Friday, Dec. 10, 2004 | 5:39 a.m.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
WEEKEND EDITION
December 11 - 12, 2004
You have to have faith.
The Saban Center for Middle East Policy is an affiliate of the prestigious Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. It is led by a former ambassador to Israel and one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet about Middle East matters, Martin Indyk. Last week Martin led the Saban Forum, called a U.S.-Israel Dialogue, that, among other things, focused on "Defending Democracy in an Age of Terror."
I was one of a very fortunate few people invited to participate in the dialogue amongst government, nongovernment, business and other leaders from the most powerful democracy on Earth and one of the newest and most vocal democracies ever created.
You might ask why a newspaper editor from Las Vegas was invited to participate along with such notables as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, World Bank President James Wolfensohn, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, former President Bill Clinton and a host of present and former Israeli government officials -- including some of the men responsible for the Mossad, one of the leading covert agencies in the world. I asked myself the same thing. It couldn't be because I am a member of the board of trustees of the Brookings Institution, because there are more than 40 of us. There had to be another reason.
The answer didn't dawn on me until two days later, when I went to another conference in New York. It was held under the auspices of the William J. Clinton Presidential Forum Foundation and, together with New York University, presented a most distinguished array of panelists who discussed a "New Thinking on Energy Policy: Meeting the Challenges of Security, Development and Climate Change." As the title of the conference suggests, it was all about global warming and what we are going to do about it.
My role, I soon figured out, was to do exactly what I am doing now, trying to share what I learned with real people, the folks who will bear the brunt of policy decisions, made or not, concerning these two Earth-changing matters. And whether we want to believe it or not, the decisions that are made concerning global warming and the Middle East peace process will affect each and every one of us.
To give a little perspective to what I heard, the problems in the Middle East -- as vast, unfathomable and unsolvable as they seem -- are nothing compared to what the experts are certain is the coming ruination of our world as we know it because of climatic change caused by greenhouse gasses. A few of the participants at the Clinton Foundation Conference were former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Carol Browner; Co-Chair of the International Taskforce on Climate Change and Member of Parliament, Stephen Byers; former director of the CIA, John Deutch; the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez; Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.; the Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs of the Republic of South Africa, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka; former U.S. Sen. Tim Worth; World Bank President James Wolfensohn (he gets around because he knows so much about so many); and Edmund Daukoru, the special adviser to the President for Petroleum and Energy for the Federal Republic ! of Nigeria.
I have mentioned some of the participants of both forums in order to impress upon you the seriousness of the people and the importance of the subject matters discussed. I realize that I am easily impressed, but in this case anyone within earshot of the dialogue that took place both in Washington and New York would have been similarly affected.
So, what did I learn? Was there a common theme that ran through the mouths of the Kissingers and Justice Breyers in Washington and the Liebermans and Wolfensohns in New York? Yes. The issues, of course, are very different but the solutions are quite similar.
In the case of this new world of terrorism in which we are all going to live for many years, the balance of civil rights versus security needs may be the single greatest challenge we will face as a nation. The United States' record in such instances is far from enviable. We have a habit of acting first and then, upon contemplation, reacting with a more tempered and measured approach.
It was nothing, if you will recall, for most Americans to willingly cede to the governmental authorities most of our basic constitutional rights for however long it would take to bring the terrorists to justice and make the world safe for democracy, this one in particular. The few people and organizations that pleaded for some deference to individual rights and liberties were shouted down in the marketplace of ideas by charging the offenders with coming up short on their patriotic credentials.
It is hard to balance the security needs of a country like ours against the liberties associated with this great democracy, but that is where we can learn something else from our Israeli friends. They have proved Cicero wrong when he said that when the cannons roar, the law is silent.
For 50 years, the cannons have roared against Israel and, yet, the law has never been silenced. The point is we can have it both ways if we choose not to give in to our fears.
To avoid the forfeiting of our individual rights and liberties in the face of security problems, the consensus was that American leadership could not stay silent. The same was true on the issue of global warming.
There is no longer any question that the greenhouse gases that result from burning oil and coal and similar fuels is causing the serious and, perhaps, irreversible damage to the ozone layer and is responsible for the significant changes in the weather patterns that are devastating various areas of the world. It is estimated that if the polar ice cap continues to melt as it is currently, it will not be too many years before more than 150 million people will be underwater!
The science is no longer in dispute and, yet, our elected leaders battle in favor of the status quo because that is where the big money is. And we do this while at the same time we are lecturing the developing and underdeveloped countries to be responsible when they try to attain some measure of industrialization. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that we can burn cleaner fuel, we can reduce the greenhouse gases and we can protect this planet for future generations and, at the same time, create more and more jobs. It just takes leadership.
It was interesting to me that both problems, both monumentally big and Earth-changing issues, can be solved with the right focus and the right kind of leadership. The question, of course, came down to how the people of this country -- the people who actually get it -- can encourage those in power to act. That remains the big question.
Perhaps Senator Lieberman hit on a possible answer. To paraphrase the good senator, when it comes to finding peace in the Middle East (which is a biblical mandate) and saving the Earth from ruinous weather changes so that people are not forced to live in poverty and pain (another biblical obligation), if we can't appeal to reason and good sense, then maybe we should seek another method.
After all, saving the Earth and the people on it is the epitome of a faith-based initiative. That should give some people a reason to start leading.
archive
