Pakistan faces a less-friendly US Congress

from the January 29, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0129/p04s01-wosc.html

A new bill underscores lawmakers' displeasure with a country that is a key Bush ally in the war on terrorism.

By David Montero Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

Two deadly attacks and a high-profile visit from a US congresswoman over the weekend have drawn further attention to Pakistan's precarious position as both a steward of the US-led war on terrorism and host to a restive population of Islamic extremists.

Pakistan's delicate balancing act has also added to the widening gulf between a skeptical Democratic Congress and a White House that has relied on Pakistani government cooperation since 9/11.

On Friday, in a rare attack in the capital, a suicide bomber killed himself and one other person at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. A day later, another suicide bomber killed 13 and wounded 60 in a suspected attack against Shiites in Peshawar, the provincial capital of the North West Frontier Province.

In response to Pakistan's mounting instability, the White House announced Saturday that it would seek an additional $10.6 billion in aid for Afghanistan over the next two years – a dramatic increase from the $14.2 billion given since 2001.

Meanwhile, new US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Islamabad Saturday. She signaled in her meetings that a change in tone toward Pakistan – from quiet disagreement to blunt accusation – is sweeping the Democratic-led Congress, analysts say. That is suggestive of an emerging rift over how the US should deal with one of its most trusted allies in the war on terror.

Washington's policy has become increasingly clouded even as violence in Islamabad's backyard has reached unprecedented levels. US officials say nearly 140 suicide attacks occurred Afghanistan in 2006, as compared with 27 in 2005, and blame the uptick in part on a controversial deal Islamabad signed with Taliban militants inside Pakistan.

Ms. Pelosi's trip – her first abroad as speaker of the House, with stops in Iraq and Afghanistan – comes just weeks after Congress passed one of its first and most controversial pieces of legislation: a bill stipulating sanctions on military aid if Pakistan cannot control militants in its borders.

Attacks like this past weekend's confirm those concerns expressed in Congress's new bill. In language unusual in its specificity and bluntness – and echoing the international community's – the legislation calls for President Bush to certify that "the Government of Pakistan is making all possible efforts to prevent the Taliban from operating in areas under its sovereign control, including in the cities of Quetta and Chaman and in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas."

The Bush administration said Friday it would oppose the bill before it becomes law, and reiterated its satisfaction with Islamabad's efforts. "The challenges of the last several months have demonstrated that we want to and we should redouble our efforts," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters while flying to Brussels for NATO sessions.

January's bill, officially called "Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007" still has to pass the Senate. And Mr. Bush has ultimate authority to waive the provision on sanctions. But the bill's critique is one of the strongest in a growing cacophony linking Pakistan to Afghanistan's growing violence.

"The signal is a very strong one being sent by Congress, and the [US] president has to act," says Samina Ahmed, South Asia Project Director of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

If enacted, the bill threatens to alter a relationship, which, although flagging on its rhetorical surface, has been well fortified by cash. Pakistan has received $4.75 billion in "coalition support funds," in addition to billions for counterterrorism efforts – about $80 million per month. All told, Pakistan received the lion's share of $6.65 billion appropriated to the Defense Department for coalition support payments to "Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations"
between 2002 and 2007, according to Congressional reports. [Editor's note: The original version incorrectly stated how much money Pakistan has received since 9/11.]

That funding is not likely to be cut, most observers agree. The stakes are too high, and the Bush administration, they add, is unwaveringly wedded to Pervez Musharraf's regime as the most effective ally in stopping terrorism in the region.

"The ultimate loser would be the United States if that money is withdrawn," says Ayesha Siddiqa, an expert on Pakistan's military in Islamabad.

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US Congress weighs its role on Iraq

from the January 29, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0129/p01s01-usfp.html

With antiwar protests on the rise, it may move to curb defense funding.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON

As the Senate begins a debate this week on whether to oppose President Bush's "new way forward" in Iraq, many lawmakers are balancing what they see as competing constitutional responsibilities – and stepped up pressure from voters long weary of a war that most Americans no longer think can be won.

A first step is the debate over a nonbinding resolution to oppose the escalation of the war in Iraq. But should that vote succeed, Demo-crats expect to move next to curb defense funding.

"We are convinced there must be a political solution to the problems in Iraq," said a Congressional delegation led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a statement after a trip to Iraq last week.

In the run-up to this week's debate, newly empowered Democrats have been conducting daily hearings on the war in both houses of Congress, aimed especially at clarifying Congress's role vis-à-vis a wartime president.

At issue is how to balance powers inherent in two parts of the Constitution: Article 1, which gives the power to declare and fund wars to the Congress, and Article 2, which designates the president as commander in chief.

When the Founding Fathers began working on the outlines of a new nation, a key element of their research was how absolute monarchs waged war – which is to say, badly.

"That's one reason why they developed the idea of balance of powers," says Louis Fisher of the Library of Congress, who will testify before a Senate panel Tuesday on Congress's "Constitutional Power to End a War."

On the House side, Rep. John Murtha (D) of Pennsylvania, who chairs the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, has been conducting closed hearings on defense readiness. Congress could use that issue to block war funding and force changes in troop deployments, all in the interest of supporting the troops, Representative Murtha says.

House Republicans propose, instead, requiring the Bush administration to report to Congress every 30 days on progress in meeting "strategic benchmarks carefully tailored to the president's new strategy," including measuring the Iraqi government's cooperation on counterterrorism efforts.

While only 24 percent of likely voters nationwide approve of Mr. Bush's handling of the war, slightly more voters say it has been worth the loss of American lives, according to a Zogby poll released Friday. "It's now clearly a Republican war," says pollster John Zogby, noting that 59 percent of Republicans agree that the war has been worth the loss of life, compared with 20 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of independents.

"But Democrats also have this internal debate over just how far they can go. They are still afraid of being perceived by the American people as being antitroops or antipatriotic," he adds. A strong showing from antiwar voters – expressed in e-mails, phone calls, or turnout at protests – "could provide an extra prod for Democrats to go that step further," Mr. Zogby adds.

In response, some defense analysts say that polling data can be misleading. "Because only 30 percent say they still support the war doesn't mean that 70 percent are prepared to pack up and leave, no matter what happens to the region as a result," says Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution.

"It's the position of a third to half the Congress that we can still salvage something in Iraq," says Mr. O'Hanlon, noting that most of the Democratic leadership is not in that camp. "We haven't had a sophisticated development of Plan B in Iraq. Congress is in a good position to flesh out some options."

For their part, antiwar protesters in Washington are adding intensity to the debate.

Few members of Congress were in town Saturday as tens of thousands rallied on the Mall near the Capitol, but activists say lawmakers can expect 1 million e-mails and phone calls this week and intense scrutiny of member votes on the war on new blog sites.

"Symbolic actions are not enough. Congress has to stop the president. Our Founders gave the Congress Article 1. Our message was: You got elected with a mandate to get us out of Iraq.
Figure it out," says Tom Matzzie, Washington director of MoveOn.org Political Action.

In the next few days, antiwar protesters are launching television ads in three states targeting Republican Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana, John Warner of Virginia, and Judd Gregg and John Sununu of New Hampshire. MoveOn.org is gearing up to raise $7 million to $9 million to influence the war debate, says Mr. Matzzie.

Others in the antiwar movement agree with his assessment.

"The president is irrelevant at this point. We are not going to change his mind. Thank goodness we have a Congress that is a co-equal branch of government," says Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War and a former Democratic representative from Maine.

"We're going to use the Internet to make it absolutely clear who is doing what. Members of Congress need to know that we have their back when they're attacked, and if they are against us, they will feel the heat."

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High-tech police tool pinpoints where a gun is fired

from the January 22, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0122/p01s03-ussc.html

Gunshot detection technology systems offer a trove of data, but are not dead-on accurate, raising concerns about civil liberties.

By Ben Arnoldy Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BOSTON

Even the best police gumshoe can go in circles chasing down a reported gunshot. Was the sound echoing from another direction? Was it just a firecracker? Sorting it out takes precious minutes – especially if a victim lies wounded, or a criminal is slipping away.

Enter gunshot detection technology.

Sixteen cities across the country have installed ShotSpotter, a system of rooftop listening devices that triangulates the origin of gunshots and pinpoints, in seconds, the location on a map. This week, Boston introduces a plan to spend $1.5 million on the system.

The company, ShotSpotter Inc., touts the system's ability to gather forensics, including when shots were fired, how many, from what angle, and, in some drive-bys, the direction that the car was moving.

But the system is not dead-on accurate, meaning police must be circumspect about how they use the new trove of data, warn civil liberty advocates. Data from ShotSpotter has not yet been challenged in court, and both the company and defense attorneys predict an eventual showdown.

"As long as these kinds of systems have a margin of error, it seems to me there are always going to be questions about whether or not it's appropriate for police to move forward on an investigation absent some independent corroboration of the report," says Ed Yohnka, communications director with the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

ShotSpotter has notched some success stories:

•Washington, D.C., police say the system helped them capture a suspect fleeing from a gunshot homicide.

•Redwood City, Calif., has reportedly cut celebratory gunfire dramatically, and Oakland, Calif., police say they caught a man firing off a gun in his backyard.

•ShotSpotter Inc. says its system saved the life of a gunshot victim in 2004 in "an East Coast city." Nobody called 911, but the sensors alerted police.

Less headline-grabbing are the cases seen in Minneapolis since installing ShotSpotter last month. Police have netted three felons, two semiautomatic guns, and recovered one stolen car. It also provided additional information in three shooting cases.

"It's just a better compass. It still takes good cops, persistent investigation, and good police skills," says Lt. Gregory Reinhardt, spokesman for the Minneapolis police department. "It's just pointing us in a better direction."

However, Lt. Reinhardt admits that none of the arrested felons and confiscated items were necessarily involved in the original shooting. In one case, police arrived to find a car speeding off. Police pursued, then apprehended a suspect – a convicted felon – who tried to flee. In the car was a loaded semiautomatic pistol. In two other cases, police arrived to find people loitering. On each occasion they took names and found a person wanted on a warrant.

"It's sort of hard to fathom that the purpose of the thing is to put police in a place where they can pick up people who are wanted on other warrants," says Mr. Yohnka.

And it's debatable, say lawyers, how much suspicion should fall on those in the vicinity of a ShotSpotter report, given that the system is only specified to be accurate 80 percent of the time within 25 meters (82 feet). An independent study in 1999 found ShotSpotter to be accurate 80 percent of the time within 25 feet.

Boston police commissioner Edward Davis says ShotSpotter records would probably not be enough to obtain a search warrant, but might meet that bar in combination with other information.

He's concerned with making sure officers arrive at gunshot scenes with enough resources to keep them safe. Some watchdogs, however, worry about fearful police arriving in force and possibly overreacting, particularly in cases of a false report.

ShotSpotter is programmed to screen out loud noises like car backfires, nail guns, and thunder. Dispatchers can also listen to audio of each event to weed out some reports. Minneapolis says the system is now 95 percent accurate, but still can get tripped up by helicopters. Yet gun silencers can defeat the technology.

Regardless of accuracy rates, the high-tech nature of ShotSpotter may dazzle juries. "It's the gee-whiz effect: It seems so scientific, it must be true, right?" says Jack King, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. If he was defending a client, he would move to keep gunshot acoustic evidence out. "If a district attorney wanted it in, I would make him put on some $1,000-an-hour experts to convince the court that it's scientifically reliable."

Data security will be one of the first questions. The entire system uses encryption, from sensor to server to dispatcher, says James Beldock, president of ShotSpotter. The server stores a record of each gunshot report that includes the time, the sensor readings, and calibration data.

"You can take data out of the system, and with graph paper and a little physics, you can come to the same answer," says Mr. Beldock. "It's going to go to court eventually, and I'm looking forward to it."

In the future, Boston and Minneapolis hope to pair ShotSpotter with surveillance cameras already in place in both cities. In a demonstration Saturday in Boston, a camera was able to automatically swivel and focus on the location of a fired gun within seconds.

"A technology that is installed for one purpose which is legitimate, could, down the road, be used for other purposes," says Carol Rose, head of the Massachusetts ACLU chapter. She says that gunshot detection systems are not inherently problematic – and may be useful – if used as advertised. "[But] the city council needs to take steps to make sure that listening devices used to triangulate gunshots aren't used to listen to private conversations."

The company says the sensors don't pick up voices.

The system would cover 5.6 square miles of Boston, in places where gun violence is highest, say city officials.

"[Over four years,] $375,000 a year is nothing to ensure public safety," says Ron Consalvo, a Boston city councilor who pushed for the system. "It does take more police on the street, and we're doing that.... But it also takes the police department doing everything they can to seize the latest technology to do their job better."

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'Embryo bank': new hope or too far?

from the January 18, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0118/p03s02-ussc.html

A Texas fertility center's methods raise concerns about 'designing'babies. Some say they're not much different from the usual practice.

By Amanda Paulson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

In an era when infertile couples often look to test tubes or surrogate mothers to create children, the notion of egg or sperm donors is hardly novel.

Yet a San Antonio woman's idea to bring the two together – creating complete embryos ready to be implanted into the womb – has drawn a raft of criticism, with bioethicists debating whether this is the commodification of children or just another – perhaps more effective – way to help people become parents.

The "embryo bank" at the Abraham Center of Life isn't a storage bank so much as an intermediary that creates embryos from anonymous donors of both sperm and egg, for a waiting list of interested parents.

But the ethical debate around selling such embryos has called attention to the delicate balance between harnessing reproductive technology to help people achieve cherished dreams of bearing children and the danger of selective genetics in the hopes of creating "designer babies." It's also, say some critics, one more example of why more oversight is needed in a field that is advancing rapidly but has had almost no regulation.

The embryo bank "sort of literalizes the fact that the United States is a Wild West when it comes to reproductive technologies," says Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a Texas nonprofit interested in the public policy implications of genetic manipulation. "We let the [Food and Drug Administration] think about safety and effectiveness, but we don't let them think about social consequences – it's very different from a lot of countries."

Jennalee Ryan, the director of the Abraham Center of Life, recruits qualified egg and sperm donors – all must have a clean medical history – and she looks for sperm donors with graduate degrees and egg donors with some college education, according to her website and recent news reports.

Ms. Ryan turned down repeated interview requests for this article.

The center has a separate fertility specialist create the embryo, each of which costs her clients $2,500. She has created 26 embryos so far, and two women have become pregnant.

In some ways, her service isn't much different from common fertility procedures. Ryan simply acts as a broker to put the egg and sperm donations together for clients.

But critics have questioned the necessity of making new embryos when there are already many thousands left over from in vitro efforts – many of which can be "adopted." They also say the service seems to cater to clients who want the maximum control over their children's genes.

Clients review information about the donors' physical traits and temperaments, their family and educational histories, and in some cases look at photos.

"This raises a real question of commodification – of creating a new human life as a commodity," says Robert George, a Princeton professor and member of the President's Council on Bioethics. "Any time you manufacture products, they have to be subjected to quality controls.... If we let the reproductive technology evolution erode the understanding of our fundamental worth and dignity, and begin to think of children as products that are better or worse [based on certain traits], the consequences for civilization really are dire."

Ryan has said that her service is particularly useful to couples where both are infertile, and the process is cheaper than in vitro fertilization, which typically costs between $10,000 and $15,000. She claims her method has about a 70 percent pregnancy rate, compared with a 30 percent rate from typical in vitro embryos created from couples with fertility issues.

She questions those that object to allowing clients to screen photos and donor traits. Such screening is already routine for people using just an egg or sperm donor, she says.

But some critics say any further step – like selecting traits from both donors rather than just one – needs to be scrutinized.

"We can argue whether this represents an inch, a yard, or a mile down the slippery slope, but we're headed down a slope toward eugenics, and we haven't figured out how to apply brakes," says Ms. Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society.

The issues raised by the embryo bank is only one more example in what will be an increasing raft of ethical, safety, and legal questions for a field that is advancing rapidly but has had almost no oversight, since it's privately funded.

No studies have been done, for instance, on the long-term health effects of in vitro, and tracking such children would be impossible since records aren't kept.

Finding a balance between no regulation and inhibiting technological advances that could help people is challenging, says Arthur Caplan, director of the Bioethics Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

"But in looking out for the best interest of children you've got to do it," he says. "It's a tragedy that we haven't gone very far down the road of protecting those interests, even though the business has gotten huge."

• Wire service material was used in this report.

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Backstory: The canteen man of the US-Mexico border

from the January 22, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0122/p20s01-ussc.html

The Rev. Robin Hoover has set up watering stations to prevent migrant deaths. Is that saintly or seditious?

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

THREE POINTS, ARIZ.

The Rev. Robin Hoover bounces through the Arizona desert in a white truck that he has turned into his own mobile water-pumping station – a sort of canteen on wheels. The man of the cloth – on this day in Levi's 501 jeans, a khaki vest, and cap – maneuvers the vehicle through a tangle of mesquite, chollas, and prickly pear cactuses toward a blue flag in the distance.

The pennant marks two 58-gallon water drums. They serve as an emergency drinking station for migrants making their trek northward from Mexico in what locals simply call "the migration" – the intensity of which is evident in the multitude of sneaker and boot prints in the sand.

After refilling the barrels, Mr. Hoover and a volunteer raise a new 30-foot pole and replace the tattered flag: The station is ready for more use. "Blue is the most unusual color in our desert and it's a symbol for water," says the clergyman.

Hoover is on a singular mission to save lives in the Arizona desert at a time of one of the fiercest debates over illegal immigration in modern history. That makes the tart-talking minister both reviled and revered.

To detractors, his effort to set up water stations represents a direct form of aid and encouragement to those crossing the border illegally, which may include terrorists. He has received numerous death threats as a result.

But supporters see him as a humanitarian who puts compassion over politics in his helping of those who often get overlooked in the antiseptic debate over immigration policy. Hoover sees himself as holding – often assertively – the "passionate center" on an issue with no lack of voices on the extremes.

"We don't like the migration. We'd just as soon people stayed home," he says. "But a collective decision has already been made: In the US, we give these people jobs, if they can get through the gauntlet. We want borders that don't kill people."

***
Hoover founded Humane Borders, an interfaith group based in Tucson that set up the network of watering stations in the spring of 2000, to stem the rising number of deaths in the desert. Already that year, some 20 people had perished. One incident hit him particularly hard: A young mother who had given her last water to her infant. The child survived. She didn't.

Even now, it's at least a 3-1/2 day walk from the border to the drums at Three Points. But to make it through the desert, a person on foot needs as many as eight gallons of water – far more than most migrants expect, especially those who are told by their "coyotes" (smugglers) that the walk is only 45 minutes.

The terrain here is so forbidding that US authorities, cracking down on illegal crossings in Texas and California in the 1990s, assumed that few would try it. But they do. In the peak season, thousands cross Arizona's "path of fire" each day. Since 1998, more than 3,100 people have died in the area.

Humane Borders, which now has 63 trained drivers and some 8,000 volunteers, services 84 water stations on both sides of the Arizona border. Its pump trucks make about 750 trips a year. The water tanks are recycled Coca-Cola syrup drums, painted to keep algae from blooming.

Last year, Humane Borders also began distributing maps in Mexico and Central America that show the location of water stations, US border patrol emergency beacons, as well as the sites of migrant deaths. "I want to tell them the information they need to save their lives," says Hoover. "Not to do so is abuse."

If the red dots marking deaths in the desert aren't a clear enough warning, the message – in bold, in caps, and in Spanish – on each map reads: "Don't do it. There's not enough water. Don't pay the penalty."

But critics say the existence of such a map sends another message – that there's help in the desert, so it's possible to cross. "We would not want to give anyone the impression that the desert is a safe place or that there are safe avenues through it," says Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

In Mexico, support for the Humane Borders agenda is unambiguous. When Mexico's National Human Rights Commission announced that it would nominate Hoover and two Mexican activists for their human rights award, new Mexican President Felipe Calderón offered to present the awards himself last month – and did.

But at home in Arizona, the politics of providing water and maps in the desert rouses strong emotions. "We have an obligation as a nation to prevent deaths in the desert, but what Humane Borders is doing is sedition," says Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the self-styled border watchdog group based in Scottsdale, Ariz. "They're aiding and abetting criminal activity by giving out maps."

Hoover has had his share of encounters with anti-immigration protesters sitting in lawn chairs, and holding rifles, along the border. He gets plenty of warnings, too. "Some people send us checks; some send death threats," he says in his office at the First Christian Church in Tucson. After appearances on talk radio, hate mail also arrives on his computer, such as: "Don't be surprised, reverend, if your church blows up." He seems unfazed: "You do what you do because of who you are, not because of who they are."

***

A native of West Texas (and proud of it), Hoover grew up in Big Spring. He's had previous jobs in nursing, photography, and commercial construction. He earned a BA from Texas Christian University, a master's degree from TCU's Brite Divinity School, and a PhD in political science from Texas Tech University. He wrote his doctoral thesis on migration policy and religious nonprofit groups.

Before moving to Tucson in 2000, he ministered to border communities in the Rio Grande Valley. The books in his church office in Tucson range from biblical studies and ethics to political theory and current events. When he works late, he listens to Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet/singer-songwriter. "Leonard Cohen said it best: Love is the only engine of survival," he says.

Hoover preaches to his congregation every Sunday. Much of the rest of the time he's out in the desert in his double-insulated work boots (to protect against snake bites) and "Ex Officio" shirts with lots of pockets (to hold cellphones, GPS devices, and notepads).

Hoover has spent enough time in political science classrooms to know the competing immigration arguments. But he believes that Christian teachings trump political science. "We can analyze these things to death. But we're left with: What are you doing for 'the least of these,' " he says, referring to Matthew 25:45.

A natural storyteller, with a salty streak, he says he could not see what he has seen – tiny shoes left in the desert, near-miss rescues, close encounters with angry critics – without a sense of humor. "You have to have a sense of humor or you'll cry yourself into a mess," he says.

To be sure, the migration issue isn't only about poor people seeking a better life. It's also about drugs and guns, smuggling, human trafficking, and crime. Farmers' fences get cut, cattle are killed, families robbed. Debris piles up and so do costs to local communities and taxpayers.

"There's no one, no one, no one happy with the migration," he says. "I love the migrants, but I do not romanticize the migrants."

Nearly 3,000 people were rescued in the desert by the border patrol in fiscal 2006 alone. Last November, border patrol agents in the Tucson sector rescued four Humane Borders members, who failed to return to a water station. "We all help each other," says Hoover. "They [the agents] tell me they sometimes drink our water."

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How to save for college and make a difference, too

from the January 22, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0122/p14s01-wmgn.html

'529' college-savings plans target ethical investors, and now come without a federal tax hit upon withdrawal.

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Saving for college in a way that minimizes taxes and endeavors to make the world a better place is becoming easier to do.

To spark more saving for education, Congress in August made permanent the federal tax benefits of investing through 529 savings plans, which operate like an individual retirement account for education-related expenses. Knowing their 529 savings now won't face a federal tax hit upon withdrawal, Americans have increased their 529 plan investing by about 10 percent over the past five months for a total of more than $90 billion.

What's more, a few of the nation's state-based 529 plans are modifying their options to sweeten the deal for ethically motivated investors, whether they live in state or not. For example:
•In November, Pennsylvania introduced a relatively low-cost option, the Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund, where the annual charge is 0.75 percent of assets under management. The state also dropped its minimum initial investment threshold from $1,000 to $25.

•Also in November, California signed up Fidelity Investments to manage its Social Choice Fund, which provides extra weighting for the most financially promising stocks within a socially screened index.

•Before July 1, Missouri plans to roll out a 529 option for the Roosevelt Anti- Terror Multi-Cap Fund, which shuns firms that do business in four nations that the State Department has linked to terrorism: Iran, Syria, Sudan, and North Korea.

Observers say states are improving their ethically screened options in part to attract more capital to their 529 programs.

"If a state program has a sufficient base of assets, it will be able to offer a more competitive fee" to encourage more saving for education, says Jacqueline Williams, chair of the College Savings Plans Network, which includes all state 529 programs. "As these 529 plans become more and more mature, you might see more of these kinds of developments [such as ethically screened products] as states try to differentiate their own product offerings to provide something unique."

But some financial advisers are skeptical of 529 options targeted at ethical investors. Allan Roth, a financial planner in Colorado Springs, Colo., warns that the Roosevelt Fund has a minuscule $14 million under management and drives up trading costs with an 86 percent annual turnover of its stocks. It also flunks a litmus test for many socially responsible investors by keeping tobacco giant Altria as its third-largest holding.

More broadly, he says that, as a rule, 529 investors pay premium fees to access ethical investments that tend to lag behind their competition in performance.

"They're going to pay more and take on additional risk" by limiting their universe of potential investments to ethically screened 529 funds, Mr. Roth says. "So the judgment they have to make ... is whether it's worth the cost to invest in such a style."

The popularity of 529s has grown since the first one made its debut in Michigan in 1988. The appeal stems in part from their flexibility. Savers can invest either in their state of residency, which triggers tax advantages in about half the states, or in another state, which may offer lower fees.

The cheapest is Utah, where investors annually pay as little as 0.35 percent of assets for investments that aren't socially screened. Once enrolled in any state's 529 program, investors can choose from among a list of investment options. In addition to mutual funds, Ohio, for instance, offers certificates of deposit.

Spending the cash can be a flexible experience as well. A single fund could pay for a son's college, a granddaughter's graduate school, or continuing education for oneself. The latter possibility might mean the financier funds his or her own degree program 10 years after dropping out of one, or bankrolls the cost of courses for personal enrichment in retirement. The benefactor simply needs to register all potential beneficiaries before withdrawing the funds.

For investors interested in social change, the broadest range of options comes from the District of Columbia, where Calvert manages the 529 program. Investors in the D.C. program may choose from among three funds whose holdings are 100 percent socially screened for such factors as good environmental citizenship and noninvolvement in tobacco manufacturing. Ten other funds in the D.C. program range from 0 to 75 percent socially screened.

To access these funds, investors must go through a broker, who receives a 4.75 percent load up front. They also pay a one-time $25 fee at the beginning and a $30 annual maintenance fee.

Calvert's fee structure leads to "high expense ratios," Roth says, but some investors are apparently undeterred. Fifty to 60 percent of investors in the 100 percent screened funds reside outside D.C., according to Laurent Ross, college savings program manager for Calvert.

"People from out of town are coming in to take part in these programs," Mr. Ross says. "The District of Columbia offers socially responsible options, so it may be worth paying more for that."
One reason: Ross says that, in the long run, socially screened stocks are likely to outpace others because they're less subject to the volatility that often results from scandals and lawsuits.

Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman also contends that her state's soon-to-arrive antiterror screens improve portfolio stability by keeping investors' dollars away from regions prone to flare-ups. They also meet a demand.

"We had a lot of people calling in and saying, 'I want to be sure my dollars aren't going to spread terrorism around the world,' " Ms. Steelman says. "We are empowering Americans to help fight the war on terror through choices they can make."

For Roth's part, the best socially responsible 529s are those with the lowest fees and broadest market exposure, since those factors reduce volatility and allow for capital appreciation over time. Of the bunch, he says he likes California's for its relatively low 0.8 percent annual fee and its linkage to the KLD Broad Market Social Index, which tracks more than 2,000 socially screened companies within the Russell 3000.

Yet because dollars and cents are of paramount concern to those with looming tuition bills, Roth suggests prioritizing financial considerations. He says to check first whether one's own state has tax benefits for residents who invest in its 529 plan. Then compare the net costs of doing so with investing through Utah's 529. In the end, Roth suggests going with the cheapest option – unless an investor believes an ethical component is worth paying an additional price.

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Push to replace new US mercury plan

from the January 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0124/p03s03-uspo.html

Mercury's tendency to pollute locally has caused the Bush administration's emissions-trading scheme to be called into question.

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

The nation's new program to regulate mercury may be short-lived.

Several draft bills in Congress – as well as a suit in federal court – are challenging the Bush administration's mercury pollution program, which took effect last year. A key reason, they charge, is that the plan's emissions-trading scheme – which has worked to curb other pollutants that spread far and wide – doesn't work for mercury, which accumulates locally as well as spreading over long distances.

That's why lawmakers on Capitol Hill are preparing bills that would tackle the toxic pollutant in a more direct manner. They aim to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 90 percent, rather than the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) target of 70 percent. The bills also would set up a nationwide monitoring network to track airborne mercury and its effects on the environment.

Democrats and Republicans have offered similar bills before. But three major scientific studies published during the past several months have added urgency to their efforts, they say. The upshot of the research: Unlike pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, airborne mercury is far more likely to drop back to earth close to its source, generating "hot spots" of contamination and accumulating in the food chain.

The research also is cited in a lawsuit 16 states and a handful of environmental groups have filed with the US Court of Appeals in Washington. The suit, initiated two years ago, challenges the EPA's regulatory tack on mercury pollution. Within the past two weeks, the plaintiffs filed opening briefs charging that the EPA is misusing the emissions-trading approach. They also argue that to set up the program, the agency illegally dropped power plants from a list of pollution sources that must face the most stringent controls under the Clean Air Act.

Emissions trading has helped the country dramatically reduce sulfur-dioxide pollution from power plants by establishing a market-based approach. Companies can balance out their big polluting plants either by running much cleaner plants elsewhere or buying pollution credits from other, cleaner utilities. As emission limits tighten, the cost of such credits goes up, encouraging companies to close or retrofit their biggest polluters.

But the recent studies provide new data that show why such a scheme should not be allowed for mercury, argues Rep. Tom Allen (D) of Maine, author of a bill to establish a national mercury monitoring network.

The first study, published last September in Environmental Science and Technology, found that over a two-year period, 70 percent of the mercury that rain or snow washed out of the skies over Steubenville, Ohio, came from local or regional sources. This is far higher than previous EPA studies indicated. The team picked Steubenville because 17 coal-fired power-plant boilers operate within 62 miles of the city, and another study had documented adverse health effects to people in the area from air pollution.

Two studies published this month in the journal BioScience discovered five biological hot spots in the northeastern US and southeastern Canada, and uncovered another nine that may be hot spots as well. The intensity of these hot spots varies with the type of coal burned in a boiler at the source and with other factors such as the landscape's chemistry or water levels in reservoirs. As with Steubenville, the researchers also established that at least two hot spots that cover southeastern New Hampshire and northeastern Massachusetts could be traced to local and regional sources and that the mercury was showing up in fish and birds.

One of the two studies carried some good news, notes Charles Driscoll, a Syracuse University scientist who took part in both studies. Between 1997 and 2002, mercury emissions fell by 45 percent in southern New Hampshire, thanks to emissions controls on incinerators.

Concentrations found in wild loons in one of the hot spots fell by an average of 30 percent over that period. Mercury levels in yellow perch and in plankton also fell.

The results have led both groups to call for a more effective national system for monitoring the sources and effects of airborne mercury. The sulfur-dioxide program worked, Dr. Driscoll says, because the EPA had comprehensive monitoring network. "Those measurements are not in place for mercury."

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Push to replace new US mercury plan

from the January 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0124/p03s03-uspo.html

Mercury's tendency to pollute locally has caused the Bush administration's emissions-trading scheme to be called into question.

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

The nation's new program to regulate mercury may be short-lived.

Several draft bills in Congress – as well as a suit in federal court – are challenging the Bush administration's mercury pollution program, which took effect last year. A key reason, they charge, is that the plan's emissions-trading scheme – which has worked to curb other pollutants that spread far and wide – doesn't work for mercury, which accumulates locally as well as spreading over long distances.

That's why lawmakers on Capitol Hill are preparing bills that would tackle the toxic pollutant in a more direct manner. They aim to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 90 percent, rather than the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) target of 70 percent. The bills also would set up a nationwide monitoring network to track airborne mercury and its effects on the environment.

Democrats and Republicans have offered similar bills before. But three major scientific studies published during the past several months have added urgency to their efforts, they say. The upshot of the research: Unlike pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, airborne mercury is far more likely to drop back to earth close to its source, generating "hot spots" of contamination and accumulating in the food chain.

The research also is cited in a lawsuit 16 states and a handful of environmental groups have filed with the US Court of Appeals in Washington. The suit, initiated two years ago, challenges the EPA's regulatory tack on mercury pollution. Within the past two weeks, the plaintiffs filed opening briefs charging that the EPA is misusing the emissions-trading approach. They also argue that to set up the program, the agency illegally dropped power plants from a list of pollution sources that must face the most stringent controls under the Clean Air Act.

Emissions trading has helped the country dramatically reduce sulfur-dioxide pollution from power plants by establishing a market-based approach. Companies can balance out their big polluting plants either by running much cleaner plants elsewhere or buying pollution credits from other, cleaner utilities. As emission limits tighten, the cost of such credits goes up, encouraging companies to close or retrofit their biggest polluters.

But the recent studies provide new data that show why such a scheme should not be allowed for mercury, argues Rep. Tom Allen (D) of Maine, author of a bill to establish a national mercury monitoring network.

The first study, published last September in Environmental Science and Technology, found that over a two-year period, 70 percent of the mercury that rain or snow washed out of the skies over Steubenville, Ohio, came from local or regional sources. This is far higher than previous EPA studies indicated. The team picked Steubenville because 17 coal-fired power-plant boilers operate within 62 miles of the city, and another study had documented adverse health effects to people in the area from air pollution.

Two studies published this month in the journal BioScience discovered five biological hot spots in the northeastern US and southeastern Canada, and uncovered another nine that may be hot spots as well. The intensity of these hot spots varies with the type of coal burned in a boiler at the source and with other factors such as the landscape's chemistry or water levels in reservoirs. As with Steubenville, the researchers also established that at least two hot spots that cover southeastern New Hampshire and northeastern Massachusetts could be traced to local and regional sources and that the mercury was showing up in fish and birds.

One of the two studies carried some good news, notes Charles Driscoll, a Syracuse University scientist who took part in both studies. Between 1997 and 2002, mercury emissions fell by 45 percent in southern New Hampshire, thanks to emissions controls on incinerators.

Concentrations found in wild loons in one of the hot spots fell by an average of 30 percent over that period. Mercury levels in yellow perch and in plankton also fell.

The results have led both groups to call for a more effective national system for monitoring the sources and effects of airborne mercury. The sulfur-dioxide program worked, Dr. Driscoll says, because the EPA had comprehensive monitoring network. "Those measurements are not in place for mercury."

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Can a 'leaky' levee save the Louisiana coast?

from the January 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0124/p01s04-ussc.html

A bold US Army Corps of Engineers plan would build a semipermeable 'Great Wall of Louisiana' to preserve marshlands.

By Patrik Jonsson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW ORLEANS

With working-class towns like Leeville and Golden Meadow partly overrun by an encroaching Gulf of Mexico, Cajun Country is in full retreat from its historic home in the deep swamps of southern Louisiana.

Now, a bold plan put forward by the US Army Corps of Engineers – and currently being discussed in the new Congress – would build a semipermeable "Great Wall of Louisiana" from the Mississippi River to Texas to block the advancing Gulf and, at the same time, do the opposite of what a levee is supposed to do: Allow water through to keep marshlands from drowning in the kind of brackish backwaters that are killing off Louisiana's signature swamps at the rate of more than 30 acres a year.

For some 120,000 people along Louisiana's blue-collar coast, the "Morganza-to-the-Gulf" levee – a sort of intertidal Maginot Line – is seen as salvation, especially since the 2005 storms. But critics say that such a "leaky levee" is a false hope, a taxpayer-funded Louisiana hay wagon that is scientifically unproven and even detrimental to both the region's ecology and economy.

What is certain, however, is that this storm-blocking proposal promises to test the political fortitude of lawmakers and scientific wisdom of the nation's levee-builders, with deep ramifications for this ancient delta.

"The idea is to plan for protection and restoration together, and [the Morganza plan is an example of] where the two ideas can benefit each other," says Windell Curole, of the South LaFourche Levee District, who manages the levees there. "But there are also places of conflict."

Cost of the Morganza proposal

With a price tag of $886 million, 65 percent of which would be federal money, the Morganza section of the great wall would zigzag from St. Mary's Parish to LaFourche Parish, enclosing some 550,990 acres of the Terrebonne Basin and walling off the oil depots of the port of Houma. In the mayhem of a storm, nine 56-foot-wide gates and three even larger floodgates would close to keep out tidal surges, but on calm days the locks would open and allow the region's natural intertidal flows to nourish the marshes.

Planned since the late 1990s, the new levee won't directly protect New Orleans, but its proponents say it will stop the long-term degradation of the marshes that could one day turn the Crescent City into a beach resort, unprotected by surge-slowing swamps.

Currently at stake, experts say, is one of America's most critical ecosystems.

About 50 percent of the Lower 48's seafood comes from the area that would be protected by the Morganza levee. Eighteen percent of the nation's daily fuel also is pumped through these marshes as the chief port to the offshore platforms.

Still, more than 10,000 people have had to migrate northward to escape the Gulf, a disturbing shift for an Acadian culture of pungent fishing villages and gritty petro towns fanning out across low alluvial ridges. "Our communities have been retreating and continue to retreat," says Mr. Curole. The new levee is their final stand, he says.

Much of Terrebonne Parish – French for "good earth" – is no longer solid ground. Huge chunks of freshwater-fed floating marshes have rotted into muck as a result of saltwater intrusion, largely caused by exploratory canals that oil companies have dug deep into the swamps. The canals bring salinated water tens of miles into the swamps, killing much of the vegetation.

"We used to be able to walk across it like a prairie, and now you'd sink six feet in if you tried to step onto it," says Peter Rhodes, chairman of the Terrebonne Parish Council.

Test of levee system

Semipermeable levees that would allow engineers to control salinity and oxygen content by regulating both flowing freshwater and tidal water have been tested only at the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge near New Orleans. Many lessons were learned that will bolster the Morganza, says Nathan Dayan, the Corps' environmental manager on the project. Still, results at Bayou Sauvage were about 50-50, especially when it came to maintaining rusting flapgates.

"The tidal interchange [idea] has been somewhat tested with some luck and without some luck," Mr. Dayan says.

The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, established after Katrina to restore critical marshlands, is backing the Morganza Plan. It would dovetail with a broader marsh restoration project that could cost more than $14 billion, says Rep. Charlie Melancon (D) of Louisiana.

But critics say the Morganza's cost may undermine the efforts of more meaningful restoration proposals, such as diverting the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers to bring silt and freshwater into the lower Louisiana basins to rebuild lost shore front.

"The short-term push for this is enormous, probably irresistible. But it's folly," says Oliver Houck, an environmental resources lawyer at Tulane in New Orleans. "The best thing you can say about it is we're taking a $4 [billion] or $5 billion gamble on a theory that's already proven not to work."

Origins of the Morganza

The Morganza project was authorized under the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) in 2000, but was dropped after the Army Corps failed to meet the deadline for a feasibility study.
It's now been six years since the WRDA was last reauthorized. In the last Congress, earmarks stuffed into a bill that contained the WRDA prevented it from being renewed. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has said he expects Congress to address the WRDA, including the Morganza, in March.

But Representative Melancon, a Cajun Country native, is miffed at the heel- dragging. "You go up to Boston where they spent $15 billion on a tunnel – that's a want, not a need," he says. "[The Morganza] deal is not about want, it's about need – the need to save the largest and most prolific American wetlands."

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Unions see greenbacks in 'green' future

from the January 25, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0125/p13s01-sten.html

Organized labor is joining forces with environmentalists to push for an eco-friendly economy.

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

With alarm growing over global warming and the economic vulnerability created by American dependence on foreign oil, it's increasingly obvious to many that the only viable future is a green one.

The pursuit of this future has made unlikely bedfellows of many groups historically at odds with each other. Evangelicals have joined forces with tree huggers. Creationists have aligned themselves with scientists. And now, organized labor is working with environmentalists.

Union leaders are betting that a green economy will not only address the issue of climate change, it will also provide a bonanza of well-paying manufacturing jobs – the kinds of jobs that have largely vanished from the United States in recent decades. A proliferation of wind turbines and solar panels means more factories, while ever more stringent efficiency standards imply the need for inspectors and experts in sealing and insulating.

"From labor unions' point of view, these are the kinds of jobs their unions are most prepared for," says Jeff Rickert, vice president of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of the major environmental and labor organizations.

Having worked in steel mills and paper plants, many in the workforce already possess the appropriate skill set, say labor leaders. All that's needed are incentives at the federal level, and America will be well on its way toward what some call a "third industrial revolution."

"This is like the transition from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy," says Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America's Future, a progressive think tank. "It has the potential for massive growth."

According to studies by the Apollo Alliance, which has outlined a 10-point plan for energy independence and jumpstarting the renewables sector, dollars invested in clean energy create more jobs than those invested in traditional energy sources. Renewable energy is simply more labor intensive. An investment of $30 billion per year for 10 years would create 3.3 million jobs and boost the gross domestic product by $1.4 trillion, according to its analysis. The federal government would recoup the initial investment in increased tax revenues within the same 10-year period.

The most optimistic point out that, because decentralization is inherent to renewable energy, an equitable distribution of wealth is built into the new energy paradigm.

"The sun shines, the wind blows, there's biomass everywhere," says Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The Hydrogen Economy." And making heavy machinery such as wind turbines far from where it's to be used simply won't be cost-effective. Neither will transmitting energy over long distances. That means jobs will be more evenly distributed as well.

The real impetus for this market is most likely to come from top-down regulation on a national scale, a measure President Bush has so far rejected, but which many see as inevitable.

"Everyone sees carbon regulation down the line," says Kate Gordon, a senior associate with the Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

But thanks to the spike in oil prices and incentives like the recently extended Production Tax Credit for producers of renewable energy, some renewables are already competitive. Electricity generated from wind power is now competitive with that produced by natural gas. Wind-generated electricity has enjoyed a 27 percent growth rate in 2006 and is projected to grow at the same pace in 2007, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Already, it appears that the renewable energy sector has begun to deliver on its promise of new jobs. Spanish wind giant Gamesa Corp. is building a manufacturing plant in Edensburg, Pa., on the site of a closed steel mill. In all, Gamesa will bring 1,000 jobs to Pennsylvania, some 230 of them long-term manufacturing jobs.

Manufacturing giant Siemens, meanwhile, recently announced plans for a wind-turbine plant in Fort Madison, Iowa, that will employ some 250 people.

And last year, Seattle-based Imperium Renewables began building the largest US biodiesel facility near Aberdeen, Wash., an area hard hit by recent paper-mill closures. Biodiesel, made from vegetable oil, emits 78 percent less carbon dioxide than petroleum diesel. It has also recently become competitive with fossil fuels.

But because the cleanest energy is energy not used at all, the area most likely to see immediate growth will be energy efficiency – training people to inspect, insulate, and seal buildings so they waste less. By 2030, half of all buildings in the US will have been built after 2000, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. "That's a great opportunity," says Joel Rogers, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a cofounder of the Apollo Alliance. And it implies many jobs.

The Bush administration can take credit for pushing unions and the environmental movement together, says Julius Getman, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Although the interests of the two groups have long coincided, mutual distrust has often – although not always – kept the two movements apart.

Environmentalists looked down their noses at organized labor as "goons" more interested in protecting polluting industries than protecting the environment. Organized labor, meanwhile, viewed the environmental movement as elitist and more preoccupied with saving trees than in saving livelihoods. The Bush administration has helped change those attitudes.

"They have run roughshod over the environmentalists, who thought they were so powerful," Professor Getman says, "and they have done everything possible to diminish the power of unions."

Mr. Rifkin envisions not only more jobs but also a more equitable distribution of wealth due to the decentralization of energy production. He foresees a land dotted with community- or individually-owned generators and hydrogen fuel cells to store energy, all connected by a "smart grid," an Internet-like network managing the ebb and flow of electricity.

"It will require the creation of millions of jobs," he says, "and it will require the attention of civilization."

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Gas substitutes boost the flex-fuel car

from the January 26, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0126/p01s04-sten.html

Soon, alternative fuels might be made from corn, soybeans, and plant fiber - and new cars would be able to run on them.

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Prospects are brightening for a big change at your local service station.

Instead of just regular, plus, and premium, gas stations in a few years may well be offering fuel made from corn, soybeans, and plant fiber. And new cars would be engineered to run on them.
Following President Bush's call Tuesday for a 20 percent cut in gasoline consumption, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have unveiled legislation that would require automakers to build "flex-fuel" cars that could burn the various alternative fuels.

The new legislation, which still must work its way through Congress, has some powerful backers. Energy-security advocates like its emphasis on reducing reliance on foreign oil. Farm-state Democrats and Republicans like its boost of corn-based ethanol. Even the Big Three automakers like the move to flex-fuel technology because it might give them an advantage over foreign automakers building hybrid cars.

"This plan now waiting in Congress dovetails nicely with the president's statements, helping achieve his goals and doing even more," says Anne Korin, chairwoman of Set America Free, an energy-security coalition based in Washington, D.C. "The amazing thing is that I believe there's actually a pretty good chance it will pass both houses and get to the president's desk."

The push for alternative fuels is coming from several forces. Last November, the chief executives of the Big Three automakers met with Mr. Bush in a White House chat to talk about the challenges facing their industry. One idea that surfaced: by 2012, half of all their new vehicles could be flex-fuel models.

These cars and trucks could burn a range of alternatives to gasoline – from ethanol made from corn to methanol made from coal. That kind of push could help meet Bush's goal of reducing US gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years.

After the president announced that goal at Tuesday's State of the Union address, Ford announced its support for the effort in a statement, pointing out it had already produced 2 million flex-fuel vehicles.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents foreign as well as domestic automakers, is taking a more nuanced stand.

"Energy security is important to the alliance, and we've already put more than 9 million alternative-fuel automobiles on the road, including hybrid, diesel, and ethanol-capable vehicles," says spokesman Wade Newton.

The bipartisan legislation in Congress has some of the same aims as the president. It aims to slash US dependence on oil by 2.5 million barrels a day by 2017 – a 10 percent reduction on expected consumption. That cut is roughly equivalent to the White House goal of 20 percent in gasoline consumption (which represents about half of US oil use).

But the bill provides an explicit road map for achieving a reduction of 7 million barrels a day by 2026. It, for example:

• Provides big tax incentives for motorists to purchase plug-in hybrid vehicles. Because these hybrids rely far more on electric power (and less on gasoline) than today's hybrids, they would qualify for bigger tax breaks than today's models do.

• Ramps up oil displacement with biofuels by, among other things, offering tax breaks to gas stations that offer ethanol and other fuels.

• Establishes a detailed oil-conservation program, which would include "oil savings" audits of federal agencies.

• Boosts research on ethanol made from plant fiber and other noncorn materials by $1 billion over five years.

• Offers tax credits, loan guarantees, and grants to automakers and suppliers that retool factories to build more efficient vehicles.

Congress, of course, is awash in energy bills that go nowhere. In fact, earlier versions of the current legislation enjoyed good bipartisan support in the last Congress. But they stumbled because they became ensnared in issues such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling – and drilling off the Florida coast. With Democrats now in charge of Congress, both issues seem off the table, giving the bill room to get going, observers say.

The biggest question marks are in the House of Representatives where the bill's success may depend on garnering support from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – as well as the level of opposition from Rep. John Dingell (D) of Michigan, whose committee is known for blocking bills Detroit automakers don't like.

But especially if some modest White House support for the bill can be generated, the bill will make it through that committee, supporters say. There are already 60 cosponsors from both parties with the prospects for another 100 or so, observers say.

"I've talked with the president about this bill before, and I know he supports its goals," says Rep. Jack Kingston (R) of Georgia, the bill's cosponsor along with Rep. Eliot Engel (D) of New York. "If the president is looking for a legacy, shifting the nation away from oil to alternative fuels, it's sitting there waiting for him."

In the Senate, prospects appear even stronger. The bill got critical support in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee where committee chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D) of New Mexico is a cosponsor. Other key Democratic cosponsors include Sens. Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama.

One key stumbling block from the old version of the House bill has been excised: a provision to get rid of the current tariff that makes it more expensive to import ethanol. Even though energy hawks wanted it badly, the provision was a deal breaker because ethanol manufacturers – especially those in the critical state of Iowa where presidential aspirants must campaign first – don't want it.

That move has generated some criticism. "This legislation recognizes the dire geopolitical threat to us from imported oil," says Ariel Cohen, an energy expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. "What I find amiss is that it does not address the need to bring into the US the most competitive ethanol, sugar-cane ethanol [from Brazil and Caribbean nations], which is now penalized with punitive tariffs."

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Up before dawn? Only for penguins.

from the January 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0124/p18s02-hfes.html

These rare penguins can only be found in one part of the world.

By Barbara S. Wysocki

It's pitch black, 5 a.m., and I'm walking briskly, but carefully, across a pasture where the daytime inhabitants have left reminders of yesterday's grassy lunch.

Why am I, a confirmed "night person," up before first light, climbing over fences, sliding down a sand-dune cliff, pounding across a wide beach, and clambering up another dune?

My predawn journey started at Nisbet Cottage just outside Dunedin on New Zealand's South Island. For me, the cottage's main attraction is the sunrise penguin walk that takes four visitors to a colony of rare yellow-eyed penguins.

My husband and I have taken advantage of the door-to-dune service to view the world's third-tallest breed of penguins. This early hour is the best time to see the birds as they head for their day-long food fest in the South Pacific waters off the Otago Peninsula.

The crashing surf may have been the penguin's wake-up call, but I was grateful for the phone that rang a half hour ago to propel me into jeans, hiking boots, and several shirt layers beneath my jacket.

Our guide, Eric, clad only in shorts and a shirt, shivers briefly when he opens the narrow slits of the hide, a small wooden hut that will allow us to observe these shy birds. We are nestled less than 25 yards from a cliffside colony that numbers about 35 yellow-eyed penguins.

"It's a southerly," Eric explains. "The winds come from Antarctica." Though it's February and midsummer, I pull on wool gloves before I pick up my binoculars.

Our guide gives us quiet instructions: "Listen. Look for white."

Sure enough, a trumpeting trill comes from off to my left. Each member of the colony has a unique voice, recognizable to its peers. I do a careful sweep of the grassy tussocks and see a white spot too upright to be a stone.

Yes, it's moving. I know I've spotted my first penguin when I see a chromium-yellow racing stripe that wraps around a head that is swinging back and forth. There's no way to know if it's a male or female penguin, since both sexes have the same markings. One thing is certain, however: This adult is calling for a swimming companion.

Yellow-eyed penguins, also called hoiho in Maori, are one of several species that make New Zealand their home. Most penguin groups plunge into the water en masse, but these birds, about the height of a human newborn, prefer the buddy system.

Locating a partner and deftly scaling the narrow gullies of the 200-foot cliff seems like a lot of work on an empty stomach. Once at the bottom, each bird traverses a rocky cove. Fortunately for us, it's low tide – so we can see them march across the beach before they dive into the frigid water.

This particular colony has had a disappointing breeding season. Only a few chicks have survived, and one of them appears unaware of the dangers of the leopard seals and sea lions that wait below.

Eric explains that the 3-month-old chick we see nearby would usually be left alone for the day while both parents go to feed on small fish and squid. At day's end, the adults typically return with enough leftovers to regurgitate a meal for their young one.

"Is this chick too lonely or too bold to stay at the nest?" I ask.

"Dunno," says Eric.

Whichever, the chick has tried to follow the rest of the crowd, so lately one of the parents has been staying home to contain the youngster's life-threatening enthusiasm. Land-based predators – such as stoats and ferrets – and habitat encroachment are also serious threats to New Zealand's penguins.

The sun is unable to penetrate the cloud cover, but there's plenty of light now as we watch the largest of the penguins, the colony kingpin, as he heads to the water with his sidekick for the day. Some colony members stand aside as he moves through the rocks and surf.

Several yellow-eyed brethren look down from the edge of the cliff as though they were sentries on duty.

"They don't all go in every day," Eric says.

I suggest that they may not be hungry, and he asks if I am.

Not surprisingly, the answer is yes. The combination of salt air, exercise, and the pure exhilaration of penguin watching has done its work. I'm ready to head back.

Daylight makes the return trek easier, and soon we're on Nisbet's hilltop deck with coffee mugs in hand.

As our hostess, Ursula, slides a plate of eggs and sausage my way, I spread her homemade gooseberry jam on my toast.

Warmed by the morning's memories, I'm very grateful that I don't have to dive into cold water for my breakfast.

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Outside the lens of the camera, a wild safari awaits

from the January 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0124/p18s03-hfes.html

Why a picture recorded in the mind is worth more than one taken with a camera.

By Daniela Petrova

I'm sitting in the outdoor bar of the Kenya Wildlife Service campsite in Nairobi, enjoying a soft drink. Two Australian girls are at the table next to me, and we start chatting. They've just come back from the Masai Mara National Reserve, one of Kenya's most popular wildlife parks, where my friend and I are headed tomorrow for a two-day safari. I ask how it was.

"Fantastic," they say. "We saw all of the Big Five!"

The Big Five – the wild animals everyone hopes to see on safari – are elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion, and leopard. Although I have spent the past three weeks volunteering in a small village about 60 miles from the capital, my only encounter with wildlife so far has been a glimpse through a dirty bus window of a single giraffe, grazing by the road.

At 4:30 in the morning, my friend and I pile into a Land Rover with other tourists who have signed up for a hot-air balloon ride. In the dark, we drive to the site, where two red and yellow balloons are waiting for us.

We climb into the basket of one of them, and it lifts off the ground, shaking slightly back and forth. As the pilot cranks up the flames, it rises higher and higher into the sky, which brightens with the morning light.

I get my first view of the Mara – an endless expanse of yellow rolling grasslands, backed by the purple silhouette of the Esoit Oloololo Escarpment to the west and divided by the chocolate waters of the Mara River.

We float silently over zebras, wildebeests, antelopes, and gazelles, which are gathered in columns and loose herds.

I alternate between snapping shots of them with my camera and looking through the binoculars, searching for the Big Five in islands of acacia trees and bushes, where they often hide.

For the rest of the day, we drive around the dirt roads of the park among countless herds of zebras and wildebeests. They stop grazing and twist their necks to look at us, but we stare past them into the distance, searching for more celebrated animals.

In late afternoon, our driver is radioed with the location of a pride of lions. He makes a U-turn and hurries to the site. About 10 other vans and Land Rovers surround two lionesses and five cubs.

I zoom in with my camera and start snapping photos, trying to keep the other cars out of my frames. Within minutes our driver starts the engine again and we rush off down the road to where a cheetah has been spotted.

The morning of my last day in the Mara, I wake up with one thought in mind: I have to see a leopard. It's the only one of the Big Five I haven't seen.

We spend the day driving under the scorching African sun, exploring places favored by leopards.
Toward the end of the day, we see a large herd of elephants. I reach for my camera – but then I stop myself. I decide to watch them instead as they move in a slow procession through the brush, their ears flapping back and forth, their heavy feet crunching on the dry grass.

Over the past two days, I have filled two memory sticks with images, but I haven't really seen much outside the lens of my camera, I realize.

As the sun dips lower toward the horizon, we stop by a large acacia tree in Ngama Hills to take in the view. Below us, the vast Mara is dotted with herds of zebras and gazelles. A soft, warm wind rustles tree branches. A bunch of wildebeests are grazing 30 feet away from us. The radio crackles, and the driver exchanges some words in Swahili and starts up the engine.

"A leopard," he tells us. "Fifteen minutes from here."

I look at my friend. She knows what I'm thinking and nods.

"Wait." I say. "We'd rather stay and watch the sunset."

I've seen four of the Big Five, and I have scores of photos to prove it. But my favorite picture – the one I will take home not in my camera but in my mind – is of the ungainly wildebeests in front of me, their long beards glowing golden in the sunset.

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Backstory: Touring the real South Africa

from the January 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0124/p20s01-litr.html

A growing number of international visitors are asking to see the underside of the post-apartheid Rainbow Nation.

By Stephanie Hanes Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA

The tour starts in a wide dirt lot cluttered with trash and minibus taxis, beyond a metal goat pen tucked under a power line tower, not far from the main road through Soweto. This is where Mandla Shongwe appears, walking with a loping but determined stroll, dressed in a long white tank top, baggy jeans and floppy hat – classic South African township duds.

He's the only person to approach, even though there are a dozen guides who also notice any outsiders in this unmarked spot.

"There will always be only one person," explains Mduduzi Jack, who works with Mr. Shongwe. "This shows that there is a system in place." It is one of the ways they try to keep their impoverished community more popular than the next squatter camp, he says. They want visitors to feel comfortable.

Informal settlements – the unregulated clusters of shacks that sprout on vacant land, often without electricity or running water – are becoming increasingly common tourist destinations, as South Africa's growing number of international visitors ask to see "real" communities and the underside of this post-apartheid Rainbow Nation.

Here, residents of the Elias Motsoaledi Informal Settlement have taken control of the trend – putting together a system of tours that brings some money into their struggling community.
Today, it is Shongwe's turn in the rotation.

His visitors usually look relieved when he approaches and introduces himself. Often, they get out of their cars or tour vans nervously, wondering what they're doing in this dirty, crowded lot, with no tourist signs in sight. Maybe they've come here because they heard about this tour from someone else – its popularity has spread by word of mouth. Or maybe another guide has brought them here as part of a longer tour of Soweto, the black township that was the heart of the anti-apartheid struggle.

Shongwe, gesturing for his visitors to follow, walks toward a rutted dirt road that slopes away from the lot, a dusty seam in a colorful quilt of never-ending aluminum shacks. Children with skinny legs dusted reddish brown from the road look up. Some wave. Women walk slowly with packages on their heads, ignoring camera-toting tourists. They're accustomed to visitors.

He begins to point out the sights: the yellow portable toilet shared by 100 people and cleaned weekly, the rusty tap that supplies water for all who live in this section, the water sanitation towers on the horizon that mark the end of this sprawling squatter camp.

"You can take pictures," he says.

Although there are no formal studies tracking squatter camp tours, the city's tourism association has estimated that visits to Soweto – a community of well over a million people – have increased more than 30 percent in the past five years. And while most of these tours focus on historic landmarks, such as Nelson Mandela's former house, many also stop at Elias Motsoaledi or other informal settlements, say tour guides.

Anna Johansson, a Swede, found herself in Elias Motsoaledi when the guide she hired for the day brought her here to one of Shongwe's colleagues. "This tour was amazing," she says, walking back to her van. "I have never seen such poverty – it is very strange to me. It is so interesting to see it for myself – not just on television."

Most of the time, visitors are international tourists like Ms. Johansson, guides say. But sometimes they are South Africans participating in corporate team-building trips.

Ken Creighton, the director of KDR Travel, which runs tours in Soweto, says a visit to a squatter camp can help both international visitors and locals understand the challenges and struggles still facing South Africa. It can also be inspiring – to step into this different world and find many people who are friendly, intelligent, and motivated.

"It's just an interesting, different place to visit if you're used to living in a white picket fence suburb," he says. "We always find that people come out of Soweto feeling positive about it. They always leave with a whole different approach to South Africa and Johannesburg and where they stay."

Residents in the Elias Motsoaledi Informal Settlement were quick to spot the trend. In the mid-'90s, soon after the settlement formed and when postapartheid tourism was beginning to grow, a community youth group decided that rather than have tour guides come into their neighborhood, they would take control of tourism themselves.

"We saw the tourists driving by on buses, and the guides were giving them information inside," Mr. Jack says. "We knew those tour guides were not from here. We knew it would be much better if the tourists came to us. Those guides were explaining the conditions that we live in – we knew we could explain those conditions better, because we actually live here."

The youth group – called "Uluntu," the Zulu word for humanity – elected representatives to talk to the provincial tourism association. They asked that registered guides bring tourists by the settlement. The youth group also elected a dozen volunteer guides from the neighborhood who they deemed trustworthy enough to put tourist donations in a general community fund. (At the end of a tour, a guide asks whether a visitor would like to make a donation, and then asks how much is a personal tip, and how much is for the community. Shongwe says the community ends up with around $1,400 a month, which is used for food parcels and other projects.)

Residents agreed to let visitors into their houses, knowing that the tourists might leave them a tip, too. They admonished their children not to beg.

Soon, word spread about the tour.

"We like to share the belief that there is a difference between being poor and miserable," Shongwe says, as he walks past the colorful aluminum shacks.

Elias Motsoaledi, named for one of the anti-apartheid fighters imprisoned with Nelson Mandela, sprouted in a vacant patch of land in Soweto in 1995, Shongwe says. Apartheid had ended the year before, and blacks from rural areas were taking advantage of their newfound freedom to move to Johannesburg – the "city of gold."

That's when Shongwe moved here, he says. He came from a rural province, hoping to make his fortune. His father was already here, working in a mine near Johannesburg – a major employer of black men during apartheid. They and nine of Shongwe's siblings lived together in a one-room shack, while Shongwe looked for a job. Because the new black-led government had promised every South African a house, they expected that their dwelling would be temporary. But by 1997, they and many others realized that jobs and houses would be hard to come by. Shongwe started volunteering as a guide.

"Do you want to go into one of the shacks?" he asks. "Pick any one."

In an aluminum-sided dwelling, spotlessly clean, Eric Tyalo sits on his bed – one of the only pieces of furniture that could fit. He lives here with his wife and two children and has a story similar to Shongwe's. He came to Johannesburg because it was the city of opportunity. But he couldn't find a job or afford a real house.

This isn't the first time he has welcomed a foreign visitor into his shack. "We see so many," he says. "At first, we were reluctant to accept white people coming into our community. We were really afraid of white people. Now we believe that white people are friends."

Tourist tips, he says, help make ends meet.

Outside, Shongwe points out the shebeen – the shack that is now a bar – where patrons use a radio (powered by car battery) to play music in the evenings. He points out the metal chain-link fences surrounding the shacks, and says that those are not for security, but for keeping out animals such as dogs and goats. He walks back up the dirt road, to the car lot and bids farewell.

Then the tourists drive away, and he joins his colleagues, waiting for the next ones to come along.

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Should US track each foreigner's exit?

from the January 22, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0122/p03s03-ussc.html

A program to record visa-holders' departures via land is being suspended because of technology issues, say security officials.

By Alexandra Marks Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK

The United States knows when visitors carrying visas enter the country, but it has no idea when, or if, most of those people leave.

Congress ordered that key flaw in the immigration system to be fixed as far back as 1996 – in part because as many as 100,000 people overstay their visas annually and join the ranks of undocumented workers. But the 9/11 attacks gave the request new impetus: The 9/11 commission in 2004 recommended that the loophole be closed, and the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act mandated that it be done "as expeditiously as possible."

By the end of this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects to have a system in place to track people who leave by air or by sea. But it has decided to abandon its efforts to track the exits of foreigners who depart through the nation's border checkpoints on land.
Tuesday, top DHS officials will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain the department's rationale.

"Land presents somewhat of a challenge," says the DHS official who confirmed that the land exit program was being suspended. "We're still looking into doing it at some point in time; it might be a number of years."

The problem, according to DHS, is that the technology doesn't yet exist to create an entry/exit program for people who cross by land – at least not without causing huge traffic delays that would disrupt commerce and daily life in border towns.

Critics say the real problem is a lack of political will and confused priorities. They charge that DHS has set the technical bar too high – for instance, requiring the system to be able to check people's exit from the country while they're driving by at 50 miles per hour.

The controversy over the entry/exit program, which is called US Visit, illustrates not only the difficulty of securing US borders physically, but also the larger question of how best to use limited resources to improve security in a post-9/11 world. Advocates of a comprehensive exit and entry program say it is crucial to security, because the nation must know who's leaving as well as who's coming into the US. Indeed, two of the 9/11 hijackers had overstayed their visas.

"We have to recognize that there are very real threats and it still is an international border – people who've become used to quick and easy crossings have to understand that there are very compelling reasons now to change the way they do business," says Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. "Maybe just-in-time manufacturing was fine in 2000 when you could get a truckload of stuff across the border very quickly and easily, but things are different now."

Critics of US Visit say it's a waste of valuable resources to focus on the 309 million people who cross the nation's land borders annually. More than 70 percent of those who cross regularly are truck drivers, workers, or people going to visit family across the border. The vast majority of the rest are vacationers.

"I understand the politics as to why we'd like to target temporary visitors, students, and others, but I haven't seen ... a really cogent analysis about why [it] would be better to put billions of dollars into that as opposed to training people to speak foreign languages and infiltrating groups that are suspicious," says Allan Wernick, a professor at Baruch College in New York and chairman of the Citizenship and Immigration Project.

DHS is testing its exit-verification program at 12 airports and two seaports. It has set up kiosks where visitors swipe their travel documents as well as have two fingerprints and a picture recorded to ensure they are indeed the person who came in on that visa. By the end of the year, DHS plans to have that system operating at the 80 US airports that accommodate international travelers.

DHS also had a pilot program at five land ports. That system used radio frequency technology to scan a chip in people's visas when they drove out of the country into Canada or Mexico. The goal was for it to work if cars were driving as fast as 50 miles an hour.

"That's unrealistic. Even with E-ZPass you have to slow down to five miles per hour," says Ms. Vaughan, in a reference to a toll-tracking card used by commuters.

A DHS spokesperson said the radio frequency technology failed in part because it couldn't prove that the people carrying the visas with the microchip were the same ones who came into the country – a congressional requirement. A recent General Accountability Office study found that to meet the mandate that the exit program be biometric, DHS would have to spend billions to expand border crossings and hire new staff to prevent huge traffic back-ups at the border.

A DHS spokeswoman defends delaying the implementation at land ports until the technology is available to make it viable to use the biometric visa identifiers – such as fingerprints – at the land ports of entry.

"We've had success by incrementally phasing the program in at airports, and that's what's resulted in no traffic buildup. And we will be phasing it in sometime in the future at land ports," says Anna Hinken, a US Visit spokeswoman. "Biometrics is the future. "These types of systems require resources and planning. It's not something that happens overnight."

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Whither all the war protesters?

from the January 19, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0119/p01s03-ussc.html

As the Iraq war heads toward 'surge,' the antiwar movement, now mostly online, nears a crucial moment.

By Brad Knickerbocker Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

On a beach in US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district the other day, about 1,000 war protesters formed up to spell out the word "IMPEACH." The aerial photo quickly spread to China and Europe.

Still, there were no political harangues, no civil disobedience. The quiet turnout was mostly "old hippies, and even older hippies," jokes event organizer Brad Newsham.

In Boston, a peaceful rally to protest the planned "surge" in US troops drew no more than a few hundred people.

Nearly four years into US combat in Iraq, the antiwar movement has yet to generate the kind of mass protest seen during the Vietnam War. There's no shutting down universities or blocking traffic at military bases – no tense face-offs with police.

But with the new Congress, the Bush administration's surge strategy (which critics deem an "escalation" of the conflict), and increasingly negative public opinion polls on the war, this may be a critical moment for the antiwar movement.

Now, it is organizing and most active in cyberspace. And while that "public space" is not as visible as the town square and university grounds nearly four decades ago, it no doubt feeds the growing public opposition to the Iraq war. (Seventy percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll last week.)

One key reason that opposition to the war has been less overt, organizers recognize, is the lack of a military draft. Also, the scale of the war is different. There were four times as many troops involved and 10 times as many American casualties over a comparable period in Vietnam.

Third, only a handful of Americans are directly affected by the war or asked to sacrifice for it.
For many, "it feels removed," says Tressa Jones of Needham, Mass., who joined the recent rally in Boston. "It's easy to forget because there hasn't been a draft. It's not wartime in the way we are living.... People aren't collecting scrap metal or growing victory gardens."

Yet scholars of recent controversial wars say that though the Iraq War is far different from Vietnam in many ways, opposition, in fact, developed much sooner.

"Protests against the Iraq war, throughout, have been at a far higher level than they were with regard to Vietnam at comparable stages of the invasions," says Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist who was an early critic of US involvement in Southeast Asia and often opposes US foreign policy in general.

"It wasn't until late 1967, five years after [President John F. Kennedy's] outright invasion, that a substantial movement became visible – and even then, and in fact until the end, it was mostly focused on the bombing of the North," Dr. Chomsky said in an e-mail. "It's hard to know how to measure effects – we don't have internal records, as in the case of Vietnam – but they have at least kept it visible enough so that most of the population has been in favor of withdrawal."

The Web played an important part in defeating war supporters in Congress last November, which in turn led to the current Democratic majority there.

One significant development: Thanks to e-mail and the Internet being available to most troops in Iraq and their families back home, the war can be very immediate to many Americans. That keeps many fighting men and women more politically aware and engaged than in past wars.

As a result, more American troops now disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war than approve of it, according to a recent Military Times poll.

"When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war – in 2004 – 83 percent of poll respondents thought success in Iraq was likely," Military Times reports. Now, " that number has shrunk to 50 percent. Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way Bush is handling the war, and 42 percent said they disapprove."

At the same time, according to the poll, the number of military respondents who identify with the Republican Party has dropped from 60 percent in 2004 to 46 percent today.

On Tuesday, two active duty servicemen – Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto and Marine Corps Sergeant Liam Madden, who served in two tours in Iraq – presented to Congress more than 1,000 signatures from active duty and Reserve troops in support of "the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq." The day before, about a dozen of those troops held a press conference at a Unitarian Church in Norfolk, Va., to voice their opposition to the war.

Those are relatively small numbers compared with the 140,000 US troops currently in Iraq. But it's the kind of act that gets public and political notice. And it echoes 1969, when 1,366 active duty troops signed a full-page ad in The New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam.

Around the country next week, Veterans for Peace will launch an antiwar effort based on a constitutional argument. Organizers will target Democratic lawmakers – especially those in leadership positions like House Speaker Pelosi.

"The Constitution is being violated," says Vietnam veteran Lee Thorn of San Francisco, referring to allegations that the US has tortured prisoners as well as what he calls infringements of civil liberties. "It's our duty as those who've taken an oath to defend the Constitution to continue."

Later in the week, a large "mobilization" of antiwar groups is planned in Washington.
•Staff writer Ben Arnoldy contributed to this report.

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