Oprah's academy: Why educating girls pays off more

from the January 05, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0105/p01s03-woaf.html

By Stephanie Hanes Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

At the end of each school year, when she says goodbye and wishes her students success in high school, Martha Mohulo can't help but worry. A veteran primary school teacher in Soweto, she knows the dangers lurking in this sprawling, struggling township - perils such as violence, AIDS, and teenage pregnancy.

So when Oprah Winfrey picked eight of Ms. Mahulo's students to attend her lavish new girls' academy south of Johannesburg, the teacher was thrilled.

"Those girls who went to Oprah, they are going to be safe," Mohulo says. "They are much better off."

Ms. Winfrey's school, a $40 million project that opened Tuesday, is one of the most recent and high-profile projects in a growing worldwide campaign to improve girls' education. Such female-focused aid yields perhaps the highest dividends for developing nations, say experts, though they are quick to point out that boys face challenges as well.

"I think it's very important for people to recognize that the lack of education for both boys and girls is a crisis in Africa," says Gene Sperling, director of the Center for Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But the benefits of girls' education, in terms of improving health, women's empowerment, and family well-being, probably does make girls' education the highest-returning social investment in the world."

The World Bank has found that when a country improves education for girls, its overall per capita income increases and its fertility rate drops. Other studies show that improved female education is linked to higher crop yields, lower HIV infection rates, and reduced infant mortality. UNICEF's annual "State of the World's Children Report" calls gender equity - particularly in education - a "double dividend" for developing countries.

"With education, the girl child will grow up and be a better mother - she will be better able to understand the importance of her own children being educated, and will be better able to provide for her children," says Sarah Crowe, a spokesperson for UNICEF in Johannesburg.
"Men and boys are often out of the home," she notes, so that fathers are less able to teach their children what they have learned.

Why African girls don't stay in school

Less than half of southern Africa's girls complete primary school (46 percent, compared with 56 percent for boys), while 26 percent enroll in secondary school (33 percent for boys). Though the statistics for boys are hardly uplifting - 44 million aged six to 11 are denied an education, compared with 60 million girls - girls have long faced more barriers to education than boys.

The reasons are myriad. In urban areas, pregnancy and poverty limit educational access. In rural regions, poor families need girls to help in the fields. When a financially strapped family must chose between sending a son or daughter to school, cultural norms favor the boy. And across southern Africa, when relatives fall ill from AIDS, girls are the ones who stay home to give care.

Governments and international agencies have recognized this, and are working towards solutions. The UN Millennium Development Goals call for both gender equity and universal primary education by 2015. Many African governments have recently eliminated primary school fees, which have hampered girls' enrollment.

Now, the challenge is to secure long-term funding, to hire and train enough teachers to manage millions of new students, and to make sure educational quality goes along with access, researchers and aid groups say. Advocates are also pushing for free secondary education, which they say will further increase girls' literacy.

David Archer, the head of international education for ActionAid, a nonprofit development group, says he is seeing a new interest in global education from private philanthropies, as well. Over the past year or so, he says, some two dozen American philanthropies have started international education projects. Last month, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced a $60 million effort to improve education in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Winfrey school: Vanity project or shining light?

The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, set on 52 manicured acres in the village of Henley-on-Klip, has state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories, a 600-seat theater, a library, beauty salon, yoga studio, and Oprah-decorated dorm rooms. This year, 152 seventh and eighth graders will attend the school; next year, Winfrey says, it will hold 450 students in Grades 7 to 12.

Some education advocates have criticized Winfrey's academy as a "vanity project," and say her $40 million could have been more widely and smartly distributed, while others say that she's managed to raise more popular attention than has any NGO.

"This school is ... shining a spotlight on girls' education in Africa," says Mr. Sperling, who also served as national economic adviser to President Clinton. "Five years from now, when people see some of these young women on her show just blowing you away, it is going to be a powerful symbol of what the potential of the poorest girls in Africa really is with the same type of educational opportunities that so many of us were lucky enough to be born into."

Mr. Archer, however, cringes at Winfrey's project. "I felt very uncomfortable about it," he says. "It's something where she can have direct control and direct engagement, rather than doing the more important and less personalized work. That same amount of money could improve the quality of schools no end throughout entire districts and provinces."

But Winfrey and her supporters defend her targeted largess. "I think the government has to be very focused on spreading resources evenly," says Sperling. "But I think there's nothing wrong, and a lot right, with a private individual saying, 'I want to do something terrific to give some of the most underprivileged girls in the world the opportunity to be leaders.' You need both."

The girls who attend her academy, Winfrey says, will become Africa's next leaders. "I know that this Academy will change the trajectory of these girls' lives," Winfrey said in a statement this week. "They will excel and pass their excellence on to their families, their nation, and our world."

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How to go to M.I.T. for free

from the January 04, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0104/p13s02-legn.html

Online 'intellectual philanthropy' attracts students from every nation on earth.

By Gregory M. Lamb Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

By the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at one of the world's most prestigious universities will be available online to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. Learners won't have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted.

The cost? It's all free of charge.

The OpenCourseWare movement, begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and now spread to some 120 other universities worldwide, aims to disperse knowledge far beyond the ivy-clad walls of elite campuses to anyone who has an Internet connection and a desire to learn.

Intended as an act of "intellectual philanthropy," OpenCourseWare (OCW) provides free access to course materials such as syllabi, video or audio lectures, notes, homework assignments, illustrations, and so on. So far, by giving away their content, the universities aren't discouraging students from enrolling as students. Instead, the online materials appear to be only whetting appetites for more.

"We believe strongly that education can be best advanced when knowledge is shared openly and freely," says Anne Margulies, executive director of the OCW program at MIT. "MIT is using the power of the Internet to give away all of the educational materials created here."

The MIT site (ocw.mit.edu), along with companion sites that translate the material into other languages, now average about 1.4 million visits per month from learners "in every single country on the planet," Ms. Margulies says. Those include Iraq, Darfur, "even Antarctica," she says. "We hear from [the online students] all the time with inspirational stories about how they are using these materials to change their lives. They're really, really motivated."

So-called "distance learning" over the Internet isn't new. Students have been able to pay for online courses at many institutions, either to receive credit or simply as a noncredit adult-learning experience. Many universities also offer free podcasts (audio or sometimes video material delivered via the Internet).

But the sheer volume and variety of the educational materials being released by MIT and its OCW collaborators is nothing less than stunning.

For example, each of the 29 courses that Tufts University in Medford, Mass., has put online so far is "literally the size of a textbook," says Mary Lee, associate provost and point person for the OCW effort there. The material provides much more than "a skeleton of a course," she says. Visitors to Tufts' OCW course on "Wildlife Medicine" call it is the most comprehensive website on that topic in the world, Dr. Lee says.

What OCW is not, its supporters agree, is a substitute for attending a university.

For one thing, OCW learners aren't able to receive feedback from a professor - or to discuss the course with fellow students. A college education is "really the total package of students interacting with other students, forming networks, interacting with faculty, and that whole environment of being associated with the school," says James Yager, a senior associate dean at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He oversees the OCW program there. His school of public health now offers nearly 40 of its most popular courses for free via OCW. The school's goal is to put 90 to 100 of its 200 or so core courses online within the next year or so. In November, learners from places such as Taiwan, Britain, Australia, Singapore, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands logged some 80,000 page views of OCW course material, Dr. Yager says.

MIT's initiative began with the idea of giving faculty at other universities access to how professors at MIT approached teaching a subject. But after the OCW project went online, the school quickly realized it had two other huge constituencies: students at other colleges, who wanted to augment what they were learning, and "self learners," those not pursuing a formal education but interested in increasing their knowledge.

Along with course content, MIT also wanted to showcase its teaching methods. Many schools follow a traditional model, teaching the theory first, then allowing students to practice what they've learned. MIT has a "practice, theory, practice" way of teaching, Margulies says, that aims to get students engaged and energized immediately - before delving much into theory.

Younes Attaourti, a physics professor in Marrakesh, Morocco, stumbled upon MIT's OCW site while surfing the Net. He's used the materials as the basis for courses he's taught on statistical physics and quantum theory of fields. And for his own learning, he's downloaded theoretical physics courses and one on ultrafast optics. "I don't think there is another university elsewhere in the world that is more generous," he writes in an e-mail: "[T]his is the first time that many people around the world are able to have access to top-quality courses."

Phillipa Williams is an adult (40-something) student at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, studying mathematics ("don't groan, I love it!" she writes in an e-mail). She's worked her way through many of the OCW undergraduate mathematics courses, she says, because they provide "a different viewpoint, another explanation of material," as well as different practice questions.

MIT's OCW website features even more glowing feedback from learners. "[B]ecause of money, many good students with great talent and [who are] diligent do not have the chance to learn the newest knowledge and understanding of the universe," says Chen Zhiying, a student in the People's Republic of China. "But now, due to the OCW, the knowledge will spread to more and more people, and it will benefit the whole [world of] human-beings."

"The MIT OCW program is a generous and far-sighted initiative that will do more to change the world for the better than a thousand Iraq-style invasions," the MIT site quotes Leigh Pascoe, a self-learner in Paris, as saying. "It does much to restore my faith in the enlightenment of the American people and their great experiment in democracy. This program should be emulated by every university worthy of the name."

Besides MIT, Tufts, and Johns Hopkins, the OCW consortium (ocwconsor tium.org) in the United States includes among its members Michigan State, Michigan, Notre Dame, and Utah State. Internationally, members include groups of universities in China, Japan, and Spain.

So far MIT has published 1,550 of its courses for OCW and plans to get the rest online by the end of this year. The materials for each course vary. Full videos of lectures, one of the most popular features, are available for only 26 courses, about 1,000 hours of video in all. "We'd like to do more video because it's really quite popular and our users love it," Marguiles says. "But it's quite expensive." The program relies on "generous support" from foundations, individuals, and MIT itself for funding, she says.

Schools like Tufts and Johns Hopkins were able to jump-start their OCW programs quickly because the schools had already committed themselves for many years to putting all their classroom materials online for use by their own students. The biggest job has been to vet the materials for copyright issues, so-called "copyright scrubbing," Lee and Yager say. If permission cannot be obtained for a specific photo or chart, it must be left out of the OCW version or a substitute found.

The OCW effort is part of a wide range of dynamic educational content emerging on the Internet, says Dan Colman, associate dean and director of Stanford University's continuing studies program and host of the website oculture.com, which highlights what's happening in Web-based education, with an emphasis on podcasts.

Full-fledged online courses "might eventually offer a viable alternative to the classroom, but right now we have a ways to go," he writes via e-mail. Podcasts, for example, let learners hear a lecture, but they don't require that the listener write a critical essay or take part in a classroom discussion - activities that are a key element of the learning process, Mr. Colman says.

And technology still needs to advance a bit more too. "We'll need a very fast fiber network and communication tools that give courses a greater degree of immediacy and sociability before this [online] model will become a real option educationally and economically," he says. "In the meantime, the traditional classroom is fairly safe."

For example, lab work, which usually requires close hands-on collaboration between an instructor and students, remains problematic online, Yager points out.

The losers in putting free content online aren't likely to be universities, which will continue to attract young students, Colman says. But free podcasts and OCW courses may pull adult learners away from other leisure activities, he says, such as reading books, watching educational television shows, or buying recordings of books or lectures. "All of these entities could suffer as users find free high-quality information on the Web," Colman says.

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To make amends for emissions, businesses try offsets

Posted January 08, 2007 - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0108/p25s02-wmgn.html

Some companies are buying compensation for emissions they can't or won't eliminate.

Does building a wind-power plant in Brazil make up for pumping out greenhouse gases in the United States? That's the premise of offsets - the business of buying compensation for emissions that companies can't or won't eliminate. Last week, the Monitor's Laurent Belsie sat down with two experts who track and recommend offsets: Terry Kellogg, executive director of 1% for the Planet, a network of environmentally committed companies based in Newburyport, Mass.; and Bob Sheppard, deputy director of Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit advocacy group in Portsmouth, N.H. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

When companies purchase an offset, are they just buying forgiveness?

Bob Sheppard: I think there's a common misperception, especially in the media now, that carbon offsets are basically an indulgence, or something similar to what the church sold in the Middle Ages. And it's really very far from that. It's really an opportunity for these companies to begin addressing the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions that result from their operations.

But what's the long-term benefit if someone plants trees in Brazil to absorb carbon? Don't a lot of those trees eventually die or burn?

Sheppard: That is one of the concerns of folks, especially regarding carbon sequestration. The good news is that there are a wide range of carbon offsets and that carbon sequestration or tree-planting, which probably 10 or 15 years ago was one of the leading choices out there, has now been supplemented by a number of other options.

What options are there?

Terry Kellogg: An example from my former employer, the Timberland Co., would be the idea that they could retrofit shower heads in inner-city dwellings.

How do low-flow shower heads reduce greenhouse gases?

Kellogg: If you're using less hot water over the course of the shower, then you're using less energy associated with heating that water.

Are there other examples?

Sheppard: There are a wide range of options. There are offsets that come from wind farms, solar projects, and from landfill methane projects, where organizations are tapping methane trapped in capped landfills and actually using it to generate electricity, [to] taking the manure from dairy farms ... and using it to generate electricity.

Kellogg: I think Bob and I would both agree: This is almost a last resort. The first thing you want to do is become absolutely as efficient as you possibly can. The second thing that a lot of companies try to do is invest directly in renewable energy. [At Timberland] we erected a wind turbine at a manufacturing facility and put a massive solar array on our distribution center. Then we looked at the emissions that were left over and asked: What can we do?

Do corporations buy in because the boss is committed - or do committed employees convince the boss?

Kellogg: Every company comes to it in a different way. It's very often an internal champion. But just as often, it's a passionate leader who brings people to the table and gets it done.Companies want to save energy and resources because it saves them money. But why would they spend money to offset emissions that everyone else is sending into the atmosphere for free?

Kellogg: Increasingly, people want to associate themselves with companies that they feel are doing more than just making a buck. They want to support companies that they feel are values-aligned and in tune with the issues of the day.... A great example is Stonyfield Farm. When they started distributing products in the Pacific Northwest, they engaged in reforestation offsets in the Pacific Northwest. So they got additional support for their market entry through the stories that were created as a result of those offsets. It's brilliant marketing, and it's a great way to better engage your consumer base.

Do companies ever use offsets to appear environmentally friendly, even though they're not?

Kellogg: They may be out there. [But] I think consumers are savvy enough to know when they're being hoodwinked. I would encourage everybody to ask tough questions of companies that are doing this.

What's the best question that an investor can ask?

Sheppard: "Is this the only thing you've done?" That's really simple. We do strongly recommend that offsets might be the first thing, but they shouldn't be the last step [that companies take].

Are some offsets better than others?

Kellogg: There's no question. A report that Clean Air-Cool Planet recently put together does an outstanding job of breaking down some of the key differences.

That report also suggested that individuals can offset their emissions.

Sheppard: There are a number of steps that they can take. The interesting thing is that a number of Web-based providers now make it relatively simple. By merely punching in information on a website, you can calculate the amount of CO2 emissions that your automobile produces or that your home or your small business produces in the course of a year. Of if you happen to be traveling, there are a number of providers now on the Web that allow you to offset your travel as well.

Kellogg: It costs about $100 for the average individual to go carbon neutral. And if that's too much, you can start looking at different parts of your lifestyle and decide to offset your car-transport emissions, for example. I'm a big fan of getting people accustomed to this new currency - the currency of carbon dioxide - and understanding that every certain number of miles you drive has a certain carbon implication. People should be braced to engage in that conversation.

For further information

Clean Air-Cool Planet report: www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/ConsumersGuidetoCarbonOffsets.pdf

Personal Calculators

Climate Neutral Co.: www.carbonneutral.com/calculators/index_shop_calculator.asp

Climate Trust: www.carboncounter.org

Native Energy: www.nativeenergy.com/lifestyle_calc.html

Sustainable Travel: www.sustravel.co.uk/carbon_calculator

World Resources Institute: www.safeclimate.net/calculator

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Capitol Hill prepares for tough hearings on Iraq

from the January 08, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0108/p03s03-usfp.html

A growing number in Congress oppose a troop surge, but will not vote against funding the war.

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

Even before President Bush lays out his "new way forward" in Iraq, the Demo-cratic majority in Congress and a growing number of Republicans say they will oppose any troop surge - but not to the point of blocking funding for the war.

That means a key aspect of the president's plan, expected to be unveiled this week, will run into a wall of words on Capitol Hill, but not much more.

"We're not going to fight their civil war for them," says Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D) of California, who chairs the strategic forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. She supports a shift of existing US forces out of areas of sectarian violence.

But if the president insists on adding forces into the most troubled areas, would she vote to deny him the funds to carry out his plan? "No," she says. "That's why he's got us over a barrel."

Still, oversight hearings convening across Capitol Hill, beginning this week, mark an escalation in congressional opposition to the war, including among members of the president's own party.

Beginning Tuesday new Democratic committee chairmen are launching hearings on issues ranging from military strategy, reconstruction, and diplomacy in the region to the Iraqi refugee crisis.

"We will use these hearings to ask tough questions, demand real solutions, and keep working to bring this war to a close," said Senate majority leader Harry Reid, in the Democratic response to Bush's weekly radio address on Saturday.

Citing the advice of current and past military leaders, Democratic leaders on the Hill are opposing any move to pour additional troops into Iraq, even before Bush announces his plan.
Instead, they called on him to begin a "phased redeployment" of US forces in the next four to six months, shifting the mission from combat to "training, logistics, force protection, and counterterror."

"Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain," said Senator Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a joint letter to the president Friday.

But they, too, say they will not block funding for the war. "It's not on the table," said Reid, after a briefing Friday.

Leading off this month's blitz of Iraq hearings, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to convene a closed intelligence briefing Tuesday afternoon. In all, it plans a dozen hearings on the war this month. These hearings, says chairman Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware, will be "workmanlike," rather than sensational. They are intended to give Americans a sober look at the state of play in Iraq and build consensus for a way forward. "No foreign policy can be sustained in this country without the informed consent of the American people," he adds.

Even in a time of diminishing public support for the war, lawmakers are wary of challenging the president as commander in chief, especially if they could later be tied into losing a war.

"I think to basically begin to withdraw before the job is finished is a mistake. If the president recommends what we seem to believe he's going to recommend, I intend to support him," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, in an interview on Fox News on Sunday.

Yet Congress's ability to influence Bush, should he decide to send tens of thousands of new forces into Iraq, is "very limited," says Norman Ornstein, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "Theoretically, they could block the funding, but practically, it's not going to happen.

"The American people may not like this war but if you do something that undercuts the commander in chief and creates a potential for chaos, voters will blame you for decades," he adds.

Meanwhile, new Republican opposition to the war is surfacing in Congress. On Friday, Rep. Heather Wilson (R) of New Mexico staked out early opposition to any plan to add more troops in the region.

"I am not a supporter of a surge to do for Iraqis what they will not do for themselves," she said, after returning from a trip to Iraq last week.

But she would not vote to stop funding the war. "The answer is never to stop paying for food for our soldiers. We can't do that," she adds.

Representative Wilson, who served in the Air Force from 1978-89, is one of several Republicans who cite recent trips to the region as the basis for their dissent. In December, Sens. Norm Coleman (R) of Minnesota and Gordon Smith (R) of Oregon broke ranks with the White House on Iraq.

In support of the White House, Sens. John McCain (R) of Arizona and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who calls himself an Independent Democrat, stepped up calls for a sustained surge of US forces into Iraq.

"I believe the war is still winnable, but we're going to have to do everything right," said Senator McCain, in a speech before the American Enterprise Institute Friday. "The worst of all worlds is a small, short surge of American forces," he says. A time-limited deployment signals to insurgents that they "can wait it out," McCain says.

A majority of Americans are against increasing troop levels in Iraq. Only about 1 in 5 voters supports sending in more troops, according to a recent survey by the Cook Political Report.

And the intensity of hearings and debate this month could step up pressure on the Bush White House. "In a democracy, you simply cannot go on indefinitely, if you have lost the public, and there's increasing opposition from an increasing share of the political elite. It's an extremely difficult political environment," says Mr. Ornstein.

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Congress tries Ford's way

from the January 03, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0103/p01s03-uspo.html

The late president's emphasis on compromise is recalled as the 110th Congress is set to convene.

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

The coincidence of Gerald Ford's state funeral and the start of a new Congress is shining a bright light on the qualities embodied by America's 38th president: decency, compromise, and especially a hearty respect for difference.

Best known for telling Watergate-era Americans that their "long national nightmare is over," he is also remembered on Capitol Hill for a 2001 speech he delivered in the Old Senate Chamber. Former Senate colleagues, who invited him to speak on leadership, still talk about it.

"We might question the other side's ideas, but never its motives or its patriotism," Mr. Ford told the senators, then gridlocked in a 50-50 split. "A few mistake the clash of ideas for a holy war."

In that spirit, the Senate's incoming majority and minority leaders planned to meet with their colleagues Thursday to talk about how to bury partisan hatchets and rebuild a spirit of civility and bipartisanship. The meeting, scheduled right before the formal convening of the 110th Congress, was billed as an opportunity for senators to talk among themselves - away from staff, reporters, and TV cameras.

"The American people have made it clear that they are tired of political gridlock in Washington. Democrats and Republicans are ready to work together in the 110th Congress," says Jim Manley, a spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid (D) of Nevada, the incoming Senate majority leader. "We'll try to work together when we can and oppose them when we must."

Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky quickly signed on to the idea, says his spokesman, Don Stewart.

On the House side, incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Democrats promise a return to respect for minority rights and bipartisanship. Democrats will offer a rules package that promises a return "to regular order in committees, a fair and open process for amendments, and sharing of information with the minority," according to Democratic aides.

"We had a lot of animosity when Gerry Ford was there, and he brought us together," said Rep. John Dingell (D) of Michigan, the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and an honorary pallbearer at Ford's state funeral, in an interview with Fox News.

Of course, promises of bipartisanship are easier to make than to keep. After the 9/11 attacks, senators linked arms with House colleagues on the steps of the Capitol and vowed a return to civility and cooperation. That spirit didn't last long.

Nevertheless, in using the language of conciliation, elected officials were capturing one of the key themes of Ford's presidency.

"He respected people who disagreed with him, and he saw political opponents just as that - political opponents, not as enemies," says former House historian Ray Smock, now of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies at Shepherd University in West Virginia. "That makes a huge difference in how you conduct business with people. It also means you're able to compromise."

Speakers at Ford's state funeral Tuesday in Washington recalled that spirit of openness.
"He had an impact so profound it's likely to be viewed as providential," said former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, citing Ford's decency and integrity.

"We could be adversaries, but we were never his enemy, and that was a welcome change from his predecessor's term," said former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, also speaking at the state funeral.

The brunt of endless late-night jokes, Ford was the first president to hire a comic writer to direct his presidential speechwriting operation.

"President Ford used humor a great deal," says Robert Orben, a comedy writer for Red Skelton and Jack Paar before accepting this job at the White House. He understood the value of self-deprecating humor before it became a staple of national politics.

On the foreign policy front, Ford presided over the end of war in Vietnam, the first political agreement between Israel and Egypt, the Helsinki Accords, and the rescue of some 150,000 Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon.

Within the Republican Party, he was a strong advocate for openness, at a time of widening rifts between liberals and conservatives within party ranks. He also reached out to the news media.

As minority leader during years of Democratic control of the House, Ford helped the GOP develop its own legislative program on issues such as education and crime, which became law.

Americans who stood in lines to pay their respects to the late president in the Capitol on Saturday most often cited his personal qualities.

"He was a stabilizing force when the country needed it. It's right to honor him," said Bill George of St. Francisville, La.

"He didn't just stand for how it would affect him politically when he pardoned President Nixon," says Catherine Herman, a history student here.

He sets an example for our time, she adds. "There are very big problems now, and whether you are a Republican or Democrat, there are no easy answers. We don't have togetherness now."
In that 2001 speech, Ford sounded his vision of effective leadership.

"It's the job of political parties to define difference," but they must also "mediate them" and forge a consensus "acceptable to the vast majority of Americans who travel in the middle of the road," Ford told the senators.

"This is the paradox of our democracy," he added. "We are never better than in a crisis, even one generated by our neglect or selfishness. Ironically, the bigger the issue, the greater the need for parties to help us organize consensus."

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For new Congress, a long 'to do' list

from the January 04, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0104/p01s02-uspo.html

After 12 years out of power, Democrats start the new session Thursday with a drive for ethics reform.

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

Sweeping back into power in both the House and Senate, Democrats Thursday launch a 100-hour legislative blitz to signal new management on Capitol Hill.

Early action will come mainly from the House of Representatives, where a 31-seat margin gives Democrats - led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the nation's first female speaker - more room to maneuver than in the Senate, where Democrats have just a two-seat margin.

Most items on House Democrats' early-action agenda had been rejected by the previous 109th Congress, when Republicans ruled. Among them are pocketbook issues that, Democratic leaders say, will directly impact the lives of Americans: a higher minimum wage, lower interest rates on student loans, and a provision to empower the government to negotiate lower prescription-drug prices for seniors.

Other measures slated for the fast track, which are popular among voters and have support from at least some Republican lawmakers, include more federal funding for stem-cell research, reduced subsidies for big oil companies, and implementation of more recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

At the same time, Democrats feel pressure - from their own caucus as well as from outside groups - to take up the tough issues that won them their majority, such as finding an exit strategy for the war in Iraq. That begins first in the Senate, where Democrats plan to begin hearings next week on the Iraq war, in anticipation of President Bush's expected announcement of a "new way forward" in Iraq.

The blitz on the House side begins Thursday with rule changes to break with the lobbyist scandals of the 109th Congress and ensure a more open government. Incoming Speaker Pelosi says the new ethics rules will change the GOP "auction house" back to the people's House, and give some rights to the minority.

Democrats campaigned to end the "culture of corruption" in Washington.

The House reform package would ban gifts and meals from lobbyists and the organizations that employ them, require pre-approval from the ethics committee for travel paid for by outside groups, prohibit the official use of corporate jets, require full disclosure of all earmarks, and consider creating an outside group to enforce ethics laws.

It also guarantees certain rights to the minority party, including adequate notice of meetings and time to review legislation.

But even before the final details on the new ethics rules were released, Republicans charged that they had been left out of the process - and hadn't seen a draft of proposed rules changes until a day before the vote.

"The idea that these are issues that have been around for a long time and that they don't need debate, that doesn't pass muster," said minority whip Roy Blunt (R) of Missouri at a press briefing Wednesday.

Other members concur. "You either believe in minority rights or you don't," says Jo Maney, a spokeswoman for Rep. David Dreier (R) of California, the outgoing chairman of the Rules Committee.

"When Republicans took control of the House in 1995 after 42 years, they pledged to restore minority rights by ending proxy voting and guaranteeing Democrats a vote on their own alternative bills. But with their slim majorities, Republicans often ruled out Democratic amendments on bills and held 15-minute votes open until GOP leaders could change the outcome on the floor.

In the new Congress, Republicans say they have no guarantee of a vote for their version of legislation.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, also plan to lead off with lobby and ethics reform this week, but will take more time for debate.

In the last Congress, the Senate passed a version of lobby reform by a 98 to 8 vote, but never reconciled its differences with the House over a final version of the bill. The Senate bill banned all gifts and meals from lobbyists and required lawmakers to wait two years before accepting lobby jobs after leaving Congress.

"The Senate passed a bill last year that will be the starter," says Jim Manley, a spokesman for incoming majority leader Harry Reid.

On the day before Congress officially convened, President Bush who will be working with a Democratic Congress for the first time in his tenure, called on lawmakers to make fiscal restraint a priority. He also asked Congress for the line-item veto, which would permit him to cut specific spending from legislation without vetoing the entire bill. He asked lawmakers to cut back on earmarks, or pet projects, and extend tax cuts. Bush said he will present Congress with a budget proposal next month that would balance the federal budget by 2012.

House Democrats already plan to make fiscal restraint a centerpiece of their agenda. They will vote to require pay-as-you-go budget rules as part of their "honest leadership, open government" rules package.

The Democratic caucus includes a record 44 members of the Blue Dog coalition of fiscal conservatives, who are expected to weigh in against unfunded new spending by freer-spending Democrats.

"We know that these moderates make the difference between being in the majority and being in the minority, and they will be given deference," said Rep. John Spratt (D) of South Carolina, incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, in an interview on C-SPAN Wednesday. He has led House opposition to soaring budget deficits in the Bush years.

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Four stars lead early GOP race

from the January 05, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0105/p01s01-uspo.html
Mitt Romney is the most recent entrant for the 2008 presidential nomination. Polls this early are mostly driven by name recognition.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON

Could Mitt Romney, ex-governor of Massachusetts and not well known nationally, end up winning the Republican nomination for president in 2008?

In a word, yes - despite prospects that don't look particularly strong on paper, analysts say. The latest polling out of states with the earliest nominating contests, which begin in a year, shows Mr. Romney in single digits. Even in neighboring New Hampshire, he comes in fourth, behind Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who won the New Hampshire primary in 2000, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

But in a week that saw Romney launch his presidential exploratory committee, allowing him to enter the all-important money race, the Republican field is fluid. Religious conservatives, a key GOP constituency, remain skeptical of Senator McCain. And his advocacy for a stepped-up US presence in Iraq has thrown his political future squarely in line with a war that few believe is going well.

Mr. Giuliani, well known for his 9/11 leadership, remains untested on the national political stage and holds liberal positions on social issues that put him at odds with many GOP primary voters (as well as a colorful personal life).

Speaker Gingrich has, for now, become a repository of support among conservatives, though his short tenure as speaker and his three marriages could cause him to wilt under the klieg lights.
Enter Romney: successful businessman, savior of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, with an attractive family. Having won the governorship of liberal Massachusetts as a moderate Republican in 2002, he then sought to remake his national image by adopting conservative positions on abortion, gay rights, and stem cells. But many Republicans remain leery. And among Evangelical conservatives, Romney's Mormon faith can also be a hurdle.

Still, in the end, political analysts can see a clear path by which Romney becomes the GOP nominee, almost by default. Republicans "want to win in November [2008]," says Ed Sarpolus, an independent pollster in Michigan who dismisses Gingrich's and Giuliani's chances. "If McCain self-destructs because of Iraq, even in New Hampshire they'll hold their nose and vote for Mitt Romney."

Push to sell the Romney brand

Romney's single-digit numbers among Iowa and South Carolina Republicans can be attributed to low name recognition; he's just getting started in earnest. But New Hampshirites know Romney. Among GOP activists there, he is well-organized and has secured some big names, such as Tom Rath, who is stepping down as a national GOP committeeman to join Romney's campaign. But among regular folk, particularly those in the well-populated southern tier who consume Boston media, anti-Romney coverage has become a staple.

As a red governor of a solidly blue state with an eye on national office, Romney was caught in a tough place.

"Republicans are suspicious of what kind of Republican that makes him," says Dick Bennett, head of American Research Group, a nonpartisan polling firm. "I don't know what Republicans will end up wanting to have. He's in the hunt, but [among Republicans in New Hampshire] there isn't any loyalty to Massachusetts."

That's bad news for Romney.

Next January, Romney will be expected to perform respectably in New Hampshire - if not winning the primary, at least coming close.

"He's got to do well; it's right next door," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. "There's no excuse for him."

If Romney can achieve that, he may find safe harbor in Michigan - his native state, where his late father remains a beloved former governor - and home to an early primary contest that will come soon after the first wave. Already, Michigan political analysts are assuming that their GOP primary will boil down to McCain versus Romney, with the usual caveats. And if Iraq remains the No. 1 issue on voters' minds a year from now, McCain may be in serious trouble.

The question, though, is whether the Michigan primary will come in time for Romney.

That ol' McCain magic

His first hurdle - doing well in New Hampshire - is a big one. McCain remains a rock star in the state, having kept alive his strong political machine from the 2000 primaries.

For Romney, local analysts don't see the Mormon issue hurting him much in New Hampshire, but they do see a problem in the drumbeat of negative Boston media about his tenure as governor.

"The media and the voters have a beef with him, because he pretty much abandoned ship a half year ago," says Tobe Berkovitz, a communications professor at Boston University and sometime Democratic political consultant. "My guess is that he saw himself as a lame duck no matter what, so why bang his head against the wall. ... He was trying to run for president, but it's also a pretty hopeless state for most Republicans to get their agenda achieved."

Mr. Sabato does not see Romney's challenges as insurmountable, including the need to get over his image as a flip-flopper on social issues.

"Opponents will criticize him and cite this memo and that memo," he says. "That's detail stuff. As long as people believe him when he says, 'Here's where I stand on "fill in the blank," ' and it's simple and to the point, they'll buy it."

Mr. Berkovitz says that, with time, Massachusetts's new, Democratic governor, Deval Patrick, could actually help Romney among Republicans in New Hampshire.

"If the people of New Hampshire see Massachusetts, with a Democratic governor going back to its old ways, Romney's stock could rise a little," he says.

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Next round begins for No Child Left Behind

from the January 08, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0108/p01s01-uspo.html

After five years, the education reform law has effected major change, but now must be voted on again by Congress.

By Amanda Paulson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

When President Bush signed the landmark No Child Left Behind Act five years ago Monday, he conducted a three-state road show, touted its bipartisan roots, and promised it would put US schools "on a new path of reform, and a new path of results."

In the five years since, critics and admirers of the bill tend to agree about the reform part, but say they're still waiting for results.

Achievement levels are creeping up toward the 2014 deadline when all public school children are supposed to be "proficient" at math and reading, and the racial and economic achievement gaps have narrowed slightly in a few cases, but not at all in others.

Yet even the act's harshest critics admit it has changed the conversation about education in America, and has focused attention on poor-achieving groups of students who had been overlooked.

This year, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is getting particular attention: It's not just the five-year anniversary, but the year the act expires and must be voted on again by Congress - an opportunity many are hoping will be used to revise the law - either a lot or a little - to make it more effective.

"I'm actually even more hopeful about this second iteration of this law than I was about the first," says Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. "In general, I think the law has been more helpful than not. For a piece of legislation that really changed the conversation from universal access to universal proficiency, I wouldn't necessarily expect to get that paradigm shift right the first time around."

A national reform

In its five years, the law has affected nearly every elementary and high school in the country.
Testing is now conducted every year from Grades 3 through 8, and students' performance is measured against that of the rest of their state and is broken down by race and income level. If any of those groups fails to make the "adequate yearly progress" two years in a row, the school is placed on an "in need of improvement" list. Schools on the list that receive federal funds are then subject to mounting sanctions and extra services.

And that's just the most visible change. The ultimate goal is to have every child meeting standards by 2014.

For now, though, the results are less clear. Scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), called the nation's report card, have climbed slowly in reading and math for some groups, but the number of students who are "proficient" is still discouraging.

Just 41 percent of all white fourth graders meet the standard in reading, for instance. For both reading and math, only 13 percent of all black fourth graders are "proficient." Teachers complain of the stigma of being a failing school, and principals worry about the myriad ways they could end up on a watch list.

The Department of Education emphasizes the long-term NAEP trends, noting that more progress in the reading scores of 9-year-olds was made between 1999 and 2004 than in the previous 28 years combined. But in general, even supporters say they're happier with the conversation the law has jumpstarted than with the results.

"It's been more effective at capturing attention and getting the rhetorical attention than in actually prompting people to go after the hard stuff they're going to need to go after to actually close these gaps," says Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, which focuses on closing achievement gaps for poor and minority students. She credits NCLB with some improvement in the achievement gap, but would like to see teacher quality standards better enforced.

A push to help those at the bottom

One change that seems likely to get traction is a shift toward a "growth" model of assessing schools, in which schools with students who come in far below grade level get credit for helping them make big strides, even if they still fall short of proficiency - so long as, the Department of Education emphasizes, they do get students to a proficient level eventually. The department has already approved pilot programs in five states, and wants Congress to include such a model in NCLB.

Still, some critics want far more sweeping changes. A coalition called the Forum on Educational Accountability now has more than 100 groups - including the NAACP and the National Education Association - which have signed a list of 14 requested changes to the law. They include lowering the current proficiency targets, providing more assistance to failing schools, getting rid of sanctions with less record of improvement, and encouraging testing designed to measure higher thinking skills and performance throughout the year.

"The goal [of NCLB] is reasonable - the structure and way it's been implemented have been a disaster," says Monty Neill, director of FairTest and chairman of the forum.

He says some sanctions, such as allowing students to attend another school, aren't working, and that the testing and annual progress requirements have caused many schools to narrow their curriculum and "teach to the test" in the months preceding it.

"We'd be better off putting money into the teachers, teaching them how to be better assessors, and building in methods for spot checking and getting feedback," Mr. Neill says.

Slim chance for change in 2007

While the conversation is heated, the likelihood that NLCB will be reauthorized this year may be small. An informal poll of Washington insiders conducted by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation found that none believed it is likely this year, and most thought it would be put off until after the 2008 presidential election.

Michael Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy of the foundation and an early supporter of NCLB, admits that by this point, he's convinced that the federal government simply can't accomplish what it wants. He'd keep the goals of NCLB, but put the federal government's effort into setting strong national standards - instead of the widely varying state standards that currently exist - and have the states and districts figure out on their own how to get students to meet those standards.

"What we've learned more than anything else is that the federal government isn't well-equipped to force school districts to do things they don't want to do," Mr. Petrilli says.

The Department of Education, meanwhile, asks critics to be patient.

"We're in such a different place" than we were five years ago, says Kerri Briggs, acting assistant secretary for policy. "Education reform is not necessarily speedy work. It's tough stuff and requires putting in new assessments, creating data systems, rethinking curriculum, new professional development for teachers.... We have a lot of heavy lifting left to do."

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Democrats eye revamp of toxic-cleanup Superfund

from the December 28, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1228/p03s03-uspo.html

One plan: Reinstate a tax on chemicalmakers to fund cleanups when polluters are out of business.

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Although 1 in 4 Americans lives within four miles of a designated toxic-waste site, the federal program to clean up the sites has slowed.

Now, key Democrats in Congress are looking to push the program, known as Superfund, back into the spotlight. They're looking not only at its funding levels but also its funding sources. A central issue: whether to restore "polluter pay" taxes on industry to help fund cleanups.

"In some of these sites, the pollution is out of control, meaning it's still dangerous," Sen. Barbara Boxer, incoming chairwoman of the environment and public works committee, said this month. "We have to clean it up."

The California Democrat says she's making Superfund, along with global warming, focal points of her environmental agenda. She has tapped presumed presidential aspirant Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) of New York to chair the Superfund subcommittee.

Superfund, started in the 1970s, has seen a decline in funding and completed projects in recent years. Between 1993 and 2005, funding fell 32 percent - from $1.8 billion to $1.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports. During the same period, the number of cleanup sites earning "construction complete" status fell by more than half - from 88 to 40 - the lowest level in more than a decade.

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which administers the program, deny funding is an issue. Fewer completed projects merely indicate transitions in construction cycles that can last a decade or more, they say.

"What's been cleared away already are the easier sites," says Susan Bodine, assistant administrator of the EPA's office of solid waste and emergency response. "The sites we're working on now, many of them are complex situations that were also being addressed in the 1990s, and they're still not done. But we're making progress."

Outside observers disagree. "Superfund is in trouble," says Velma Smith, a policy analyst at the National Environmental Trust in Washington. "People in the agency are telling me they're giving up on assessing new sites. They may know a problem exists, but they can't get the money to even go out and assess it."

Many of Superfund's biggest challenges can be traced back to its budget woes, critics and former EPA employees say. For example: While the EPA once had a "trust fund" from taxes on the production of toxic chemicals by chemical and oil companies, authorization for the tax lapsed in 1995. The fund shrank steadily from nearly $4 billion to zero by 2002, despite President Clinton's attempts to get Congress to restore it. President Bush has not asked to renew it.

That means that the share of Superfund programs paid for by taxpayers has risen steadily. From 1993 to 2000, it was less than 20 percent of the overall appropriation. By 2004, the public was footing the whole bill, the GAO reports.

That's why some Democrats, including Senator Boxer, want to reinstate "polluter pays" taxes. Polluters still pay to clean up their contaminated sites when the EPA can track them down. But when companies are bankrupt, the EPA pays. In the past, the "trust fund" helped offset the public cost through a tax on companies producing the chemicals that were being cleaned up.

Those taxes once generated about $1.5 billion a year, according to a June report by the Center for Progressive Reform. Now "with reduced funding, investigation and enforcement has lagged, causing fewer sites to be added to the list because nobody's out there looking for them," says Rena Steinzor, coauthor of the report.

But other analysts say the tax is too broad.

"The tax isn't fair," H. Sterling Burnett of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a think tank, told Environment and Energy Daily in an interview. "It's going to target some companies who had nothing to do with the pollution and it's not going to get the companies that did the pollution because many of them are no longer around."

Ms. Bodine of the EPA also sees little merit in taxing chemical producers. "We do have the federal funds we need," she says.

Even where toxic waste cleanup problems are identified, there are problems getting them into the Superfund pipeline. At least 61 sites are currently proposed but not yet added to the 1,241 nonfederal sites on the National Priority List or NPL. Among them are many "orphan" sites where there are no polluters to sue - and federal dollars must be used to clean them up.
Orphan sites are not a new problem.

"We had a number of these orphan sites that we had completed design for cleanup and just needed the money from headquarters for construction - and those dollars weren't forthcoming," says William Muno, former head of Superfund for the EPA's Midwest region. "I've spoken with people since I retired and, from what I understand, the situation is even more acute."

Even completed cleanups have caused controversy. In Ringwood, N.J., this summer, furious residents met with politicians over sludge and other contaminants left on a Ford site the EPA declared clean more than a decade ago.

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A grass-roots push for a 'low carbon diet'

from the December 28, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1228/p14s01-sten.html

David Gershon's book guides readers through a series of behavioral changes to reduce their 'carbon footprint.'

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Last June, David Gershon saw Al Gore's global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." The time was ripe, he realized, to finish an old project.

In 2000, Mr. Gershon created a step-by-step program, à la Weight Watchers, designed to reduce a person's carbon footprint. The idea received positive reviews after a pilot program was run in Portland, Ore., but it eventually fell by the wayside for lack of interest. "The world wasn't ready," says Gershon, who heads the Empowerment Institute in Woodstock, N.Y., a consulting organization that specializes in changing group behavior.

But since then, Americans witnessed the catastrophic fury of hurricane Katrina, which, if nothing else, showed them what a major city looks like underwater. A substantial body of evidence supporting the idea of human-induced global warming accumulated. And, of course, Mr. Gore made his movie.

Attitudes toward global warming had shifted considerably. (Indeed, a recent poll by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that nearly half of Americans cited global warming as the No. 1 environmental concern; in 2003, only one-fifth considered it that critical.)

Gershon put his nose to the grindstone, and a slim workbook titled "Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds" was the result. Replete with checklists and illustrations, the user-friendly guide is a serious attempt at changing American energy-consumption behavior.

Although representing 4.5 percent of the world's population, the United States contributes an estimated 25 percent of its greenhouse gases. Faced with this fact and news reports of spring arriving earlier, winter arriving later, and the Arctic melting, the subject of climate change has gone from an abstract issue debated among scientists to something with apparently measurable effects in daily life.

This is where Gershon's book comes in. The book guides participants through a month-long process of behavioral change. Each participant calculates his or her footprint - the average US household emits 55,000 pounds of carbon dioxide annually, the book says - and then browses a list of emissions-lowering actions. The goal is to reduce that amount bit by bit. Replacing an incandescent bulb with a fluorescent, for example, counts for a 100-pound annual reduction.

Purchasing an energy-efficient furnace counts for 2,400 pounds. Just tuning up your existing furnace reduces your carbon emissions by 300 pounds while insulating your warm air ducts lowers them by 800 pounds.

But the key to the program's success, say those who've participated, is in forming a support group. People have good intentions, says Gershon, but alone, they often lack the will to follow through. Like Weight Watchers or Alcoholics Anonymous, the formation of a group encourages follow-through by socially reinforcing the new, desired behavior.

"I think it's essential," says Nathaniel Charny, a New York lawyer who participated in the recently completed testing phase of "Low Carbon Diet." "Everybody's reinforcing the goals, and you're having frank discussions about things."

And as Gershon sensed, the timing for a book offering day-to-day solutions to an overwhelming global problem couldn't be better. Gore's group, The Climate Project, which recently began training 1,000 volunteers to give Gore's now-famous slide show, is handing out 600 copies of the book at the end of the session.

Meanwhile, a handful of environmental and religious groups are recommending the book to its members. The Regeneration Project, a San Francisco-based interfaith ministry, has linked to the book on its main page. So have Climate Solutions, a nonprofit group in Olympia, Wash., and the Vermont chapter of Interfaith Power and Light (IPL), a nationwide organization dedicated to "greening" congregations.

Tellingly, before the advent of Gershon's book, several congregations around the country spontaneously embarked on carbon-reduction programs of their own. The Michigan IPL worked out a deal with suppliers to sell compact fluorescents to members at a lower price, and the Georgia IPL came up with a program called "preparing for a new light" whereby for each candle lit during holidays such as Hanukkah or Christmas Eve, participants change one incandescent bulb in their home for a compact fluorescent. And three congregants at St. Luke's in Cedar Falls, Iowa, started a comprehensive, step-by-step program like Gershon's called "cool congregations."

This growing interest in measurably reducing one's footprint is a textbook case of how new ideas spread throughout society, say sociologists, and how new movements are born. In the abstract, if a problem is to be acted upon, it has to be recognized as a problem, says Christopher Henke, assistant professor of sociology at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. Generally speaking, problems are not recognized by a group until the leaders of that group acknowledge them as such. In this sense, a problem matures and grows up, says Mr. Henke, citing examples such as the civil rights movement in the 1960s and more recent antismoking campaigns. "It becomes something that we take on as our own set of beliefs, our own moral issue," he says, "and then it becomes a reality."

In the case of global warming and faith networks, the past year has seen some important steps in this regard. In February, evangelical leaders around the country broke with the Bush administration and, in an open letter called the Evangelical Climate Initiative, said something had to be done. In August, Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said that, because of the summer heat wave, he was a "convert" to the idea of human-driven global warming.

Once important figures in social groups adopt an idea, others in the group are much more likely to to follow along. Then, movements spread and grow along pre-existing social networks, says Bogdan Vasi, an assistant professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. "People join a movement because their friends and relatives are involved," he says. "If you hear that your friend is buying wind energy, you're more likely to buy wind energy as well."

Indeed, preceding and perhaps contributing to the apparent demand for "Low Carbon Diet" is a remarkable prior effort by The Regeneration Project and the IPL. During October, the organizations showed "An Inconvenient Truth" to 4,000 congregations nationwide, reaching an estimated 500,000 people. "Those were people who would not pay to see that movie," says the Rev. Sally Bingham, executive director of the Regeneration Project. "But they got to go see it for free." And the movie seems to have catalyzed the audience, she says. After seeing the movie, audience members around the country asked what, exactly, they could do about global warming.

"There's kind of a critical mass now around global warming," says Wes Sanders, vice chair of the Vermont IPL, which has already begun forming teams around Gershon's book. "It's suddenly become sexy, so to speak."

Although it's unclear whether the book is a beneficiary of, or a contributor to, a grass-roots movement, how ideas spread through groups is one of Gershon's central preoccupations. He ascribes to a classic theory by sociologist Everett Rogers on how innovations diffuse throughout a community. New ideas begin with a small group of innovators and move on to early adopters.

They then pass on to early majority followed by a late majority. Finally, the most hardheaded - the laggards - adopt the new idea. Contrary to the oft-leveled criticism in environmental circles that by preaching to the choir nothing gets accomplished, Gershon argues that one should direct efforts at the group that's most receptive.

"Preach to the choir," says Gershon. "They'll sing loud enough to get everyone to go into the church, or synagogue, or mosque."

A few footprint shrinkers

U.S. homes account for 8 percent of the world's emissions, with the average household contributing 55,000 pounds of carbon dioxide annually, according to author David Gershon. His "Low Carbon Diet" workbook makes dozens of suggestions for reducing one's carbon footprint. Here are a few of his book's recommendations and how much carbon he says participants can subtract from their footprints by following through:

• Together, washers and dryers generate five pounds of carbon dioxide per cycle. In warm or hot water loads, 90 percent of the required energy goes to heat the water. Using cold water saves two pounds per load. Front-loading washing machines cut the amount of water used in half. Drying clothes on a clothesline further diminishes emissions. All in all, using cold water once per week shrinks your carbon footprint by 275 pounds each year; not using the dryer once a week gets you another 200. Replacing an old machine with an Energy Star front-loading washer saves 500 pounds a year.

• A 10-minute shower generates up to four pounds of CO2. A 5-minute shower cuts that in half and a low-flow showerhead drops it further. In a household, each person who reduces their shower to five minutes cuts emissions by 175 pounds per year. A low-flow showerhead saves you another 250.

• Request to be removed from junk mail lists, which needlessly contribute to waste. If you can reduce your weekly waste by 60 gallons, credit yourself with 2,650 pounds yearly.

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Himalaya's receding glaciers suffer neglect

from the January 03, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0103/p07s02-sten.html

Scientists monitor only a few of India's vital glaciers, which are receding by as much as 100 feet each year.

By Janaki Kremmer Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW DELHI

Billions of people in China and the Indian subcontinent rely on South Asia's Himalayan glaciers - the world's largest store of fresh water outside the polar ice caps. The massive ice floes feed seven of the world's greatest Asian rivers in one of the world's most densely populated regions.

Yet as global climate change slowly melts glaciers from Africa to the Andes, scientists say the glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating at a rate of about 33 to 49 feet each year - faster than in any other part of the world.

In the Himalayas, the Gangotri Glacier, one of India's largest, is entitled to an even more dubious distinction. Recent studies reveal that the Gangotri, which forms a mass of ice about 18 miles long, is retreating at a rate of more than 100 feet a year.

But according to government officials and environmental groups like Greenpeace, very little has been done in the way of a rigorous scientific study. Scientists are monitoring glacial melting on only a handful of the 7,000 glaciers that cover the Indian Himalayas.

And at such a rapid retreat, a gradual increase in droughts, flash floods, and landslides are not the only issue to worry about, say environmentalists. Justwhen power companies are planning more energy sources to power India's growing economy, a rising level of sediment in regional rivers is creating havoc for many grids.

"The power grid in Uttarkashi is constantly breaking down and that's because of the rise in sediment in the water being used at the hydro-power projects," says Joseph Thsetan Gergan from the WADIA Institute of Himalayan Glaciology, a part of the Indian Department of Science and Technology. "When the power breaks down, the people blame the Geological Survey of India or the Central Water Commission for not doing its work properly, but that's like thinking of digging a well when your house is already on fire."

While the Gangotri has been retreating since measurements began in 1842, the rate of retreat, which was around 62 feet per year between 1935 and 1971, has almost doubled.

An added difficulty, says Mr. Gergan, is the lack of a sustained research effort since the 1970s.

The Indian government's own recommendations, issued in March 2002 by the standing committee on Science and Technology, noted that glacial melting required immediate implementation of a program to measure and monitor the changes to the Gangotri and its impact on the Ganges river systems.

"It's not enough to just note the fact that the glaciers are melting," Gergan says. "The impact of that is not being focused on at all."

India's moves in the right direction

Others say the news is not all bad for India. Suruchi Bhadwal of the Energy Resources Institute, in New Delhi says that India is the first country to have a ministry for nonconventional energy sources which has big plans for the future.

"[The government plans] to electrify 70,000 villages using renewable energy, promote the use of biodiesel, and use low-carbon development pathways," Mr. Bhadwal says.

India has the potential to generate up to 45,000 megawatts of wind energy, but the country has only been able to harness about 2,980 megawatts as of 2004.

None of these lofty goals assuages environmentalists' worries, but Bhadwal is optimistic when he compares India's glaciers with those of neighboring Pakistan.

"Although India's glaciers are retreating, in Pakistan there are some that are actually growning in size," says R. Rangachari, a research professor at the Center for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based independent think tank.

But despite such scientific ambiguities, Mr. Rangachari says India's retreating glaciers can no longer be ignored - regardless of whether they are the fault of climate change or population increases along the higher reaches of the river.

"The Gangotri has been receding for about 500 years, and there is no doubt that things are worsening, whether it's climate change or anything else," Rangachari says. "But it's no good looking at recession in isolation, or population density in isolation, the problem as a whole must be urgently attended to by the government."

A holy place in jeopardy

The Gangotri glacier terminates at a "snout," known to Indians as the Gaumukh, or cow's head. The snout forms an ice cave and becomes the source of the Bhagirathi river. Each year, millions of pilgrims take a swim in the freezing waters here in order to free themselves from their sins.

At 79, local holy man Swami Sundaranand, who lives in Gangotri - a temple town and destination for many trekkers - has been taking photos of the Gangotri glacier and the Gaumukh for more than 50 years. As a yogi, he has perfected 300 yogic positions or asanas, and climbed twice with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Yet it is his photographic tendencies that have earned the Swami his nickname: " Sadhu Who Clicks," after the common name for an Indian ascetic.

Armed with more than 100,000 photos as evidence of the glacier's shrinkage, the swami travels India holding press conferences to raise awareness of the Gangotri's rapid demise. "In 1949, when I first saw the glacier, I felt as if all my sins were washed away and I had truly attained rebirth," the swami says. "But now, it is impossible to experience that Ganga of the past."

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New prospect for US: glut of ethanol plants

from the January 05, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0105/p01s04-wmgn.html

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Like at least four others building new ethanol plants in Illinois, Mike Smith expects his new biorefinery to begin pumping out fuel from corn by summer.

Unlike the other plants, Mr. Smith's Canton, Ill., facility is nowhere to be found on a key industry tally, which the US government and Wall Street analysts use to track ethanol plants under construction. A study released Thursday reports that at least 14 new biorefineries - representing nearly 1 billion gallons of extra fuel - are not on that tally. That oversight could mean problems ahead for the food supply and the "green fuel" industry, some analysts say.

• Ethanol production could pull so much corn out of the food supply by 2008 that US corn exports could plummet.

• The food-fuel competition could push corn prices so high that some ethanol producers in the fledgling industry, which many deem vital to US energy security, would merely break even - or, if corn gets pricey enough, actually lose money.

Even before Thursday's report, some analysts had warned of a future glut of ethanol production capacity.

The immediate concern of the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), which released the new report, is the impact on the global food supply.

"We're worried there will be less to feed the world if we're using too much corn to make fuel," says Lester Brown, EPI's president. "The US ... supplies 70 percent of the world's corn exports. These previously unidentified distilleries could have a big negative impact."

Wall Street investment banks and farm cooperatives continue to pour billions of dollars into building ethanol plants, basing their decisions in part on predictions of future capacity by the Renewable Fuels Association. The RFA lists 65 plants under construction. But EPI, which put together its own tally using several industry lists, has found 79 such plants.

That extra capacity has major implications for agriculture and the ethanol industry. Using the RFA's lower estimate, the US Department of Agriculture has forecast that ethanol biorefineries - also called distilleries - will need about 60 million tons of corn from the 2008 harvest. But if EPI's higher estimate for plants is correct, then up to 139 million tons of corn will be needed.

For its part, the RFA defends its more conservative estimate. "Our list is a pretty accurate snapshot - about the best you can get in an industry that changes as quickly as this one," says spokesman Matt Hartwig. "If we were to do our list based on announcements, it would be much longer. But that would be misleading because not all those come to fruition. Those on our list we believe will be built and up and running."

Last month, the RFA added about a dozen new facilities to its list, which suggests about 11.4 billion gallons in capacity by 2008, which is still lower than the EPI's range of 12 billion to 15 billion gallons.

Besides the potential impact on food exports, the glut in capacity could throw the ethanol industry into turmoil. The problem isn't demand for ethanol. The energy industry could use far more than what's currently produced. The real challenge is that competition for corn could drive its price so high that profits evaporate, some analysts warn.

"We see significant overcapacity in the short term, 2007-2010," warned a Deutsche Bank analysis last month. That analysis, based in part on RFA data, sees capacity of only about 8.3 billion gallons a year by 2008 - similar to a Citibank analysis in September.

Factor in the EPI numbers and the crunch gets worse.

"We've got to come up with enough corn acres to meet the demand," says Jerry Gidel, grains analyst for North America Risk Management in Chicago. "We're chasing a kite right now that keeps on rising." He predicts that capacity could reach 11 billion gallons a year by early 2008.

The 1.7 billion gallons of capacity RFA added late last year was "totally unexpected and has me a little worried," he says.

Ethanol prices fluctuate with gasoline prices. So when gas prices go up, profits for ethanol plants are good even if corn costs more. When gas prices dip, ethanol profits can get pinched by rising corn prices. With oil at $60 dollars a barrel, ethanolmakers can make money.

"I would feel very uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable, planning a new ethanol biorefinery at this time," says Robert Wisner, an economist at Iowa State University. "The RFA numbers are clearly at the low end of the capacity scale. We have a substantial number of plants out there that are very close to breaking ground right now that are not part of that list."

If oil prices were to drop below $60 a barrel, a further boost in corn prices could slash profit margins for ethanol manufacturers, some say.

"Right now we're getting by on $60 a barrel oil and still making money in ethanol," Mr. Gidel says. "But if all of a sudden we're going to stay at $60 and see demand for corn for ethanol rise for the 2008 harvest, well that would be a very ... challenging year for ethanol."

Wall Street has cooled somewhat to the industry's initial public offerings (IPOs) - privately held ethanol firms going public, analysts say.

"It's going to be a tough year because there's so much capacity," says a Deutsche Bank analyst, who asked not to be named because he did not have permission to speak to the press. "I don't really see Wall Street wanting to do a lot less [investment] with ethanol. We have had some pull back on a couple of IPOs by ethanol companies. Now the environment is tougher, but I don't think that's going to stop anybody."

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On your mark, the train is coming

from the December 27, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1227/p18s03-hfes.html

By Chryselle D'Silva Dias

The familiar warning greets visitors at London's train stations and is as famous as Big Ben or the queen. Look at the souvenir stalls and you'll know I'm not lying. There are more "Mind the Gap" T-shirts, coffee mugs, and key chains than those featuring all the royal family put together.

London's transport system, especially the Underground railway with its Tube stations, is one of the quickest ways to travel around the city. If you're a tourist, all you need is a travel card and a Tube map, filled with colorful lines, to get around. It is that simple.

Londoners say that their trains are dirty and overcrowded. They say that at peak hours, it is difficult to get into a car or find a place to sit. On some days, they say, even standing space is at a premium.

As I stood at the platform one day waiting for the Tube to come through the tunnel, I couldn't help laughing at these complaints.

"Londoners are so funny," I thought with a slight grin, hoping no one noticed. "They think that this is crowded! How would they survive back home?"

"Back home" is Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the heart of India. You may have heard stories of the crowds, the noise, and the chaos. But unless you have experienced train travel there, you have not lived life. That's possibly a good thing, because - the joke goes - if you're not an old hand at train travel there, you may not have much of a life left.

It's true that Mumbai has one of the best transport systems in the world. There are trains and buses running late into the night. The trains are (mostly) on time and run like clockwork. More than 3,000 trains each day carry more than a million commuters into and out of the city.

Still, the thought of getting into another train in Mumbai makes me break out in a sweat. I traveled for many years by train, wondering each time if I would reach home alive that evening.
"What an exaggeration!" I hear you say.

Picture this: It is 7:55 a.m. I am waiting for the 8:03 train, which will take me to the other end of the city where I work.

The "ladies" compartment is at the end of the train, next to the driver. I know the train will stop at the end of the platform. But if I want to get on, I have to do what every commuter in Mumbai does - move down to the middle of the platform and jump into the moving train as it slows down on its approach.

I see you recoil in horror. I did, too, at first. Common sense tells us to wait until the train comes to a halt before we board. Experience warns, however, that if you are foolish enough to wait, you will not be able to get in. Forget about finding a seat, you will be fortunate if you can get a toehold in.

It is a hard way to travel. Yet millions do it every day, perfecting the act of soaring into moving compartments into a fine art.

This "sport" isn't just for men - women of all ages jump, too. The fact that they're wearing high heels and saris and carrying shopping bags are but temporary inconveniences to be endured and conquered.

Most will end up standing in a bone-crushing crowd for their entire journey, trying hard not to be pushed out of the train early in the surge of passengers that try to enter and leave at every station. Sardines have a cushy time of it compared to this.

Back in London, as I wait for the Tube to come into the station, I marvel at the order of it all: Passengers wait patiently behind the yellow line. There is no pushing, no shoving. Rarely does anyone wedge in front of you, trying to get in first. And as the train approaches and stops, most people wait for the disembarking passengers to alight before hurrying in.

In Mumbai, if you wait that long, you'll still be on the platform as the train leaves the station.
I don't mind standing during a journey on London's Underground. This level of "crowded" is fine for me. The closest person is still far away, compared to Mumbai.

Watching the eclectic blend of people around me, I cannot help but marvel at this smorgasbord of humanity - every country, language, race, color, and accent is represented here. Well, almost.
On this day, the whole compartment seems to want to get off at my stop. Yet nobody seems to be in a hurry. I still manage to disembark in one piece as the voice says "Mind the gap."

I smile. I am safe. No palpitations today. While Mumbai will always be one of my favorite cities, London, without a doubt, is my train heaven.

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US creates terrorist fingerprint database

from the December 27, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1227/p01s03-usfp.html

By Warren Richey Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

The US government is building a massive database designed to identify individual terror suspects from fingerprints on objects such as a tea glass in an Iraqi apartment or a shell casing in an abandoned Al Qaeda training camp.

The database is being created in part by forensic specialists searching for and preserving evidence overseas. They are collecting unidentified latent fingerprints in places once occupied by Al Qaeda and other suspected terrorists.

The information is feeding into a computerized system designed to match a name with an unidentified fingerprint.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff calls the program "a quantum step forward in security."

"(It) gives us the ability to identify the unknown, unidentified terrorist," he said in a recent speech. "It also creates a powerful deterrent for anybody who has ever spent time sitting in a training camp, or building a bomb in a safe house, or carrying out a terrorist mission on a battlefield."

Not everyone sees the creation of such a database as progress. Privacy advocates and civil libertarians say it could lead to a dangerous erosion of American rights.

Privacy advocates voice concern

"Our assessment of these systems is that many that are undertaken with a goal of identifying terrorists eventually become systems of mass surveillance directed toward the American public," says Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington.

"When Secretary Chertoff says we are trying to identify people who were in safe houses in Iraq with terrorists, that is a very small part of the story," Mr. Rotenberg says. "The technology used to identify a terrorist in a safe house in Iraq is the exact same technology that can be used to identify a war protester in a Quaker meeting house in southern Florida."

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the completion of a database system that collects electronic fingerprints of both the index and middle fingers of every noncitizen entering the US. The system now documents 64 million travelers. The Homeland Security database is being linked with the FBI's database of more than 40 million subjects.

The effort prevented 1,300 convicted criminals and immigration law violators from entering the US, and blocked 1,000 others from gaining visas, according to Mr. Chertoff.

Now, Homeland Security is upgrading from a two-finger to a 10-finger system. In effect, it requires foreign visitors to submit to the kind of extensive fingerprinting usually reserved for criminals. But officials say that collecting all 10 prints ensures compatibility with the FBI database, and increases the investigative utility of the computerized system.

"Ten prints allows us to run not only against the database of known felons or known terrorists where we have fingerprints linked to a particular name, it lets us run against the databases we are collecting for latent fingerprints that are picked up in battlefields or safe houses or training camps all over the world," Chertoff said.

An unidentified latent print from a known terror safe house could provide an early warning by triggering an investigation if it matches someone trying to gain entry into the US, officials say.

Privacy advocates say the system is being presented to the American public and Congress as an antiterrorism tool. But they warn it could vastly increase the government's ability to track and investigate US citizens.

"It makes it sound as though this will have a limited purpose - terrorism, and a limited scope - non-Americans, but the reality is that the system is not going to be so limited," says Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation based in San Francisco. "They will be using it for every kind of law enforcement there is. They will be collecting fingerprints on Americans, and it will be used for every general purpose."

Fingerprinting part of ID science

Fingerprinting is a subset of a rapidly developing area of identification science called biometrics. Researchers are studying how to identify individuals in a crowd by using computers to match unique facial characteristics to those same characteristics on a driver's license photo. The federal and state governments are assembling databases preserving the DNA of convicted criminals.
And studies are underway to use eye scans to identify individuals. But by far the government's largest identifying database relates to fingerprints, and it may soon grow larger.

In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act, which instructs DHS to develop a single standard for all state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards. The ID is expected to include a biometric identifier. Many experts say the most likely candidate will be a fingerprint.

If adopted, that action would create for the first time a government database of fingerprints of virtually every adult American citizen. "This could come home to Americans very, very quickly," Rotenberg says.

Privacy advocates say they are hopeful that the new Democratic Congress will exert an aggressive oversight posture and study the implications of the fingerprint program before it is in place.

An Oregon lawyer and his fingerprints

They point to the case of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield.

The case began in mid-March 2004, shortly after terrorist bombs ripped through commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people and injuring 1,400. After the attacks, Spanish authorities found fingerprints on a plastic bag with detonators.

The FBI ran the prints through its computer system and found no matches, but identified several close nonmatches. Mr. Mayfield was the fourth of 20 close nonmatches.

Three FBI fingerprint examiners studied the Madrid fingerprint, and concluded that it had been made by Mayfield.

Mayfield's print was in the FBI's database because he had served in the armed forces and had earlier been charged with a crime.

FBI investigators learned that Mayfield had converted to Islam and had married an Egyptian immigrant. He also had served as the attorney in a custody case for a man who was convicted of conspiring to aid the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Justice Department officials say this information was unknown to the three examiners when they matched Mayfield's print to the Madrid bombing.

Spanish officials had their doubts about the match. They rejected the FBI's conclusion and continued to investigate.

The FBI dismissed the skepticism of Spanish authorities. One official in the investigation wrote: "I spoke with the lab this morning and they are absolutely confident that they have a match on the print. No doubt about it!!!! They will testify in any court you swear them into."

The FBI began surveilling Mayfield and his family, including covertly entering his home and office. Mayfield was arrested and held in prison for two weeks.

Concerned about the possibility of a mistake, a federal judge ordered an independent analysis of the fingerprint. That analyst also concluded that the print belonged to Mayfield.

Two million dollar settlement

That same day, Spanish authorities identified an Algerian man as the real source of the fingerprint.

Eventually, the FBI retracted its earlier conclusion. Last month the Justice Department agreed to pay Mayfield a $2 million settlement and issued a formal apology.

The Justice Department Inspector General's review of the case earlier this year warned about using a large database like the FBI's. "The enormous size of the (FBI) database and the power of the ... program can find a confusingly similar candidate print," the report says.

Mayfield says he was singled out because of his Muslim faith.

The Justice Department concluded that the fingerprint examiners were not aware that Mayfield was a Muslim with a connection to a convicted Al Qaeda supporter when they made the initial match. But later the examiners became aware of those facts, contributing to the FBI's reluctance to investigate whether they had fingered an innocent man, according to the Justice Department review.

Asked about the Mayfield case after his Nov. 30 speech, Chertoff acknowledged that mistakes had been made. But he added that mistakes are made in the criminal justice system, and no one suggests repealing the criminal code.

"We should make our techniques better but we shouldn't throw the whole process out because there are inevitable mistakes," he said.

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