As noted in Rushworth Kidder’s recent commentary, the Institute for Global Ethics has begun gathering results from a new survey assessing the most severe global challenges facing humanity.

This survey now has been unrolled for readers of Ethics Newsline®. If you’d like to participate, just click here and let your views be known. Thank you.

For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Late last week, as the price of a barrel of oil surged $11 in a single day, I recalled a conversation I had in the fall of 1986 with one of America’s leading scientific thinkers, Freeman Dyson. The 1979 oil crisis was still a sobering memory, but Dyson, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton who described himself as “obsessed with the future,” wasn’t worried about energy.

“I don’t regard that as a real problem,” he told me during an interview for the Christian Science Monitor. “If you have advanced biotechnology, I don’t see any difficulty in getting all the energy you want from the sun. It’s only a question of redesigning trees so that they produce something other than wood — gasoline, for example.”

This was before the age of email, laptops, cell phones, or the cloning of Dolly, the Scottish ewe. So does that mean, I asked somewhat incredulously, that we’d get fuel the way we get sap from a sugar maple in New England — by tapping the tree?

“I wouldn’t do it so crudely,” he explained. “I would have a sort of living, underground pipeline system, so that the gasoline would be delivered where you want it.”

For a man who designed a nuclear-powered starship and long had been a proponent of space colonization, energy sufficiency was simply a matter of inventiveness. But how far into the future would it be? “At the most,” he said, “50 years.”

We’re now about halfway there, and Dyson’s prophecies — about which he continues to write — no longer seem so strange. Last month on PBS, “NewsHour” reported briefly on Solazyme, a California high-tech startup that has reengineered the genetic structure of algae. Processed in laboratories for a few days, it produces oil very similar to the light sweet crude that nature requires tens of millions of years to create. Solazyme already is running several cars on its product.

Why can’t I buy some for my car? Because, obviously, the innovation is still under way. But that’s no excuse for other alternative-energy resources. Here on the Maine coast, the wind is typically steady and strong, and we have more sunny days than Michigan or the Pacific Northwest. But I have no windmill in the yard, no solar panels on the roof.

Now you can blame me for not being a tech-savvy early adopter like a few of our neighbors happily living off the grid in south-facing houses with basements full of batteries. But that’s not the point. Why aren’t alternative-energy technologies as common as cell phones and broadband — not restricted to the clever and the forward leaning, but spread across millions who only want their benefit and couldn’t care less how they work?

Because (the theory goes) the answers don’t lie in the technology but in the economy. As long as oil is relatively inexpensive, there’s not much demand for these new technologies. Let gas prices hit $10 a gallon (or so it is thought), and all of that will change.

But will it? If prices rise slowly, the boiled-frog syndrome may set in, with nobody thinking to leap out of the pot until it’s too late. If, on the other hand, the increase is sudden and sharp, the clamor for change could cause massive disruptions in family budgets, prompt panic at the gas pumps, and raise the specter of profiteering in alternative-energy products.

In fact, we have a better choice. Rather than waiting for markets to force painful adjustments, we can create policies to speed up change. Suppose, 10 years ago, Congress had legislated changes that vigorously promoted entrepreneurial solar and wind-power equipment. Suppose, as a result, my local Yellow Pages listed as many local firms selling and servicing this equipment as there are car dealers — and as many banks willing to finance it as to provide auto loans. Suppose I could realize substantial tax savings by equipping my home with equipment powered by wind or sun. Is there any doubt that, even though Dyson’s genetic wonder world still may be two decades off, our little Maine community already would be well on its way to energy sufficiency?

What’s holding us back? The answer has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with political will. In the end, our political progress depends on the moral choices we make and the ethical decision making we pursue. Effective national policymaking requires three things: agreement on shared values, methodologies for creating compromise when values conflict, and the moral courage to put those methodologies into practice. Around the politics of energy policy, we’re seeing a few proclamations about values. But as last week’s partisan muddle in the Senate over a global warming bill suggests, we’re seeing far fewer efforts to hammer out the compromises that create sound post-petroleum economic policy — and hardly any moral courage in leading the march toward that goal. Will we simply wait until the economic hardship falls so harshly and unfairly on the nation’s households that some of them are destroyed? Or are we ready to demand more responsible forethought from our policymakers — so that, as Dyson observed, energy continues not to be “a real problem”?

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

“It’s clear that some of the information Major League Baseball and the players union gave the committee in 2005 was inaccurate. It isn’t clear whether this was intentional or just reflects confusion over the testing program for 2003 and 2004. In any case, the misinformation is unacceptable.”

– Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in a written statement last week addressing new concerns over the accuracy and honesty of Major League Baseball’s steroids testing program. Waxman’s committee, which investigated doping in baseball in 2005, last week learned that baseball officials failed to disclose during their testimony that “the 2004 testing, with its significantly lower positive test results, had been partly shut down for much of that season,” reports the New York Times. “As a result, players who apparently tested positive in 2003 were not retested in 2004 until the final weeks of the season, and might have been notified beforehand, perhaps skewing the overall test numbers for that year.”

Source: New York Times, June 9.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, May 27 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 18 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 19, 2007.

Press freedom restricted as coverage turns away from heroism stories; scientists say their persistent warnings of forthcoming quake were ignored; parents of children killed in quake attempt to file suit, but are dragged from courthouse by police; government sends in medics to reverse sterilization operations for parents who lost their sole child

SHANGHAI and DUJIANGYAN
Several new ethics-related developments in China’s efforts to cope with the crippling effects of the earthquake made headlines in the world press last week. Among the stories:

• China began rolling back many of the freedoms accorded journalists to report on the disaster, according to Los Angeles Times correspondent Mark Mangier. He reports: “The propaganda ministry and the State Council, China’s Cabinet, have issued directives to state-run news media outlining forbidden topics. Among them: questions about school construction, whether government rescue efforts lagged, and whether Beijing knew in advance that the earthquake would happen but failed to warn people.” Mangier notes that the crackdown came after the thrust of storylines went from heroic efforts of rescue workers to questions of whether corruption figured in the shoddy construction of schools, many of which collapsed while nearby buildings suffered only minor damage.
• The New York Times reports that some Chinese scientists are claiming that the steep death toll stems in part from a failure to anticipate the quake despite clear warnings that it was inevitable. Howard French, reporting from Shanghai, says some scientists are charging that they had repeatedly raised their concerns with government authorities. But, French writes: “They say preparations for a quake there were cursory at best, and building codes remained well short of the codes that have become standard in other well-known earthquake zones, including Beijing itself.” To date, according to the Times, state-run media in China paid little attention to the fact that there was a paucity of government oversight on building construction or attention to limiting urban growth.
• About 100 parents of children killed in the collapse of allegedly substandard schools have attempted to file a lawsuit against the government, the Voice of America reports. But police dragged them away from outside a courthouse in Dujiangyan, a resort city in Sichuan province.
• According to the Australian Broadcasting Company, the Chinese government is sending medics into the quake-devastated area to reverse sterilization operations for parents who lost their only child in the quake. Chinese law allows exceptions to the nation’s one-child-per-family policy if the child is killed or has a disability.

Sources: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, June 7 — New York Times, June 5 — Voice of America, June 5 — Los Angeles Times, June 4 — Australian Age, June 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, June 2 — Related Newsline story, May 27 — Related Newsline story, May 27 — Related Newsline story, May 19 — Related Newsline story, May 19.

Police chief says city has “lost its moral compass”

HARTFORD, Conn.
A hit-and-run accident in which a 78-year-old man was struck and left unattended on a busy street as car after car drove by has led to Hartford’s police chief proclaiming that the city has “lost its moral compass.”

The chilling incident was captured on surveillance cameras, according to television station NBC30 in Hartford.

Angel Arce Torres was trying to cross the street when a car rammed into him, tossing him like a rag doll and leaving him crumpled in the street. Nine cars passed by without stopping, reports ABC News, and more than 40 seconds passed before anyone even left the sidewalk to get a closer look, although later reports indicated that several 911 calls came in shortly after the incident.

A few minutes later a passing police car came across the scene.

Newsday reports that the incident touched off some soul searching in Hartford and angry denunciations by community leaders.

Police chief Daryl Roberts said the episode was symptomatic of the callousness and lack of humanity that has taken hold of the city, according to the Hartford Courant, which notes that the incident came in tandem with two other discouraging developments: a savage beating and robbery of a former deputy mayor and the discovery of a badly decomposed body of a man in the basement of his family’s recently foreclosed home.

The Boston Globe reports that some residents of the neighborhood in which the elderly man was run down say fears that the incident was somehow gang-related, plus a desire to avoid contact with police, may have played a role in the apparent display of indifference.

As this issue went to press, Torres was in critical condition and is paralyzed.

Sources: Boston Globe, June 8 — ABC, June 6 — Newsday, June 6 — Hartford Courant, June 5 — NBC 30, Hartford, June 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 3, 2007 — Related Newsline story, June 12, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 3, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 18, 2003 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 3, 2002.

In one corner looms Antoin Rezko, in the other, Charles Keating; and both candidates face hovering questions about lobbyists

WASHINGTON
As political developments last week appeared to cement the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic opponent to presumed Republican candidate John McCain, reporters and analysts began speculating about what role ethics will play in their respective bids. Among the coverage:

• Antoin Rezko, a fundraiser who played a major role in the political rise of Obama, was found guilty last week on 16 federal counts of fraud, money laundering, and bribery. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that while no evidence in the trial raised links to Obama, with the presumptive Democratic nominee’s name surfacing only tangentially as a beneficiary of Rezko’s fund-raising, it appears inevitable that the verdict will become a campaign issue.
• On the GOP side, press reports note the likely highlighting of McCain’s association with Charles Keating, Jr., a wealthy savings and loan executive at the center of a government probe in the 1980s — the so-called Keating Five scandal, in which four other senators and McCain were accused of corruption and inappropriately helping savings and loan operator Keating. The Christian Science Monitor reports that while the Senate Ethics Committee eventually found McCain’s involvement to be minimal and issued only a mild rebuke, the incident amounted to “a brush with political death.”
• Both McCain and Obama face questions over the role of corporate interests in their campaigns, according to an analysis from the finance site TheStreet.com. Analyst John Fout writes: “Obama claims to have no lobbyists working on his campaign, though he has many former lobbyists working for him and an army of bundlers. One example would be his chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod. Axelrod formerly worked as a lobbyist for Exelon, an energy company based in Illinois that is a leader in advocating for nuclear energy. Employees of Exelon have strongly backed Obama, donating more than $200,000 to his presidential campaign.” McCain, Fout notes, has also “become sensitive to the lobbyist issue. In May, his campaign issued a memo asking all staff members to reveal lobbyists ties along with potential conflicts and followed up by purging the staff of anyone who might hurt the campaign’s image. Other important staff members like campaign manager Rick Davis and chief strategist Charlie Black have cut their lobbyists ties in recent weeks.”

Sources: Chicago Sun-Times, June 6 — The Street.com, June 6 — AP, June 5 — Christian Science Monitor, May 19.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 2 — Related Newsline story, May 12 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 14 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25.

Investigator says he cannot rule out possibility that officials knowingly engaged in “torture by proxy,” deporting suspects to nations where information would be extracted by brutality

WASHINGTON
The United States is reopening a probe into the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian engineer whose extradition to Syria raised questions about the moral implications of the rendition of terror suspects to countries where it is likely that torture will be employed.

Richard Skinner, the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional hearing that his office could not rule out the possibility that officials sent Arar to Syria believing he would be tortured for information in that nation, the Toronto Star reports.

Moreover, Skinner questions the circumstances of the legal process that led to Arar’s deportation, including a late-Sunday-night hearing that his lawyers could not attend, according to a report from the CanWest News Service.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was detained in New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport when returning to Canada from a vacation in 2002. Based in part on information supplied by Canadian authorities, the Canadian National Post reports, Arar was identified as an Islamic extremist and deported to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured for about a year.

Arar later was cleared of any terrorist links and was awarded $10.5 million in compensation by the Canadian government.

U.S. secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted only that communication in the incident was flawed, and Arar remains on the U.S. no-fly list, reports CFTR Radio in Toronto. But several U.S. congressmen have gone on record as apologizing for the actions of U.S. officials.

Sources: Toronto Star, June 5 — CanWest News Service, June 5 — National Post, June 5 — CFTR Radio, June 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 26, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 29, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 18, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 11, 2006.

But Charles Plosser says being too rigorous about investments could dry up economy

NEW YORK
The concept of “moral hazard” was raised again in a major speech last week in which the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia warned of the consequences of encouraging reckless borrowing.

Charles Plosser said the Fed or any other central bank faces a risk if it intervenes as a lender of last resort in a bailout of those who cannot meet their loan obligations, according to a report from Forbes.

If lending to major financial institutions is “misapplied,” it can “effectively subsidize risk-taking,” Plosser said.

The Agence France-Presse reports that Plosser urged the government to develop clear benchmarks for situations that would merit Fed intervention.

Plosser noted that new and complex investment vehicles make risk-judging difficult, according to reports from Reuters and RTT News, but at the same time he maintained that regulating markets too heavily could inhibit financial growth.

The concept of moral hazard emerged on two levels in the recent turmoil surrounding the collapse of the subprime lending market: first, as an issue in the debate over whether giving loans to consumers with shaky credit encouraged eventual default, and later as a consideration in whether the government should bail out financial institutions buffeted by the ripples from the subprime collapse.

Plosser’s remarks about complex financial vehicles related to another underlying cause of the subprime meltdown: the slicing, dicing, packaging, and reselling of mortgages in complex investment vehicles that made it difficult to assess their riskiness and distanced the loan originator from the ultimate risk of the transaction.

Sources: Reuters, June 5 — AFP, June 5 — Forbes, June 5 — RTT News, June 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 2 — Related Newsline story, May 27 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25.

Disgraced South Korean businessman sentenced to give ethics lectures; ethics scandals make it tougher to get a student loan; executive gives $10 million for studies in corporate responsibility

VARIOUS DATELINES
Ethics and education were the subjects of several stories in the world press last week. Among them:

• A South Korean court has sentenced Chung Mong-koo, the former head of Hyundai Motors, to write articles and give lectures on business ethics, reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Chung was found guilty of various counts involving accounting fraud and originally received a prison term, but the sentence was reduced on appeal to community service. Chung also will have to do some community work involving manual labor, reports the ABC.
• A Pennsylvania energy executive has donated $10 million for ethics education at the University of St. Thomas’s Opus College of Business in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to a report from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Harvey Halloran, CEO of American Refining Group and Energy Unlimited, made the grant in support of work in corporate ethics and responsibility.
• Getting a college loan is a tough assignment, and a recent series of ethics scandals is part of the reason, reports the Wall Street Journal. Certain government subsidies for student loans were cut in half by Congress last fall after probes into lenders’ financial ties to schools, the paper notes.

Sources: Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 5 — Australian Broadcasting Corporation, June 5 — Wall Street Journal, June 4.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 2 — Related Newsline story, May 5 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 28 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 31 — Related Newsline story, July 30, 2007.

But no one sought permission of the phones’ owners, and some thorny privacy issues have surfaced

WASHINGTON
A study involving tracking cell phone use in Europe has revealed some interesting patterns of human behavior while also raising questions about the ethics of researching people’s movements without their permission.

The research involved tracking the movements of cell phone users in an undisclosed European industrial city, reports the BBC, and concluded that the majority of users tend to stay close to home for months at a time.

About 75 percent remained within a 20-mile radius of their home during the six-month duration of the study.

But the users did not agree to participate in the study, which means it probably would not have been legal in the United States because of federal regulations, reports the technology network CNET.

The study’s authors say they did not know the exact whereabouts of users and the phone numbers were electronically scrambled so as to be unrecognizable.

Still, contends bioethicist Arthur of the University of Pennsylvania, “There is plenty going on here that sets off ethical alarm bells about privacy and trustworthiness.”

Caplan told the Associated Press that studies of normal behavior at public places is “fair game for researchers” as long as no one can figure out identities. “So if I fight at a soccer match or walk through 30th Street train station in Philly, I can be studied,” Caplan wrote in an email to the AP. “But my cell phone is not public. My cell phone is personal. Tracking it and thus its owner is an active intrusion into personal privacy.”

The CBC notes that cell phone tracking, which uses GPS signals to locate the phone and its user, is legal when consensual, and in fact is offered often as a sales inducement.

The purpose of the study was to document movement patterns to forecast traffic or outbreaks of disease.

Sources: CNET, June 5 — BBC, June 5 — AP, June 5 — CBC, June 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 2 — Related Newsline story, May 19 — Related Newsline story, May 5 — Related Newsline story, May 5 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 28.

Only one of 14 surveyed nations shows less fear between 2006 and 2007, Gallup finds

From Gallup.com:

“In 10 of 14 former Soviet republics Gallup surveyed, residents’ likelihood to say most or many people in their country are afraid to openly express their political views rose significantly between 2006 and 2007. In seven countries, the proportion responding this way now represents a majority.

“The most dramatic increases occurred in Georgia and Lithuania; in each country residents were about twice as likely in 2007 as they were in 2006 to say many or most of their fellow citizens are afraid to express their political views. But substantial increases were also seen in countries where this perception was already common. In Tajikistan and Armenia, for example, the figures rose from about half of residents to about 7 in 10.

“…In several of the countries where freedom of expression ratings have dropped, it’s possible to identify specific trends or events that reflect an ongoing climate of fear and intimidation….

“In several of the former Soviet republics where the perception that people are afraid to express themselves is less common, residents were nonetheless more likely to feel this way in 2007 than in 2006….

“Kyrgyzstan was the only former Soviet state in which fewer residents said many or most people are afraid to express their political opinions in 2007 (33%) than in 2006 (45%). In that country, mass demonstrations in January and April 2007 played a pivotal role in triggering political reform. In both instances, the president was compelled to agree on constitutional compromises that ceded more power to parliament. Respondents in Kyrgyzstan are also far more likely than those in most former Soviet republics to say they are satisfied with the way democracy works in their country….”

For the full press release from Gallup, June 9, click here.

“There is this difference between happiness and wisdom, that he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.”

– Charles Caleb Colton quotes (English cleric, writer, and collector, 1780-1832)