News n Notes from the Web

Why Kyoto will vanish into hot air
By Bronwen Maddox - Foreign Editor's Briefing - The Times Online UK
Date: 28 November 2005

THE United Nations conference that began yesterday in Montreal and will stretch on for nearly two weeks will fail in its aim: to devise a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

That does not matter; in fact, it is the best outcome. Kyoto has been an extraordinary piece of work. A treaty that its most important signatories have found impossible to meet, and which has changed behaviour very little, has still become a resonant global symbol. The best way forward now is not a "successor" to Kyoto, which covers the years until 2012. Another treaty that attempted to set fixed targets for cutting emisssions could be economically very damaging — in the unlikely event that countries ever reached agreement.

The better answer is in the plethora of bargains between a handful of rich and poor countries, which some are already exploring. It is also in the development of new technology to combat global warming, and in deals to spread these quickly to poorer countries. Some of these new suggestions for life after Kyoto have come from the US, China and India, which all found Kyoto unpalatable. For just that reason, they are more valuable than son-of-Kyoto would be. It is no surprise that European Union countries became so enamoured of the Kyoto Protocol, which finally came into force in February this year.
They have found its targets fortuitously easy to meet. For them, the treaty coincided with a revolution in energy supply.
Kyoto set the EU a target of cutting "greenhouse gases" by 8 per cent from 1990 levels by the period 2008 to 2012. Members divided up the reductions between themselves; some could see that they would find big cuts easier than others. They are slightly off course, but not by so much that they think they have surrendered the moral high ground.
The figures tell the political story. In 2003 Britain’s emission of greenhouse gases was 13 per cent down on 1990 levels, slightly ahead of its EU-appointed target of 12.5 per cent.

Of course, emissions are likely to rise between now and 2008. Britain is also missing the Government’s own target of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2010. All the same, these drops have been made possible by the shift from coal-fired power stations to gas in the early 1990s. Germany, similarly, is almost in line with its Kyoto targets, with an 18 per cent drop in 2003, on its target of 21 per cent. France is down by nearly 2 per cent, ahead of its target of no change. True, many smaller EU countries are not doing so well. But many of the new eastern members show sharp drops well ahead of target, because of the closure of old industries.
Those "achievements" of the EU have made Kyoto an irresistible tool with which to berate others, notably the US. But extending Kyoto would be difficult for the EU too.

The EU would be well advised to look more sympathetically on the new proposals coming out of the US, Britain and the conference hosts, Canada. These include "intensity targets" — cuts in emissions per dollar of economic output. They are more attractive than Kyoto to poor countries as well as to the US. So are proposals for rich countries to invest in technology to filter out emissions and to share it with developing countries. Other suggestions include sector targets, which would set emissions standards for some of the biggest industries, such as steel and cars.

Under most of these systems of new, flexible targets, it might still be possible to set up markets in pollution, in which countries or industries could trade the right to release emissions.

Any agreement to curb greenhouse gases is worth little if the US, China and India do not sign up. Kyoto failed in that basic requirement. For all the rhetorical mileage which some European countries have found in Kyoto, at the US’s expense, their own "success" — such as it is — is due to a quirk of history rather than to selfdiscipline or the powers of their leaders. That gloating is no basis on which to move forward.

Big Oil defends big rise in profits

David Ivanvich - Houston Chronicle- Nov. 10, 2005, 1:53AM
Sentae Hearing - Executives say earnings from pricey gas are in line, but push for windfall tax continues
WASHINGTON - Oil company executives doggedly defended their recent multibillion-dollar profits Wednesday, even as lawmakers warned about the rising anger of American voters. As federal regulators investigate possible price gouging and some lawmakers call for a new windfall-profits tax, executives from five major oil companies told a Senate panel that the earnings rung up while motorists were paying more than $3 a gallon for gasoline were not excessive. "Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge," Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Lee Raymond told members of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees. Exxon earned $9.9 billion in the third quarter.

Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., warned the executives lawmakers are being bombarded with complaints from constituents, who are highly suspicious of the oil industry's motives. "Americans have been experiencing painfully high prices at the pump," Domenici said. "Whether you think so or not, they think so." Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., never a friend to the oil industry, told the executives that in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, "people are concerned about fairness and justice at a time of sacrifice. "Your sacrifice appears to be nothing," Boxer said. ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva said that while prices at the corner gas station were up an average 67 cents a gallon for the three months ending Sept. 30, the Houston-based company's profit per gallon rose by only 4 cents. ConocoPhillips' profits amounted to just 7.7 cents per dollar of sales "near or below the average of all U.S. industry," Mulva said. "We do not see this as a windfall," he said.
Oil company profits are largely a function of crude prices, argued Shell Oil President John Hofmeister. "And the price of crude is set on world markets," Hofmeister said. "We do not set or control the price of crude." Earlier this summer, lawmakers, as part of the massive energy bill, ordered the Federal Trade Commission to investigate possible market manipulation or price gouging in the gasoline market. FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras told lawmakers her agency has issued dozens of subpoenas in that probe. "If there is anti-competitive behavior going on between ... these gasoline companies, we'll find that, and we'll prosecute," Majoras said.

Calls for tax
Called at the urging of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Wednesday's hearing could help Republicans deflect criticism they aren't doing enough to shield consumers from rising energy costs. It is not likely to quiet calls for a windfall-profits tax, although the prospects for such a proposal, for now, seem remote. Outside the Capitol, protesters sporting "Exxpose Exxon" T-shirts, complete with oil stains, were in force — but inside, the much-anticipated hearing was largely devoid of fireworks. The biggest eruption among the lawmakers occurred at the outset, as Democrats tried to get the panel to have the oil executives sworn in. But Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, head of Wednesday's joint panel, refused, insisting there was no need since "federal law makes it a crime to provide false testimony." That decision enabled the executives to avoid the kind of embarrassing photo of executives raising their right hands.

Tax incentives questioned
Chevron Corp. CEO David O'Reilly and BP America President Ross Pillari also attended the hearing, but it was Exxon's Raymond who was the main target of lawmakers' questioning. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., pressed Raymond and the others about the $2.6 billion worth of tax breaks the recent energy bill awarded to the industry. In the new era of belt-tightening on Capitol Hill in the wake of the hurricanes, lawmakers are eager to find places to cut. These incentives were targeted primarily at smaller oil and gas producers to help on the accounting of certain expenditures. But the energy bill also included a $400 million provision that would offer tax breaks to companies willing to expand a refinery. But the oil executives dismissed those tax measures as largely irrelevant to their companies. "That energy legislation is zero in terms of how it affects Exxon Mobil," Raymond said. They said they want access to federal lands now off-limits to oil and gas drilling, and streamlined permitting to facilitate refinery expansion. After the hearing, Domenici — who shepherded the energy bill through the Senate — said lawmakers might have to rethink the refinery tax incentive since these companies don't seem to deem it of much value.

Public likely not persuaded
If the CEOs were hoping to change consumers' attitudes toward their industry by appearing at this hearing, they probably fell short. "Factually, they did fine," said Ken Stern, managing director of FTI Consulting in New York. "But there's a big difference between the facts and the ability of Americans ... to digest the facts. Sometimes the facts cause indigestion."
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The Patriot Act: Business Balks

Business Week-NOVEMBER 10, 2005 - NEWS ANALYSIS - By Richard S. Dunham
It's joining critics who seek to curb the law's wide-ranging investigative powers. And Capitol Hill is listening
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman loves to remind visitors of Sin City's oh-so-discreet tagline: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." But since the New Year's celebrations ringing in 2004, he has had to modify the motto. Fearing a terrorist attack, the FBI descended on casinos, car rental agencies, storage warehouses, and other Las Vegas businesses with sheaves of "national security letters" demanding financial records covering about 1 million revelers. Startled business owners who questioned the action were told they had one choice: cough up their documents or wind up in court.

Now, a somber Mayor Goodman acknowledges, what happens in Vegas may end up staying in an FBI computer. "It's Kafkaesque," he says. "The central component to our economy is privacy protection. People are here to have a good time and don't want to worry about the government knowing their business."

STRANGE COALITION. The FBI carried out its document hunt under the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed hurriedly in the aftermath of September 11. The act allows investigators to demand that businesses turn over sensitive financial records, without specifying the investigation's target or why the files are needed. The outfit receiving a letter is permanently gagged, prohibited by law from ever disclosing that the feds came calling.

Indeed, the statute is silent on whether company officials who receive an order can call a lawyer or appeal to a judge -- although the Justice Dept. says it always allows businesses to seek legal recourse, behind closed doors and without the person appealing present. "Businesses want to cooperate in the war on terrorism, but this type of unchecked government power goes a little over the line," says Bob Shepler, director of corporate finance at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

With most provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at yearend, the Administration has been urging Congress to make its temporary police powers permanent. But an odd coalition is trying to scale back the government's reach -- and it may be making headway. On Nov. 9, word came from Capitol Hill that the rising chorus of civil liberties complaints could produce a deal to temper some of the law's more intrusive features.

THOUSANDS OF LETTERS. If that happens, corporate interests can notch up part of the victory to savvy lobbying. Concerned about the circumvention of due process guarantees -- and about hefty compliance costs -- a half-dozen prominent business groups have joined with the American Civil Liberties Union to push Congress to narrow the law's scope. What's surprising in today's with-me-or-against-me Washington is that the coalition includes such Bush allies as NAM, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Realtors.

"These are not groups that normally take on this Administration," says Susan Hackett, general counsel of the Association of Corporate Counsel, a coalition member that represents companies' in-house lawyers. "People in the business community clearly are worried."

Administration officials insist they haven't overreached. "The Patriot Act allows us to get a very limited set of records," contends one Justice official. "We are not inclined to ask courts to endorse fishing expeditions, and courts are loath to do so." Department officials say that judges have granted them access to business records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act just 35 times in the first 3 1/2 years of the law, adding that those orders involved only data on driver's licenses, public accommodations, apartment leases, credit cards, and telephone use.

DATA LEAKS? But Justice also enjoys broader clout under the Act's Section 505 -- an expansion of national security letters, issued without a court order. Since 2001 the feds have served as many as 30,000 letters a year, according to Administration sources and civil libertarians. Despite the volume of requests, one Justice official says: "There has not been a single verified abuse of any Patriot Act authority."

Still, corporate lobbyists and business groups are increasingly concerned about the law's cost and potential for abuse. The business alliance spelled out its reform agenda in an Oct. 4 letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). The groups argue that the Patriot Act's Sections 215 and 505 "allow the federal government to require voluminous and often sensitive records...without [public] judicial oversight or other meaningful checks on the government's power."

They say that compliance with the demands puts confidential financial data, trade secrets, and other proprietary information at risk. Another concern: the fear that multinationals could land in legal trouble abroad -- particularly in Europe -- for violating stringent privacy laws there if they comply with U.S. government demands for financial records.

"EXTREMELY BROAD." The businesses with the most at risk are real estate agents, car dealers, casinos, jewelers, boat dealers, travel agencies, insurance brokers, Internet service providers, and pawnbrokers -- all deemed to be financial institutions under a broad definition approved by Congress in 2003. "Our customers must be comfortable that sensitive financial information will remain confidential," says Tom Heinemann, a policy analyst at the Realtors' association. "Our industry wants to make sure that there are appropriate checks and balances in place to protect access to those kinds of records."

What's more, the business groups contend that the Patriot Act, as written, gives the feds carte blanche to rifle through corporate records. One worry: Like police searching a car trunk after a traffic stop, the feds could discover evidence of unrelated crimes or securities law breaches when they rummage through business records. "The sweep of government power is extremely broad," says Lisa Graves, senior counsel at the ACLU. "When you've got a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail."

Business groups say they already are getting pounded. They argue in their Oct. 4 letter that the law "does not impose any limit on the breadth of records" demanded by federal agents, and they are seeking "a meaningful right to challenge the order when the order is unreasonable, oppressive, or seeks privileged [business] information." The coalition has urged Congress to give companies the right to seek court permission to lift the act's lifetime gag orders, an idea that may be taking hold.

DEAF EARS. Few of these complaints are registering with the usually business-friendly Bush Administration. The Justice Dept. says that business has all the protections it needs. "There are sufficient safeguards that many choose to ignore," Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee at an April hearing. Among those: a right to appeal to a secret court and a limited right to counsel to comply with or challenge an order. Gonzales now favors including those guarantees in the rewritten Patriot Act, which will be finalized by House and Senate negotiators scheduled to meet for the first time on Nov. 10.

But Gonzales is likely to be disappointed by many of the other provisions negotiators are now hammering out. Both the Senate and House versions of the measure would allow a judge to modify an FBI order that was deemed unreasonably burdensome on a business. And on Nov. 9, the House directed its team to accept Senate-passed provisions setting a four-year sunset clause on many of the Patriot Act's key provisions, despite Administration opposition.

In final negotiations, the Senate is pushing its House counterparts to incorporate most of the safeguards sought by commercial interests. One big victory for the corporate coalition came on Nov. 9 when House negotiators agreed to permit businesses or individuals to seek judicial review of national security letters. Senate leaders believe they have an agreement on another top business concern: limiting the power of law enforcement to keep company records on file forever. A tentative deal would require investigators to return or destroy lists they've obtained, such as those covering airline passengers or casino customers, if the terror tip turns out to be a dud.

FRAYED TIES. Less certain is the fate of a Senate-passed requirement that the FBI link the specific records that it's seeking to a specific suspect. The Administration is fighting to maintain its current power. The changes sought by business "are overly complex and will lead to litigation difficulties [in pursuing terrorist suspects] because it will require the courts to engage in a more complicated legal review," one senior Administration official argues. As BusinessWeek went to press on Nov. 9, congressional leadership sources said that no final deal had been cut on the sensitive issue.

In one area, business appears to be losing: Neither version addresses corporate concerns about exposing trade secrets or breaching customer privacy.

Corporate reps in Washington acknowledge that they had qualms about the Patriot Act from the start but say they didn't want to speak out against the key legislative underpinning of the war on terrorism immediately after September 11. But with George W. Bush's approval rating now hovering below 40%, Hill Republicans may have decided that it's wiser to stand up for their corporate donors than to stick with their embattled President.
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Who's Counting: Abortion Through the Looking Glass
Changing Assumptions Might Challenge Familiar Arguments

Nov. 6, 2005 — - Although abortion battles are in the news with the nominations of new Surpreme Court justices in recent months, the arguments we hear about the issue are all rather familiar and stale. In an effort to introduce a new, albeit somewhat fanciful, argument, let me begin with a classic story that is usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw.

Seated at a posh dinner party, Shaw asks the woman sitting next to him if she'd sleep with him for $1 million. She laughs and says she would, after which he asks her if she'd do so for $10. Outraged, she says, "What do you think I am?" He replies, "That has just been established. Now we're just haggling about the price." Such hyperbolic extrapolations and exaggerations are useful when questioning the absoluteness of people's beliefs and so might be helpful with an issue like abortion, in which people often adopt an inflexible and dogmatic pro-life position.

Bennett and an Anti-Abortion Argument
Anti-abortion groups sometimes employ this technique in their skirmishes with pro-choice groups: If an abortion at two months is OK, they ask, why not one at six months? And if one at six months is acceptable, why not kill infants, or toddlers, or the very old? A more recent example occurred during William Bennett's radio show last month. The former Reagan administration secretary of education got himself in trouble when a caller to his show prompted Bennett to refer to an intriguing and quite plausible argument made by the economist Steven Levitt. Levitt, the author of "Freakonomics," maintained that the decline in crime in the '90s was in large part the result of the significant increase in abortions in the '70s.

Bennett found this hypothesis morally repellent. Wanting to show that even if the hypothesis were true, it would still not justify abortion in his eyes, Bennett exaggerated the argument and introduced the element of race with the stated intent of showing the argument's deficiencies. Not surprisingly, he was attacked as a racist. I'm not a fan of his political conservatism or of his moral unctuousness, but I don't see his argument as evidence of racism. He used a common sort of logical stratagem, which can easily be taken the wrong way by people not accustomed to it. Had he not been ad-libbing, he could easily have made a similar point without causing offense by bringing up the extraneous element of race.


A Non-Standard, Pro-Choice Argument
In any case, at the risk of suffering similar attacks from a different swath of the political spectrum, consider the following argument, which also depends on a contrary-to-fact exaggeration to make its point. It's an argument that pro-choice proponents might use to undermine the belief of some abortion opponents in the absolute inviolability of the fetus's right to life. Let's ask ourselves what position opponents of abortion -- say on the Supreme Court or elsewhere -- might take if two biological facts about the world were to change. The first assumption we'll make is that for some unknown reason -- a strange new virus, a hole in the ozone layer, some food additive or poison -- women throughout the world suddenly become pregnant with 10 to 20 fetuses at a time. The second assumption is that advances in neonatal technology make it possible for doctors to easily save some or all of these fetuses a few months after conception, but if they don't intervene at this time all the fetuses will die. Abortion opponents who believe that all fetuses have an absolute right to life would surely opt for some intervention. Otherwise, all the fetuses would die.

Their choice would thus be either to adhere to their absolutist position and be overwhelmed by a population explosion of overwhelming magnitude or else act to save only one or a few of the fetuses. The latter choice would be tantamount to abortion since all the fetuses are viable. It would, nevertheless, take someone very, very doctrinaire to opt to have the birth rate increase, at least initially, by a factor of 10 to 20. This is obviously not a knockdown, airtight argument (although delivered to the right audience, it might result in knock downs). As already noted, however, it's not the usual boilerplate and may induce induce fresh thinking in some people. The argument's point is that if certain contingent biological facts were to change, then presumably even ardent abortion opponents would change their position, suggesting that their position is itself contingent and not absolute. After this is acknowledged, the haggling over the details might proceed.


-- Professor of mathematics at Temple University, John Allen Paulos is the author of best-selling books including "Innumeracy" and "A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market." His "Who's Counting?" column on ABCNews.com appears the first weekend of every month.

Published: 11.08.2005
'We do not torture,' Bush says while ignoring inspection query
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

PANAMA CITY, Panama - President Bush defended the U.S. interrogation of suspects in the war against terrorism Monday as "within the law." But he ignored a pointed question during a joint news conference with Panamanian President Martin Torrijos about whether the United States would allow the International Red Cross access to clandestine CIA prisons, reported to be in several other countries.

"We do not torture," Bush declared. At issue recently are reports in The Washington Post that the Central Intelligence Agency is interrogating captured al-Qaida operatives at a secret prison in Eastern Europe and, at various times, in other facilities in Afghanistan and Thailand, among other places. U.S. officials, pressed on the issue, have neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the secret-prison program. And Bush did the same on Monday. "Our country is at war, and our government has the obligation to protect the American people," he said, adding that his administration was aggressively prosecuting he war.

The Senate, led by John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has passed legislation to ban torture. But as the measure continues through Congress, Vice President Dick Cheney has been lobbying to exempt the CIA. Asked directly on Monday whether he backed Cheney, Bush acknowledged his administration was making "sure that as we go forward, we make it possible, more possible to do our job." "There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again," the president said. "And so, you bet, we'll aggressively pursue them."

In Washington, though, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., remained harshly critical. "This administration has consistently sought legal justifications for harsh techniques," he said, "and their contradictory denials and stonewalling only make the war on terrorism harder to win and put our soldiers in further danger." Monday's news conference with Torrijos was Bush's second on his five-day swing through Latin America. The president was pressed again on the inquiry in the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. "We take this investigation very seriously," he said, "and we'll continue to cooperate during the investigation."
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