslims arrested in Spain in relation to 9/11 or the Madrid bombings, only one - Yusuf Galan - was a convert. But he says that the "number who support the ideals that feed terrorism is much greater."

Writer and philosopher Rosa María Rodríguez Magda worries less about terrorism than converts' potential to subvert democratic values.

"In principle, Spanish converts intend to defend moderate Islam," she says. "As such, they shouldn't pose a danger but rather an opportunity for debate. But they have to do it rationally, without accusations that only create conflicts whose consequences could disturb social harmony."

In her book, "Spain Converted to Islam," Magda accuses some converts of inconsistency in their support for feminism because they also embrace polygamy.

Moreover, she sees converts as the "Trojan horse" through which Islamist ideas about "reclaiming al-Andalus" could take hold in Spain.

"Perhaps this friendly face of Islam is more dangerous than the fundamentalist affirmations of certain imams," she writes. "At least with the latter we know who the enemy is; they're not wolves in sheeps' clothing."

Junta members reject such characterizations, however.

"For neo-cons like Arístegui," says Mr. Escudero, "we converts don't fit within the mold of the [Islamist] enemy they've tailor-made. So we make them uncomfortable."

The Junta may also be falling out of favor with other Muslims as well. Early in 2006, the Islamic Commission unexpectedly replaced the moderate Escudero with a new secretary-general.

Felix Herrero is a convert himself, though his mosque was investigated for terrorism, and some believe he is sympathetic to - even controlled by - powerful Saudi donors.

Escudero's ouster may have been caused by his democratic endeavors.

"They criticized the fatwa against bin Laden, saying no one has the right to eject a Muslim from Islam," says Prado, who is now the director of the Junta Islámica's Catalonia branch."It was a clear rejection of the Junta Islámica's agenda."

An Islam promoting European values

The Junta's role does appear to be changing. Nevertheless, converts are still an important buffer in Spain, according to Escudero.

"We know the institutions and how the government works," he says, "so it makes sense that the role of mediator would fall on Spanish Muslims, on converts."

And Prado underscores their importance in fostering a locally grown Islam that promotes European values. "With the Junta Islámica, we've broken the monopoly that certain foreign countries have on Islam in Europe."

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Can you invest in a Nobel Prize-winning idea?

Posted November 06, 2006 - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1106/p25s01-wmgn.html

For ethical investors, companies involved in microfinance can offer competetive returns as well as social appeal.

You can earn a profit from a type of banking that just won a Nobel Prize. A fringe idea three decades ago, microfinance has become a recognized way to pull people out of poverty. In October, one of the movement's founders, Muhammad Yunus, and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize. Ethical investors can play a role, too. By making loan money available to poor entrepreneurs, they can earn a modest return. Recently, the Monitor's Laurent Belsie talked over the investment possibilities with Scott Budde, managing director of social and community investing at TIAA-CREF, and Roy Jacobowitz, senior vice president of Acción International.

Here are edited excerpts of their conversation.

What does a Nobel Peace Prize do for microfinance?

Jacobowitz: I think it's going to have an enormous impact in terms of raising the visibility and public understanding of what microfinance is.... I guess you don't get any more legitimate than a Nobel Peace Prize.TIAA-CREF is a relative newcomer to microfinance.

What's the attraction?

Budde: There are about 3.2 million people who use TIAA-CREF for retirement savings. And we know that a very high percentage of them are really very actively involved in social issues. Microfinance presents a combination of some very competitive returns in some new types of investment opportunities along with very broad social appeal.

How does it work?

Jacobowitz: How it works is very simple. It is the process of making loans and other financial products available to poor entrepreneurs and the members of poor households. And as a financial process, it's almost no different than providing any other financial product.

Do the poor really pay up?

Budde: There have been lots of examinations of microfinance by a wide range of institutions, including Big Four auditing firms. We invest in a company, for example, called ProCredit Holding. That company uses full international accounting standards. Auditors have been all over the world looking at those rates [of repayments] and have shown that, in fact, the loss rates on those loans are significantly better than loss rates in developed countries.

Jacobowitz: People will hear the claim 97 or 98 percent repayment. That's factual.The idea was gaining traction even before the peace prize to Grameen Bank.

Jacobowitz: For Acción, in the '70s, we used to throw a party when our affiliates achieved 1,000 borrowers. In the '80s, we threw a party when they reached 10,000 borrowers. Today, our network of 33 institutions in 23 countries worldwide is serving over 2 million active borrowers. The movement, interestingly, has gone from understanding that the poor are creditworthy to the [idea that] institutions that serve them can be investment-worthy.

How can investors get involved?

Jacobowitz: Everyone can participate - with an investment as small as $2,000 over 18 months in a fund like the Acción Global Bridge Fund, which provides a social rate of return, maximally, of about 2.5 percent today, [all the way up] to institutional investors, like TIAA-CREF. In the middle, for qualified investors, there are private placements in an organization like Acción Investments.

Qualified investors?

Jacobowitz: Very wealthy people who are able to take significant financial risk.

Is the return higher for them than for smaller investors?

Jacobowitz: The original business plan for Acción Investments had projected an internal rate of return of about 5.9 percent - and, actually, in its first three years of operations [it] has generated a return of closer to 10 percent internally.

TIAA-CREF investors don't participate directly in your microfinance program.

Budde: That's right. Our investment program in microfinance, which we've established as being $100 million, is part of a much, much larger fund ... called TIAA Traditional.

Why not let people invest in, say, a Bangladesh loan program?

Budde: We've opted to do it within a much larger fund, where investors can get that very broad diversification, which certainly helps to lower risk.

How much of their portfolio should investors commit to this?

Jacobowitz: I don't think it's a financial decision. I think it's a social-benefit decision people are making, and then they figure a number that's appropriate.... The other way that ethical and socially responsible investors can think of it is: Those who have created a family trust or a family foundation are required to use 5 percent of a moving average of their underlying assets in the foundation, and they can do what's called a program-related investment, where they can actually make an investment in a social activity. That's another way that investors can think about a way of coming into microfinance, doing some good, and also being responsible for themselves.

Do you think we'll see more ways to invest in this area?

Budde: Absolutely. We already are seeing a much wider range of investment opportunities of different types of equity, of different types of debt investments. The microfinance institutions themselves are certainly expanding into a wider range of financial services beyond just lending - to look at small micro-insurance programs, for example.

• Watch the entire conversation online at csmonitor.com/ethicalinvesting.

For more information: Council of Microfinance Equity Funds (cmef.com), Acción International (accion.org), Calvert Community Investments (calvertfoundation.org), TIAA-CREF (tiaa-cref.org).

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