Engage the government and aid the democrats

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Building an Alliance of Democracies.

There are two lenses by which to view the political potential of Saudi Arabia’s large, tech-savvy youth generation. The first, optimistic perspective holds that given their social awareness, technological skillset, and creative potential, the Kingdom’s millions of young citizens will be the engine for constructive progress. That progress is defined by post-oil economic transformation, and hence renewed political stability and national unity under the House of Saud. This is the image invoked by Saudi Arabia’s grandiose Vision 2030 initiative, as well as its architect, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

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A brilliant British actor, Laurence Fox happened to say something mildly controversial on the BBC last year—and suddenly found himself a victim of cancel culture. Instead of retreating or apologizing, Fox made the unusual choice to not just rebel but to do it in the most public way possible: by running for mayor of London.

Analyzing the future of democracy with former prime ministers and presidents. Featuring Nick Clegg, Felipe Calderón, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Bilingual education has been a subject of national debate since the 1960s. This essay traces the evolution of that debate from its origin in the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Bilingual Education Act (1968), which decreed that a child should be instructed in his or her native tongue for a transitional year while she or he learned English but was to transfer to an all-English classroom as fast as possible. These prescriptions were ignored by bilingual enthusiasts; English was neglected, and Spanish language and cultural maintenance became the norm.

Bilingual education was said to be essential for the purposes of gaining a new sense of pride for the Hispanics and to resist Americanization. The Lau v. Nichols (1974) decision stands out as a landmark on the road to bilingual education for those unable to speak English: bilingual education moved away from a transitional year to a multiyear plan to teach children first in their home language, if it was not English, before teaching them in English. This facilitation theory imprisoned Spanish speakers in classrooms where essentially only Spanish was taught, and bilingual education became Spanish cultural maintenance with English limited to thirty minutes a day. The essay discusses the pros and cons of bilingual education.

Criticism of bilingual education has grown as parents and numerous objective analyses have shown it was ineffective, kept students too long in Spanish-only classes, and slowed the learning of English and assimilation into American society. High dropout rates for Latino students, low graduation rates from high schools and colleges have imprisoned Spanish speakers at the bottom of the economic and educational ladder in the United States.

This revolt, the defects of bilingual education, and the changes needed to restore English for the Children are covered in the essay. The implications of Proposition 227 abolishing bilingual education in California are also discussed.

Within the United States, global warming and related policy issues are becoming increasingly contentious, surfacing in the presidential contests of the year 2000 and beyond. They enter into controversies involving international trade agreements, questions of national sovereignty versus global governance, and ideological debates about the nature of future economic growth and development. On a more detailed level, determined efforts are under way by environmental groups and their sympathizers in foundations and in the federal government to restrict and phase out the use of fossil fuels (and even nuclear reactors) as sources of energy. Such measures would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere but also effectively deindustrialize the United States.

International climate policy is based on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which calls on industrialized nations to carry out, within one decade, drastic cuts in the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) that stem mainly from the burning of fossil fuels. The Protocol is ultimately based on the 1996 Scientific Assessment Report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. advisory body. The IPCC's main conclusion, featured in its Summary for Policymakers (SPM), states that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." This widely quoted, innocuous-sounding but ambiguous phrase has been misinterpreted by many to mean that climate disasters will befall the world unless strong action is taken immediately to cut GHG emissions.

This essay documents the inadequate science underlying the IPCC conclusions, traces how these conclusions were misinterpreted in 1996, and how this led to the Kyoto Protocol. I also discuss some fatal shortcomings of the Protocol and the political and ideological forces driving it.

The IPCC conclusion is in many ways a truism. There certainly must be a human influence on some features of the climate, locally if not globally. The important question—the focus of scientific debate—is whether the available evidence supports the results of calculations from the current General Circulation Models (GCMs). Unless validated by the climate record, the predictions of future warming based on theoretical models cannot be relied on. As demonstrated in this essay, GCMs are not able to account for observed climate variations, which are presumably of natural origin, for the following reaons:

1. To begin with, GCMs assume that the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide will continue its increase (at a greater rate than is actually observed) and will more than double in the next century. Many experts doubt that this will ever happen, as the world proceeds on a path of ever-greater energy efficiency and as low-cost fossil fuels become depleted and therefore more costly.

2. Next, one must assume that global temperatures will really rise to the extent calculated by the conventional theoretical climate models used by the IPCC. Observations suggest that any warming will be minute, will occur mainly at night and in winter, and will therefore be inconsequential. The failure of the present climate models is likely due to their inadequate treatment of atmospheric processes, such as cloud formation and the distribution of water vapor (which is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere).

3. The putative warming has been labeled as greater and more rapid than anything experienced in human history. But a variety of historical data contradicts this apocalyptic statement. As recently as 1,000 years ago, during the "Medieval climate optimum," Vikings were able to settle Greenland. Even higher temperatures were experienced about 7,000 years ago during the much-studied "climate optimum."

The IPCC's Summary for Policymakers tries hard to minimize the inadequacy of the GCMs to model atmospheric processes and reproduce the observed climate variations. For example, the SPM does not reveal the fact that weather satellite data, the only truly global data we have, do not show the expected atmospheric warming trend; the existence of satellites is not even mentioned.

The scientific evidence for a presumed "human influence" is spurious and based mostly on the selective use of data and choice of particular time periods. Phrases that stress the uncertainties of identifying human influences were edited out of the approved final draft before the IPCC report was printed in May 1996.

A further misrepresentation occurred in July 1996 when politicians, intent on establishing a Kyoto-like regime of mandatory emission controls, took the deceptively worded phrase about "discernible human influence" and linked it to a catastrophic future warming—something the IPCC report itself specifically denies. The IPCC presents no evidence to support a substantial warming such as calculated from theoretical climate models.

The essay also demonstrates that global warming (GW), if it were to take place, is generally beneficial for the following reasons:

1. One of the most feared consequences of global warming is a rise in sea level that could flood low-lying areas and damage the economy of coastal nations. But actual evidence suggests just the opposite: a modest warming will reduce somewhat the steady rise of sea level, which has been ongoing since the end of the last Ice Ageóand will continue no matter what we do as long as the millennia-old melting of Antarctic ice continues.

2. A detailed reevaluation of the impact of climate warming on the national economy was published in 1999 by a prestigious group of specialists, led by a Yale University resource economist. They conclude that agriculture and timber resources would benefit greatly from a warmer climate and higher levels of carbon dioxide and would not be negatively affected as had previously been thought. Contrary to the general wisdom expressed in the IPCC report, higher CO₂ levels and temperatures would increase the GNP of the United States and put more money in the pockets of the average family.

But even if the consequences of a GW were harmful, there is little that can be done to stop it. "No-regrets" policies of conservation and adaptation to change are the most effective measures available. Despite its huge cost to the economy and consumers, the emission cuts envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol would be quite ineffective. Even if it were observed punctiliously, its impact on future temperatures would be negligible, only 0.05ºC by 2050 according to IPCC data. It is generally agreed that achieving a stable level of GHGs would require much more drastic emission reductions, including also by developing nations. To stabilize at the 1990 level, the IPCC report calls for a 60 to 80 percent reduction—about twelve Kyotos on a worldwide basis!

Finally, the essay attempts to trace the various motivations that led to the Kyoto Protocol. It concludes that U.S. domestic politics rather than science or economics will decide the fate of the Protocol; in particular, the presidential elections of 2000 will determine whether the United States ultimately ratifies the Protocol, which would be essential for its global enactment. Conversely, informed debate about the Protocol can influence the outcome of the elections.

Living longer but poorer

More than half of all immigrants in the United States reside in just seven cities: Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Houston, and San Francisco. A controversial issue is whether immigrants are a benefit or a burden to these areas. A 1997 National Academy of Sciences study reports that "immigrants add as much as $10 billion to the national economy each year," but "in areas with high concentrations of low-skilled, low-paid immigrants," they impose net costs on U.S.-born workers. This essay questions that finding.

Examining a range of economic variables for the eighty-five largest U.S. cities over the period 1980–1994, this essay finds that those cities with heavy concentrations of immigrants outperformed cities with few immigrants. Compared with low-immigrant cities, high-immigrant cities had double the job creation rate, higher per capita incomes, lower poverty rates, and 20 percent less crime. Unemployment rates, however, were unusually large in high-immigrant cities. These findings do not answer the critical questions of whether the immigrants cause the better urban conditions or whether benign urban conditions attract the immigrants. But the essay does refute the assertion that the economic decline of cities is caused by immigration; that assertion cannot be true because, with few exceptions, the U.S. cities in greatest despair today--Detroit, Saint Louis, Buffalo, Rochester, Gary--have virtually no immigrants.