The UPI Think Tank Wrap-up is a daily digest covering brief opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events, and position statements released by various think tanks.
The Cato Institute
WASHINGTON -- CAFE defeat saved lives, scholar says
Senators Tom Daschle, D.-S.D., and John Kerry, D.- Mass., conceded Tuesday that they lacked the votes in the Senate to pass a major increase in the corporate average fuel economy standards, known as CAFE standards. Jerry Taylor, director of natural resources studies at the Cato Institute, called it "a tremendous victory for human health and the economy."
He had the following comments:
"Environmentalists who supported an expansion of CAFE standards for cars and light trucks are allowing their hostility to energy use to override their common sense. For instance, the National Academy of Sciences reported last year that the current standards are directly responsible for the deaths of 1,300 - 2,600 motorists a year.
That's because automakers find that the cheapest way of increasing fuel efficiency is to reduce the size and weight of the cars they sell, making them more dangerous to motorists in a crash. Dramatically expanding CAFE standards would accelerate this trend and would directly result in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of Americans.
"While the costs of expanding CAFE standards is steep, the benefits are ephemeral. Expanded standards certainly wouldn't reduce foreign oil imports. For instance, since the CAFE standards were first introduced, the average fuel economy more than doubled for new cars and grew by more than 50 percent for new light trucks, but imported oil has increased from 35 to 52 percent of U.S. consumption. Reducing oil demand would remove the most expensive oil sources from the market first, and foreign oil is the cheapest oil supply source in the world. Domestic producers, not foreign oil producers, would be hit hardest if gasoline demand were to decline.
"Nor would an expanded CAFE standard do much about global warming. Gasoline consumption in the United States is only responsible for 1.5 percent of all human-related greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA reports that expanded CAFE standards won't appreciably change that figure.
"If people want to drive fuel efficient cars, that's their right. But forcing people in cars they don't otherwise wish to drive -- or indirectly taxing them through the regulatory standards for not choosing to drive cars that environmentalists like -- is not only wrong, it's dangerous."
WASHINGTON -- Microsoft settlement shouldn't fall prey to attorneys general, rivals' interests, scholar says
Next week, nine states that rejected the Justice Department's settlement of the Microsoft antitrust case will appear before federal district court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to seek stronger sanctions against the company. Robert A. Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, had the following comments on the issue:
"Nine states have rejected Microsoft's antitrust settlement with the Justice Department. Under the Tunney Act, Judge Kollar-Kotelly must decide whether the settlement serves the public interest. No doubt, she will be guided by the overriding goal of the Tunney Act: to assure that the settlement is not a 'corrupt bargain.' Once the judge is comfortable on that ground, she should defer to the Justice Department's characterization of the settlement as a responsible and fair outcome.
"It's been two years since an attempted settlement, mediated by appellate judge Richard Posner, came to nothing -- reportedly because of several intractable attorneys general. Later, Judge Posner lambasted the states' role in antitrust, accusing them of being captured by competitor interests.
"That insight is critically important. We must not permit attorneys general, responsive to the parochial concerns of rival businesses, to preempt the federal government's authority to settle a lawsuit that is national in scope and has major implications for the post-9/11 economic recovery."
The East-West Center
(The East-West Center is an education and research organization established to strengthen understanding and relations between the United States and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. The denter carries out its mission through programs of cooperative study, training and research. The center is supported by the U.S. government and the governments of nine Asia-Pacific nations.)
HONOLULU -- Indian government's handling of riots could lead to instability
The Indian government's response to anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat threatens its own survival as well as the country's long-term stability, an East-West Center specialist on South Asia said. It is becoming clear that the riots were not spontaneous expressions of religious fervor but rather well-organized attacks on Muslim homes and businesses, said Arun Swamy.
Public records including voter and business registration lists appear to have been used to target Muslims, he said. The attacks may have been actively coordinated by local units of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads both the national government and the Gujarat state government, along with members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a militant Hindu organization, Swamy said.
Swamy pointed out that both the national and state governments were accused of responding slowly to the crisis. The national government has rejected opposition calls to dismiss the Gujarat state government -- the only large state where the BJP is in power -- and ban the VHP, despite having banned some militant Islamic organizations.
Worse, he said, both the national and state governments initially paid more attention to an attack on a train carrying VHP volunteers to a disputed religious site. The government charges that the attack was instigated by Pakistani agents aimed at destabilizing India.
A mosque on the disputed site was torn down by a Hindu mob in 1992. Although the BJP and VHP claim a Hindu temple was on the site until the 16th century, the BJP came to power with the support of many smaller parties only after promising not to allow a new temple to be built there without Supreme Court approval. But the VHP has forced the issue by sending volunteers to build the temple, resulting in the Gujarat riots. The national government has sought a compromise solution.
These actions leave the BJP's allies in a difficult position, Swamy said. "Some have suggested that they would withdraw support from the government if the temple is built. However, the opposition congress party's recent successes in state elections make the BJP's allies reluctant to destabilize the government."
The short-term political calculations of the various parties in the ruling coalition conflict with what is needed to ensure India's long-term stability.
"Unless the allies withdraw support from the government or the government cracks down on Hindu militants, India's 100 million Muslims are unlikely to feel secure in their own country," Swamy said. "The most likely scenario is a compromise on temple construction that satisfies no one."
HONOLULU -- Lower fertility won't stop large population growth
With the United Nations possibly revising downward its world population estimate for the year 2050 by at least a billion people, policymakers should not be lulled into curtailing family planning programs because major population growth will still occur, an East-West Center population researcher said.
Demographers are meeting this week at the United Nations to reassess world population estimates, possibly leaning toward a lower prediction of 7.9 billion in 2050 compared to predictions of 9.3 billion and up. In the year 2000, world population numbered 6.0 billion.
A number of populous countries have lowered their fertility rates faster than they have raised per capita income. Fertility in India, which was the first country to start a national family planning program, has dropped from 6.0 children per woman in 1950 to 3.2 today.
Robert Retherford, a specialist on fertility and family planning, said that even when fertility falls to "replacement level" -- 2.1 children per woman -- population continues to grow for some time because of a temporarily inflated proportion of people in the childbearing ages of 15 to 50. This "population momentum" will keep the world's population growing for many decades.
To illustrate this momentum, Retherford pointed out that fertility dropped to 2.0 children per woman in Japan in 1957 and continued falling to 1.3 in the year 2000. Yet Japan's population will continue growing until 2006, by which time it will have increased by about 35 percent over the preceding 50 years.
"Policymakers should not become complacent," Retherford said. "World population will still grow by about one-third by the year 2050 and will continue to grow more after that, placing great strains on global resources and the environment. It's important to continue efforts to bring down fertility fast in those countries that still have high or moderately high fertility."
Institute for Public Accuracy
(The IPA is a nationwide consortium of policy researchers that seeks to broaden public discourse by gaining media access for experts whose perspectives are often overshadowed by major think tanks and other influential institutions.)
WASHINGTON -- Nuclear posturing
In his news conference on Wednesday afternoon, President Bush responded to several questions about nuclear policies. The following IPA had comments:
-- John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy.
"Contrary to what Bush said today, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) expands the circumstances in which nuclear weapons could be used beyond those that deter an attack on the United States. ... The U.S. cannot credibly tell Iraq and North Korea to permit inspections to verify the absence of nuclear arms while threatening to use nuclear weapons against those countries. Preventing terrorists from obtaining nuclear bombs requires international cooperation, not revulsion among allies and foes alike against the U.S. claim in the NPR to be able to use nuclear weapons in response to 'surprising military developments.'"
-- Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) in California.
"The NPR propels U.S. policy further down the dangerous road toward the use of nuclear weapons in combat."
-- Chris Paine, senior analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Over the next 10 years, the administration's plans call for the U.S. to retain a total stockpile of intact nuclear weapons and weapon components that is roughly seven to nine times larger than the publicly stated goal of 1,700 to 2,200 'operationally deployed weapons.' This is an accounting system worthy of Enron. To the 'accountable' tally of 2,200 one must add the 240 missile warheads on the two Trident submarines in overhaul at any given time; 1,350 strategic missile and bomber warheads in the
'responsive force'; 800 'nonstrategic' bombs assigned to U.S./NATO 'dual-capable' aircraft; 320 'nonstrategic' sea-launched cruise missile warheads in the 'responsive force'; 160 'spare' warheads; 4,900 intact warheads in the 'inactive reserve' and the 5,000 stored plutonium 'primary' and 'secondary' components that could be reassembled into weapons. In other words, the Bush administration is actually planning to retain the potential to deploy not 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear weapons, but as many as 15,000."
-- Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan.
"Why should every country of the world not develop nuclear weapons now that America may nuke anyone at anytime? The Bush administration has announced that it views nuclear weapons as instruments for fighting wars, not merely as the weapons of last resort. Resurgent American militarism is destroying every arms-control measure everywhere. Those of us in Pakistan and India, who have long fought against nuclearization of the subcontinent, have been temporarily rendered speechless."
-- Alla Yaroshinskaya, author of "Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth."
"The NPR is a very dangerous blow to non-proliferation and it has the potential to drag us all into a catastrophic nuclear war."
The Reason Public Policy Institute
LOS ANGELES -- Cloning disinformation? Desperate opponents try to frighten lawmakers with bogus scares
By Ronald Bailey
"The picture of the brave new world of eugenic biotechnology is coming clear, and it is an ugly and frightening picture of designed descendants, commodified body parts, manipulated babies, and life itself twisted to little more than the attempt to prove it is possible to twist life," hyperventilated J. Bottum, literary editor of The Weekly Standard, last week.
This drumbeat of dystopic bombast against biotech continued last week with a joint op-ed by William Kristol, the Standard's editor, and left-wing bioluddite Jeremy Rifkin in the Los Angeles Times. They darkly warned of the advent of "a commercial eugenics civilization," offering "a new form of reproductive commerce with frightening implications for the future of society."
Kristol and Rifkin fabricate a bogus ethical dichotomy pitting "utilitarians" against those who allegedly "believe in the intrinsic value of human life." Despite their invidious moral posturing, Kristol and Rifkin do not have a lock on ethical rectitude. The intrinsic value of human life is a given for all sides in this debate. The battle is really between those who want to use the gifts of human reason and human compassion to ameliorate illness and death and those like Kristol and Rifkin who counsel fatalistic acceptance of the manifold cruelties randomly meted out by nature.
Why have some left-wing and some right-wing intellectuals joined together in opposition to biotechnological progress? The left has always known that economic growth and scientific advances can derail its schemes for an egalitarian division of society's goods. If most everyone becomes better off over time, the political impulse to egalitarianism never gains much traction. The right, on the other hand, has always been suspicious of economic growth and scientific advance because they undermine established hierarchies and traditional systems of belief.
Now the technological advances regularly spun out of our dynamic commercial scientific civilization are putting ever-greater pressures on the core concerns of the left and right.
The anti-cloning campaign is not restricted to dystopian rhetoric, but also involves efforts to confuse legislators currently contemplating bans on cloning about the actual status and likely trajectory of therapeutic cloning research.
For example, in the same issue of The Weekly Standard in which Bottum is having his fit, an article by Wesley J. Smith sets aside his usual moral arguments against therapeutic cloning, and argues that it will never be practical anyway. The article shows that either Smith is way behind the times with where research is heading or he is deliberately trying to mislead policy makers and the public. Let's assume that Smith is merely behind the times.
The central claim Smith makes is that therapeutic cloning will never work in practice to help cure the 100 million Americans that the National Academy of Sciences estimated could one day benefit from stem-cell therapies. Why? Because, Smith asserts, therapeutic cloning requires tens of millions of human eggs in order to produce the cells and tissues that might cure diseases in each patient. In order to get those millions of eggs, Smith suggests, millions of women would be forced to super-ovulate, which would be an intolerable violation of their individual integrity and put their health at great risk.
Could this horror scenario be true? Not at all. In therapeutic cloning, the goal is to reset the genetic switches in a somatic cell -- say, an adult skin cell -- taken from a patient's body so that it can be programmed to grow into cells and tissues that can repair damage caused by such ailments as diabetes, spinal cord injuries, or heart attacks. Researchers believe that such stem cells, which would be genetically identical to a patient's tissues, would be perfect transplants because a patient's immune system would not reject them.
At this very early stage of development, the only way researchers have to reset the genetic switches of a patient's somatic cells is to use human eggs. Where Smith goes badly wrong is his assumption that scientific research and technological progress will stand still and enucleated human eggs will forever be the only way to create immune-compatible stem cells.
Relying on that simplistic assumption, Smith then sketches out his horrific scenario in which millions of women are cruelly kept in bondage as egg producers for cloning researchers. This is sheer nonsense.
Resetting somatic cells using human eggs is needed now for research to find the factors in egg cells that can reset somatic cells. Once those factors are found, human eggs will no longer be needed, says Princeton molecular biologist Lee Silver. So in the future, skin cells taken from a patient may simply be dosed with the proper proteins manufactured in a lab that will transform them into embryonic stem cells. Those stem cells can then be coaxed into becoming the desired immune-compatible transplant tissues.
Silver points out that researchers are also pursuing another approach to overcome Smith's alleged human egg shortage. For example, it may be possible to use embryonic stem cells themselves to reset the nuclei of somatic cells. In other words, already existing embryonic stem-cell lines may contain the factors necessary to reset the genomes of donor nuclei. Such bootstrap stem cells could theoretically be multiplied to any desired quantity and used to produce immune-compatible stem cells for any number of patients. Again, no eggs needed.
Finally, although Smith airily dismisses the possibility, it may also be that plentiful eggs from animals like cows and pigs would do for purposes of resetting somatic cells and putting them on the path to growing new lifesaving tissues for transplant. Researchers in the United States, Australia, and China are already engaged in research exploring this prospect.
Smith's dystopia of millions of women serving as egg factories for a vast immoral biomedical complex is a fantasy. But it is a fantasy with a purpose: to horrify scientifically uninformed legislators into outlawing research into this promising biomedical technology.
(Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent and the editor of Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet)
The Hoover Institution
STANFORD, Calif.--The fall of Saddam
By Robert Zelnick
On the day Saddam Hussein falls, there will be dancing in the streets of Baghdad. The country will not implode. Military analysts will ponder a victory that was less costly than many projected. States such as Syria and Iran will proclaim their aversion to terrorism. NATO will forget its early opposition.
Now, during the prebattle period, naysayers are having their day. Why Iraq? It is no worse than others on the "axis of evil." After all, Iran has longer-range missiles and sells more weapons. North Korea may already be nuclear.
They caution against, in Al Gore's words, "wishful thinking based on best-case scenarios." Iraq is tougher than the Taliban; the Iraqi National Congress is no Northern Alliance. And they note international concern. The Saudis have an excess of caution, and the Turks, an excess of Kurds. Impoverished Moscow and wealthy France see billions in Iraqi debt unpaid. Other European friends resent seeing their military irrelevance displayed.
For all its malfeasance, however, Iran is a society where political evolution seems plausible. North Korea plays a reckless game fueled by the paranoia of its leadership. But it has no external designs, and past conduct suggests a willingness to rein in its most troublesome programs, for a price.
Saddam's Iraq is in a class by itself. It has launched two wars against neighboring states and fired Scud missiles against a third. Saddam attempted to kill a former U.S. president and routinely violates "no-fly zones" established to limit his ability to annihilate his own people. Iraq has used chemical weapons on the battlefield and to quash domestic unrest. Saddam maintained a covert nuclear program and sought to develop biological weapons, harassing United Nation inspectors sent to enforce the ban.
The compelling insight embraced by the decision to dislodge Saddam is that the war against terrorism cannot be won if the war against weapons of mass destruction is lost.
Before the Persian Gulf War, military experts exaggerated Iraqi military power. In the event, Saddam's "battle-hardened" divisions were depleted by desertion, their morale shattered by indiscipline and American bombs. Save for a lucky Scud missile that crashed into military barracks in Dhahran, the United States lost more troops to "friendly fire" than to Iraqi guns.
Today Iraq's army is even smaller, less well equipped, and less prepared than it was before the Persian Gulf War. And the U.S. advantage in highly accurate weapons -- formidable then -- is now overwhelming.
Nor should the comfort of friends like Saudi Arabia be controlling. Their tolerance of the antics of Osama bin Laden and other terrorists operating against anyone save the royal family has been well reported, as has the vitriolic brand of Islam taught in Saudi-financed schools. Turkey has some legitimate concerns, but they will fade if Kurdish nationalism is held in check.
As to NATO, its focus is Europe. Elsewhere, differences are common. We broke with our British and French friends over the 1956 Sinai campaign. There were differences too over Vietnam, and today, over Israel. But at the end of the day, NATO members too will cheer the fall of Saddam and relish the reduced threat his demise will signal.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute
(The LVMI is a research and educational center devoted to classical liberalism -- often known as libertarianism -- and the Austrian School of economics. Grounded in the work of economists Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard, LVMI seeks a radical shift in the intellectual climate by advancing the Austrian School of economics and by promoting the market economy, private property, sound money and peaceful international relations, while opposing government intervention as economically and socially destructive.)
AUBURN, ALA.--Take CAFE off the policy menu
By Gary M. Galles
"This is like déjà vu all over again." Yogi Berra's famous words describe the latest incarnation of proposals to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, known as CAFE standards, simple-minded political "solution" -- mandating that vehicles get better mileage -- to a nonexistent gasoline crisis.
Thankfully, this absurd idea has been rejected by the Senate, with even the pro-regulation crowd responding to consumer demands for vehicle choice. But there still remains the problem of existing standards.
CAFE were born a quarter century ago, when there was a gasoline crisis -- caused more by gasoline price controls than by OPEC. Congress was convinced that Americans were not competent to make their own automotive choices. CAFE standards were intended to force us to get better mileage by imposing harsh penalties on any automaker whose fleet did not meet rising fuel-economy standards.
Seven years ago, Congress decided that CAFE standards had risen far enough (to 27.5 mpg for cars and 20.7 mpg for light trucks, a category which includes minivans and SUVs), but last summer's gas price spike brought new proposals to raise the standards. This year, some were saying "crisis" again, and such proposals were being recycled, fanned by concerns including energy dependence, opposition to oil drilling in Alaska, and SUV envy.
For instance, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., had proposed a 35-mpg standard for all vehicles by 2013, and Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., has a very similar proposal, which proponents claim would cut U.S. oil consumption by more than 1 million barrels a day.
However, a study of increasing CAFE standards done more than a decade ago showed that CAFE standards were both costly and ineffective at achieving their goal. If an honest study was done today, it would recommend eliminating rather than raising those standards and would suggest that trusting Americans to make efficient transportation choices for their circumstances is the most sensible policy.
In September 1988, the Federal Trade Commission studied the effects of raising the 26.5-mpg standard to 27.5 mpg. They estimated that, over a 15-year time horizon, raising the CAFE standard would actually increase gas consumption by 200 million gallons, rather than decreasing it. There were several reasons for this, all ignored in the current political frenzy to "do something."
First, anything that would improve gas mileage, therefore lowering the cost of driving, would increase the number of miles driven, an effect the FTC estimated would offset 30 percent of the presumed gas savings (although later estimates have put that effect at "only" 20 percent).
Second, cheaper driving costs would facilitate housing development farther from workplaces, further progressively eating into gas savings over time, while worsening congestion and all its adverse consequences.
Third, to cover the cost of bringing new models in line with CAFE, domestic manufacturers would have to cut production of larger, more powerful domestic cars and light trucks, thus raising their price tags. As a result, owners of older gas-guzzlers, which also spew far more pollutants into the air, would hold onto them longer, further diminishing any net gas savings or pollution reductions from the newer models.
Fourth, foreign car and truck makers who already meet overall CAFE standards would fill in the slack by producing more powerful and less fuel-efficient cars and trucks, so that reducing domestic production of those models would do little to increase overall fuel economy. But both the shift of bigger car production to foreign producers and the shift of production of lower mileage domestic nameplates to other countries would lead to the loss of U.S. automobile-related jobs (estimated at 20,000 in 1988). Domestic auto producers and workers learned this was true the hard way, and now they adamantly oppose stricter regulations.
Nobody knows better than those who buy and fuel them with their own money which kind of vehicles are most appropriate for the circumstances they will be used for. Certainly not members of Congress, who pander for votes by pushing higher mileage standards, even as past studies have shown such standards to be less than effective.
CAFE standards have suffered a setback but they will be back until they are permanently removed from the policy menu. And as Yogi might describe the attempt to raise or retain milleage standards: "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
(Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University.)
