THE STRATEGIC SHIFT

ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY
THE REDIRECTION

Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2007-03-05
Posted 2007-02-25

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound"and unintended"strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that "realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region."

After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is "a new strategic alignment in the Middle East," separating "reformers" and "extremists"; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were "on the other side of that divide." (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, "have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize."

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. "We haven’t got any of this," he said. "We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating."

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, "The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.")

The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The new strategy "is a major shift in American policy"it’s a sea change," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states "were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq," he said. "We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it."

"It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger"Iran or Sunni radicals," Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. "The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line."

Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that "the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War." Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. "The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq," he said. "It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down."

The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put "fear" into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and "make him worry that the Sunnis could actually win" the civil war there. Clawson said that this might give Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in suppressing radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late last year by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that the Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite militias has steadily increased.

Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that "there is nothing coincidental or ironic" about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. "The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when"if you look at the actual casualty numbers"the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude," Leverett said. "This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them."

President George W. Bush, in a speech on January 10th, partially spelled out this approach. "These two regimes""Iran and Syria""are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq," Bush said. "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

In the following weeks, there was a wave of allegations from the Administration about Iranian involvement in the Iraq war. On February 11th, reporters were shown sophisticated explosive devices, captured in Iraq, that the Administration claimed had come from Iran. The Administration’s message was, in essence, that the bleak situation in Iraq was the result not of its own failures of planning and execution but of Iran’s interference.

The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds of Iranians in Iraq. "The word went out last August for the military to snatch as many Iranians in Iraq as they can," a former senior intelligence official said. "They had five hundred locked up at one time. We’re working these guys and getting information from them. The White House goal is to build a case that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they’ve been doing it all along"that Iran is, in fact, supporting the killing of Americans." The Pentagon consultant confirmed that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in recent months. But he told me that that total includes many Iranian humanitarian and aid workers who "get scooped up and released in a short time," after they have been interrogated.

"We are not planning for a war with Iran," Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary, announced on February 2nd, and yet the atmosphere of confrontation has deepened. According to current and former American intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran. American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq.

At Rice’s Senate appearance in January, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, of Delaware, pointedly asked her whether the U.S. planned to cross the Iranian or the Syrian border in the course of a pursuit. "Obviously, the President isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq," Rice said, adding, "I do think that everyone will understand that"the American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to protect our forces."

The ambiguity of Rice’s reply prompted a response from Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, who has been critical of the Administration:

Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, "We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia," in fact we did.
I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee. So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the President is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous.


The Administration’s concern about Iran’s role in Iraq is coupled with its long-standing alarm over Iran’s nuclear program. On Fox News on January 14th, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, "of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world’s supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world." He also said, "If you go and talk with the Gulf states or if you talk with the Saudis or if you talk with the Israelis or the Jordanians, the entire region is worried. . . . The threat Iran represents is growing."

The Administration is now examining a wave of new intelligence on Iran’s weapons programs. Current and former American officials told me that the intelligence, which came from Israeli agents operating in Iran, includes a claim that Iran has developed a three-stage solid-fuelled intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small warheads"each with limited accuracy"inside Europe. The validity of this human intelligence is still being debated.

A similar argument about an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass destruction"and questions about the intelligence used to make that case"formed the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. Many in Congress have greeted the claims about Iran with wariness; in the Senate on February 14th, Hillary Clinton said, "We have all learned lessons from the conflict in Iraq, and we have to apply those lessons to any allegations that are being raised about Iran. Because, Mr. President, what we are hearing has too familiar a ring and we must be on guard that we never again make decisions on the basis of intelligence that turns out to be faulty."

Still, the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours.

In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change.

Two carrier strike groups"the Eisenhower and the Stennis"are now in the Arabian Sea. One plan is for them to be relieved early in the spring, but there is worry within the military that they may be ordered to stay in the area after the new carriers arrive, according to several sources. (Among other concerns, war games have shown that the carriers could be vulnerable to swarming tactics involving large numbers of small boats, a technique that the Iranians have practiced in the past; carriers have limited maneuverability in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, off Iran’s southern coast.) The former senior intelligence official said that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring. He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the White House’s not being "foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008."

PRINCE BANDAR’S GAME

The Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle East has relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saudi national-security adviser. Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United States for twenty-two years, until 2005, and has maintained a friendship with President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. In his new post, he continues to meet privately with them. Senior White House officials have made several visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of them not disclosed.

Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King Abdullah and Bandar. The Times reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw. A European intelligence official told me that the meeting also focussed on more general Saudi fears about "the rise of the Shiites." In response, "The Saudis are starting to use their leverage"money."

In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years, built a power base that relies largely on his close relationship with the U.S., which is crucial to the Saudis. Bandar was succeeded as Ambassador by Prince Turki al-Faisal; Turki resigned after eighteen months and was replaced by Adel A. al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat who has worked with Bandar. A former Saudi diplomat told me that during Turki’s tenure he became aware of private meetings involving Bandar and senior White House officials, including Cheney and Abrams. "I assume Turki was not happy with that," the Saudi said. But, he added, "I don’t think that Bandar is going off on his own." Although Turki dislikes Bandar, the Saudi said, he shared his goal of challenging the spread of Shiite power in the Middle East.

The split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in the seventh century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis dominated the medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and Shiites, traditionally, have been regarded more as outsiders. Worldwide, ninety per cent of Muslims are Sunni, but Shiites are a majority in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in Lebanon. Their concentration in a volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in the West and among Sunnis about the emergence of a "Shiite crescent""especially given Iran’s increased geopolitical weight.

"The Saudis still see the world through the days of the Ottoman Empire, when Sunni Muslims ruled the roost and the Shiites were the lowest class," Frederic Hof, a retired military officer who is an expert on the Middle East, told me. If Bandar was seen as bringing about a shift in U.S. policy in favor of the Sunnis, he added, it would greatly enhance his standing within the royal family.

The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of power not only in the region but within their own country. Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a region of major oil fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province. The royal family believes that Iranian operatives, working with local Shiites, have been behind many terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, according to Vali Nasr. "Today, the only army capable of containing Iran""the Iraqi Army""has been destroyed by the United States. You’re now dealing with an Iran that could be nuclear-capable and has a standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers." (Saudi Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army.)

Nasr went on, "The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis""Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates. "The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back."

The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.

Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.

This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that "they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at"Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran."

The Saudi said that, in his country’s view, it was taking a political risk by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in the Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration. "We have two nightmares," the former diplomat told me. "For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed."

In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S. government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran.

Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)

The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.

Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah. The Saudi government is also at odds with the Syrians over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for which it believes the Assad government was responsible. Hariri, a billionaire Sunni, was closely associated with the Saudi regime and with Prince Bandar. (A U.N. inquiry strongly suggested that the Syrians were involved, but offered no direct evidence; there are plans for another investigation, by an international tribunal.)

Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, depicted the Saudis’ coöperation with the White House as a significant breakthrough. "The Saudis understand that if they want the Administration to make a more generous political offer to the Palestinians they have to persuade the Arab states to make a more generous offer to the Israelis," Clawson told me. The new diplomatic approach, he added, "shows a real degree of effort and sophistication as well as a deftness of touch not always associated with this Administration. Who’s running the greater risk"we or the Saudis? At a time when America’s standing in the Middle East is extremely low, the Saudis are actually embracing us. We should count our blessings."

The Pentagon consultant had a different view. He said that the Administration had turned to Bandar as a "fallback," because it had realized that the failing war in Iraq could leave the Middle East "up for grabs."

JIHADIS IN LEBANON

The focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after Iran, is Lebanon, where the Saudis have been deeply involved in efforts by the Administration to support the Lebanese government. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is struggling to stay in power against a persistent opposition led by Hezbollah, the Shiite organization, and its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has an extensive infrastructure, an estimated two to three thousand active fighters, and thousands of additional members.

Hezbollah has been on the State Department’s terrorist list since 1997. The organization has been implicated in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed two hundred and forty-one military men. It has also been accused of complicity in the kidnapping of Americans, including the C.I.A. station chief in Lebanon, who died in captivity, and a Marine colonel serving on a U.N. peacekeeping mission, who was killed. (Nasrallah has denied that the group was involved in these incidents.) Nasrallah is seen by many as a staunch terrorist, who has said that he regards Israel as a state that has no right to exist. Many in the Arab world, however, especially Shiites, view him as a resistance leader who withstood Israel in last summer’s thirty-three-day war, and Siniora as a weak politician who relies on America’s support but was unable to persuade President Bush to call for an end to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. (Photographs of Siniora kissing Condoleezza Rice on the cheek when she visited during the war were prominently displayed during street protests in Beirut.)

The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a billion dollars in aid since last summer. A donors’ conference in Paris, in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion from the Saudis. The American pledge includes more than two hundred million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal security.

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture."

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting "to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. "Salafis are sick and hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said. "They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly."

Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, "The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous." Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. "I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests"presumably to take on Hezbollah," Crooke said.

The largest of the groups, Asbat al-Ansar, is situated in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. Asbat al-Ansar has received arms and supplies from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated with the Siniora government.

In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister"Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination"paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants "had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan."

According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.

In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. "We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here," he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a "theatre of conflict."

The official said that his government was in a no-win situation. Without a political settlement with Hezbollah, he said, Lebanon could "slide into a conflict," in which Hezbollah fought openly with Sunni forces, with potentially horrific consequences. But if Hezbollah agreed to a settlement yet still maintained a separate army, allied with Iran and Syria, "Lebanon could become a target. In both cases, we become a target."

The Bush Administration has portrayed its support of the Siniora government as an example of the President’s belief in democracy, and his desire to prevent other powers from interfering in Lebanon. When Hezbollah led street demonstrations in Beirut in December, John Bolton, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., called them "part of the Iran-Syria-inspired coup."

Leslie H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Administration’s policy was less pro democracy than "pro American national security. The fact is that it would be terribly dangerous if Hezbollah ran Lebanon." The fall of the Siniora government would be seen, Gelb said, "as a signal in the Middle East of the decline of the United States and the ascendancy of the terrorism threat. And so any change in the distribution of political power in Lebanon has to be opposed by the United States"and we’re justified in helping any non-Shiite parties resist that change. We should say this publicly, instead of talking about democracy."

Martin Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United States "does not have enough pull to stop the moderates in Lebanon from dealing with the extremists." He added, "The President sees the region as divided between moderates and extremists, but our regional friends see it as divided between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis that we view as extremists are regarded by our Sunni allies simply as Sunnis."

In January, after an outburst of street violence in Beirut involving supporters of both the Siniora government and Hezbollah, Prince Bandar flew to Tehran to discuss the political impasse in Lebanon and to meet with Ali Larijani, the Iranians’ negotiator on nuclear issues. According to a Middle Eastern ambassador, Bandar’s mission"which the ambassador said was endorsed by the White House"also aimed "to create problems between the Iranians and Syria." There had been tensions between the two countries about Syrian talks with Israel, and the Saudis’ goal was to encourage a breach. However, the ambassador said, "It did not work. Syria and Iran are not going to betray each other. Bandar’s approach is very unlikely to succeed."

Walid Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon and a strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of Syria, and has repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is under the direct control of the religious leadership in Iran. In a conversation with me last December, he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, as a "serial killer." Nasrallah, he said, was "morally guilty" of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder, last November, of Pierre Gemayel, a member of the Siniora Cabinet, because of his support for the Syrians.

Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be "the ones to talk to," Jumblatt said.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, "We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria"and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition."

There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, "The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement." He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.

Jumblatt said he understood that the issue was a sensitive one for the White House. "I told Cheney that some people in the Arab world, mainly the Egyptians""whose moderate Sunni leadership has been fighting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for decades""won’t like it if the United States helps the Brotherhood. But if you don’t take on Syria we will be face to face in Lebanon with Hezbollah in a long fight, and one we might not win."

THE SHEIKH

On a warm, clear night early last December, in a bombed-out suburb a few miles south of downtown Beirut, I got a preview of how the Administration’s new strategy might play out in Lebanon. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, who has been in hiding, had agreed to an interview. Security arrangements for the meeting were secretive and elaborate. I was driven, in the back seat of a darkened car, to a damaged underground garage somewhere in Beirut, searched with a handheld scanner, placed in a second car to be driven to yet another bomb-scarred underground garage, and transferred again. Last summer, it was reported that Israel was trying to kill Nasrallah, but the extraordinary precautions were not due only to that threat. Nasrallah’s aides told me that they believe he is a prime target of fellow-Arabs, primarily Jordanian intelligence operatives, as well as Sunni jihadists who they believe are affiliated with Al Qaeda. (The government consultant and a retired four-star general said that Jordanian intelligence, with support from the U.S. and Israel, had been trying to infiltrate Shiite groups, to work against Hezbollah. Jordan’s King Abdullah II has warned that a Shiite government in Iraq that was close to Iran would lead to the emergence of a Shiite crescent.) This is something of an ironic turn: Nasrallah’s battle with Israel last summer turned him"a Shiite"into the most popular and influential figure among Sunnis and Shiites throughout the region. In recent months, however, he has increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not as a symbol of Arab unity but as a participant in a sectarian war.

Nasrallah, dressed, as usual, in religious garb, was waiting for me in an unremarkable apartment. One of his advisers said that he was not likely to remain there overnight; he has been on the move since his decision, last July, to order the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid set off the thirty-three-day war. Nasrallah has since said publicly"and repeated to me"that he misjudged the Israeli response. "We just wanted to capture prisoners for exchange purposes," he told me. "We never wanted to drag the region into war."

Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean "insurrection and fragmentation within Islam." "In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other," he said. "I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence." (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.)

Nasrallah said he believed that President Bush’s goal was "the drawing of a new map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq. Iraq is not on the edge of a civil war"there is a civil war. There is ethnic and sectarian cleansing. The daily killing and displacement which is taking place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which will be sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq. Within one or two years at the most, there will be total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total Kurdish areas. Even in Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two areas, one Sunni and one Shiite."

He went on, "I can say that President Bush is lying when he says he does not want Iraq to be partitioned. All the facts occurring now on the ground make you swear he is dragging Iraq to partition. And a day will come when he will say, ‘I cannot do anything, since the Iraqis want the partition of their country and I honor the wishes of the people of Iraq.’ "

Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country "into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq." In Lebanon, "There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state." But, he said, "I do not know if there will be a Shiite state." Nasrallah told me that he suspected that one aim of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer was "the destruction of Shiite areas and the displacement of Shiites from Lebanon. The idea was to have the Shiites of Lebanon and Syria flee to southern Iraq," which is dominated by Shiites. "I am not sure, but I smell this," he told me.

Partition would leave Israel surrounded by "small tranquil states," he said. "I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to North African states. There will be small ethnic and confessional states," he said. "In other words, Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other. This is the new Middle East."

In fact, the Bush Administration has adamantly resisted talk of partitioning Iraq, and its public stances suggest that the White House sees a future Lebanon that is intact, with a weak, disarmed Hezbollah playing, at most, a minor political role. There is also no evidence to support Nasrallah’s belief that the Israelis were seeking to drive the Shiites into southern Iraq. Nevertheless, Nasrallah’s vision of a larger sectarian conflict in which the United States is implicated suggests a possible consequence of the White House’s new strategy.

In the interview, Nasrallah made mollifying gestures and promises that would likely be met with skepticism by his opponents. "If the United States says that discussions with the likes of us can be useful and influential in determining American policy in the region, we have no objection to talks or meetings," he said. "But, if their aim through this meeting is to impose their policy on us, it will be a waste of time." He said that the Hezbollah militia, unless attacked, would operate only within the borders of Lebanon, and pledged to disarm it when the Lebanese Army was able to stand up. Nasrallah said that he had no interest in initiating another war with Israel. However, he added that he was anticipating, and preparing for, another Israeli attack, later this year.

Nasrallah further insisted that the street demonstrations in Beirut would continue until the Siniora government fell or met his coalition’s political demands. "Practically speaking, this government cannot rule," he told me. "It might issue orders, but the majority of the Lebanese people will not abide and will not recognize the legitimacy of this government. Siniora remains in office because of international support, but this does not mean that Siniora can rule Lebanon."

President Bush’s repeated praise of the Siniora government, Nasrallah said, "is the best service to the Lebanese opposition he can give, because it weakens their position vis-à-vis the Lebanese people and the Arab and Islamic populations. They are betting on us getting tired. We did not get tired during the war, so how could we get tired in a demonstration?"

There is sharp division inside and outside the Bush Administration about how best to deal with Nasrallah, and whether he could, in fact, be a partner in a political settlement. The outgoing director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, in a farewell briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in January, said that Hezbollah "lies at the center of Iran’s terrorist strategy. . . . It could decide to conduct attacks against U.S. interests in the event it feels its survival or that of Iran is threatened. . . . Lebanese Hezbollah sees itself as Tehran’s partner."

In 2002, Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, called Hezbollah "the A-team" of terrorists. In a recent interview, however, Armitage acknowledged that the issue has become somewhat more complicated. Nasrallah, Armitage told me, has emerged as "a political force of some note, with a political role to play inside Lebanon if he chooses to do so." In terms of public relations and political gamesmanship, Armitage said, Nasrallah "is the smartest man in the Middle East." But, he added, Nasrallah "has got to make it clear that he wants to play an appropriate role as the loyal opposition. For me, there’s still a blood debt to pay""a reference to the murdered colonel and the Marine barracks bombing.

Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, "we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.

"The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah from a street guy to a leader"from a terrorist to a statesman," Baer added. "The dog that didn’t bark this summer""during the war with Israel""is Shiite terrorism." Baer was referring to fears that Nasrallah, in addition to firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping its soldiers, might set in motion a wave of terror attacks on Israeli and American targets around the world. "He could have pulled the trigger, but he did not," Baer said.

Most members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities acknowledge Hezbollah’s ongoing ties to Iran. But there is disagreement about the extent to which Nasrallah would put aside Hezbollah’s interests in favor of Iran’s. A former C.I.A. officer who also served in Lebanon called Nasrallah "a Lebanese phenomenon," adding, "Yes, he’s aided by Iran and Syria, but Hezbollah’s gone beyond that." He told me that there was a period in the late eighties and early nineties when the C.I.A. station in Beirut was able to clandestinely monitor Nasrallah’s conversations. He described Nasrallah as "a gang leader who was able to make deals with the other gangs. He had contacts with everybody."

TELLING CONGRESS

The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then"notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams"are involved in today’s dealings.

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal "lessons learned" discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: "One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office""a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.

I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)

The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. "Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’ " (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because "he believes he can influence the government in a positive way."

The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy goals but "wanted to do it by the book." The Pentagon consultant also told me that "there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives." It was also true, he said, that Negroponte "had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East."

The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. "There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions," he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.

"This goes back to Iran-Contra," a former National Security Council aide told me. "And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it." He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, "The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour."

The issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress. Last November, the Congressional Research Service issued a report for Congress on what it depicted as the Administration’s blurring of the line between C.I.A. activities and strictly military ones, which do not have the same reporting requirements. And the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, has scheduled a hearing for March 8th on Defense Department intelligence activities.

Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, a Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence Committee, told me, "The Bush Administration has frequently failed to meet its legal obligation to keep the Intelligence Committee fully and currently informed. Time and again, the answer has been ‘Trust us.’ " Wyden said, "It is hard for me to trust the Administration."

Labels: Iran, war

Q&A: The IPCC report on global warming

Hilary Osborne and David Adam
Guardian Unlimited
Friday February 2, 2007

The report the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published today in Paris was almost three years in the making.
It is the first volume of three, which will be drawn together later in the year to make the fourth of the IPCC's assessments.

The authors have reached some pretty depressing conclusions: that human activity has contributed to climate change, and that even if we change our behaviour today, the planet will become a more dangerous place.

What is the background to the report?

The UN's Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation established the IPCC in 1988. It does not do its own research, but rather assesses published data to provide regular updates on the state of our knowledge about climate change. It last published an assessment in September 2001.

On April 6, the IPCC will report on the impact of climate change and the adaptation and vulnerability of people and wildlife; and on May 4, it will report on potential ways to mitigate the problem.

Work on the three reports began in November 2003, with the creation of three working parties. It will finish in November this year, when the IPCC will collate its findings into a single publication. The IPCC Fourth Assessment report will be released in time for key UN climate talks in Indonesia in December.

Who wrote it?

The report has around 130 lead authors, including meteorologists and climatologists from across the world.

The three reports will bring together the work of hundreds of scientists. More than 800 scientists have contributed, and more than 450 lead authors from more than 130 countries have been involved. At least 2,500 expert reviewers have looked over, and commented on, the draft versions.

The IPCC is an intergovernmental body, and its reports are reviewed by governments as well as experts. They were given the opportunity to comment on drafts of the report, and the lead authors will have taken into account their contributions when putting together the final version.

What does it say?

Emissions of greenhouse gases are expected to further change the climate over the next 100 years, it says. As a result, sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre, snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains, deserts will spread, oceans will become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs, and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

While it predicts severe melting of Arctic ice this century, and of the Greenland ice sheet over the next few hundred years, it suggests the much colder Antarctic ice sheet will grow with increased snowfall, offsetting about 0.1 metres of sea-level rise by 2100.

A big rise in sea levels would be catastrophic, with millions of people forced to leave their homes, particularly those living in tropical, low-lying areas. This will create waves of immigrants into countries that may struggle to cope with the influx.

Crucially, the report points out that a lag in the global climate system means average temperatures will continue to rise by 0.1C a decade even if all sources of emissions were frozen today. And it says forests, oceans and soil will become less able to absorb carbon dioxide, which could contribute another 1.2C of warming by the end of the century.

In total, world temperatures are likely to rise by 3C by 2100, but they could increase by as much as 5.8C.

Does everyone agree?

Not entirely. Those who dispute climate change is happening are unlikely to be swayed. After all, the last IPCC report, in 2001, reached similar conclusions about our role in climate change. And even some of the scientists who agree there are problems will disagree with the IPCC.

Because it is the fruit of collaboration, the report will be more conservative than some scientists would like. For example, the prediction of a 3C rise in temperatures over the next 100 years is far lower than the 11C some studies suggest.

Some scientists have already disputed the report's suggestion that the Antarctic will be unaffected by the rise in global temperatures. They say temperatures are already rising in the region and report the loss of huge chunks of the Antarctic shelf.

What happens next?

Negotiations on a new international treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions are currently stalled, and the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, has said he hopes the report will provoke change. He told Reuters: "I hope this report will shock people, governments, into taking more serious action, as you really can't get a more authentic and a more credible piece of scientific work."

In the UK, Tony Blair has outlined his intention to persuade the US, India, China and Brazil to sign up to a framework to come into effect when agreements made under the Kyoto protocol end, in 2012. The report may help him make his case at the G8 summit in June.

Failing that, the UN climate talks in Indonesia in December will provide another chance for the world's governments to make progress on plans to cut emissions.

Powerful Florida Storms Kill 19, Raze Homes: Crews Search for Survivors After Powerful Storms Smash Hundreds of Homes in Fla., Killing 19

By JIM ELLIS
The Associated Press
Feb. 2, 2007

LADY LAKE, Fla. - Disaster crews with dogs went from one pile of debris to another in a search for bodies Friday after powerful storms, including at least one tornado, smashed hundreds of homes across central Florida and killed 19 people or more.

It was the second-deadliest combination of thunderstorms and tornados in Florida history, cutting a 40-mile swath of destruction across four counties just before daybreak, terrorizing residents of one of the nation's biggest retirement communities, and leaving trees and fields littered with clothes, furniture and splintered lumber.

Residents helped pull the dead from the ruins.

"It was scary, really scary," said Patrick Smith, who lives in the Paisley area, where at least 13 deaths were reported. He said he saw a weather alert on television, grabbed his wife and "went straight to the floor." After the storm passed, he pulled the bodies of a man and his 9- or 10-year-old son from a neighboring house.

Florida's emergency management chief, Craig Fugate, said it could take several days to determine the exact number of dead, and the main priority was finding survivors who may be trapped.

Gov. Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency in four counties, but the worst damage was reported where the twister touched down in northern Lake County and eastern Volusia County. In typical tornado fashion, the storm hopscotched across the landscape, demolishing some homes and leaving others virtually untouched.

"Our priority today is search and rescue," said Crist, who toured the damaged area in his first natural disaster since taking office last month. "Everything's being done to get them the aid and assistance that they need."

Lake County spokesman Christopher Patton said there were 19 confirmed deaths, all in Lake County, about 50 miles northwest of Orlando. The dead included at least two high school students, authorities said. Numerous injuries were reported, but officials could not immediately estimate how many.

Officials in Lake and Volusia counties ordered dusk-to-dawn curfews in heavily damaged areas to prevent looting and injuries to residents trying to sift through wreckage in the dark.

Authorities said hundreds of houses, mobile homes and other buildings were damaged or destroyed. Volusia County reported a preliminary estimate of $80 million in damage involving 500 properties.

The storm left yards strewn with chairs, beds and clothes, knocked tractor-trailers onto their sides as if they were toys, and tore away roofs. Debris hung from trees, and some homes were thrown off their foundations.

Bernadette Fields, 67, said two of her neighbors in mobile homes were blown through a bedroom wall into Lake Mack. Their bodies were found by their own dog, she said.

Dozens of rescue workers many hardened by experience with Florida's multiple hurricanes went from house to house, spray-painting big red X's to mark the husks of buildings that they had checked. Often they found people who awoke to the storm's roar and watched their homes disintegrate around them.

Lee Shaver, 54, said he and his wife, Irene, and their dog had "about 10 seconds" to take shelter in a closet before their roof was torn off.

"Every muscle and bone in my body shook," said Lee Shaver outside his damaged home in The Villages, one of the nation's largest retirement communities.

"It was terrifying. You're not thinking consciously. You're just trying to save your life," added his 55-year-old wife.

Tornado watches had been posted hours before the twister struck, and warnings were issued between eight and 15 minutes before they touched down, said meteorologist Dave Sharp of the National Weather Service in Melbourne.

But few people were listening to the radio or watching television at that hour, and few communities in the region have warning sirens.

"The most dangerous tornado scenario is a threat for killer tornadoes at night, and that was the case," Sharp said.

The weather service estimated the tornado had winds of between 136 mph and 165 mph, Sharp said. But that was based on where the twister first touched down and did not include some of the hardest-hit areas, which researchers planned to examine Saturday, he said.

Vern Huber, 87, said his weather radio alarm went off around 3:30 a.m. and he and his wife, Louedna, 81, huddled in the hall and put pillows from the couch on top of themselves.

"It was a deafening roar," Huber said.

In Lady Lake, the Church of God was demolished, its pews, altar and torn Bibles left in a jumbled mess. The 31-year-old, steel-reinforced structure was built to withstand 150-mph winds, the Rev. Larry Lynn said.

By daybreak, parishioners gathered on the lot where the church once stood, hugging each other and consoling Lynn. They planned to clear the debris and hold Sunday services on the empty lot.

"That's just the building, the people are the church. We'll be back bigger and stronger," Lynn said.

While Lake County got the worst of it, Volusia County officials reported that 69 homes were damaged in New Smyrna Beach. A county medical clinic in DeLand was severely damaged.

"We heard a big boom then we heard the freight-train noise. All five of us got in the closet," said Linda Craig, 44, who lives in Hontoon Island, a heavily damaged area of Volusia County.

The winds lifted one tractor-trailer and dropped it on another, pinning the driver in the cab of the second semi, said Kim Miller, a spokeswoman with the Florida Highway Patrol. The driver's injuries were not considered life-threatening.

About 10,000 customers were without power. Several counties opened shelters for those who lost their homes.

Friday's storms were reminiscent of past tornados during years where El Nino was a weather factor, as it was again in this case, said state meteorologist Ben Nelson.

The 19 deaths made Friday's tornado the second-deadliest in Florida history, surpassing a 1962 tornado outbreak that killed 17 in the Panhandle.

The state's deadliest tornado event on record happened in February 1998, when five twisters hit near Orlando over two days, killing 42 people and damaging or destroying about 2,600 homes and businesses.

Associated Press reporters Curt Anderson, Damian Grass, Suzette Laboy, Stephen Majors, Adrian Sainz and Ron Word contributed to this report.

Arithmetic, Population and Energy (transcript)

by Dr. Albert Bartlett
Global Public Media: Public Service Broadcasting For A Post Carbon World
Original lecture given on 6 February 2006

Thank you very much Hugh.

It's a great pleasure to be here, and to have a chance just to share with you some very simple ideas about the problems we're facing. Some of these problems are local, some are national and some are global.

They are all tied together, they're tied together by arithmetic and the arithmetic isn't very difficult. What I hope to do is I hope to be able to convince you that the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

Well, you say, what's the exponential function?

This is a mathematical function that you'd write down if you're going to describe the size of anything that was growing steadily. If you had something that was growing at 5% per year, you'd write the exponential function to show how large that growing quantity was year after year. And so we are talking about a situation where the requirements required for the growing quantity to increase by a fixed fraction is a constant 5% per year. The 5% is a fixed fraction, the three years a fixed length of time. So that's what we want to talk about. Its just ordinary steady growth.

Well if it takes a fixed length of time to grow 5%, it follows it takes a longer fixed length of time to grow 100%. That longer time's called the doubling time and we need to know how you calculate that doubling time. It's easy.

You just take the number 70, divide it by the percent growth per unit time and that gives you the doubling time. So our example of 5% per year, you divide that into 70, you find that growing quantity will double in size every 14 years.

Well, you might ask, where did that seventy come from, well, the answer is that it's approximately one hundred multiplied by the natural logarhythm of two. If you wanted the time to triple you would use the natural log rhythm of three. So it's all very logical. But you don't have to remember where it came from, just remember 70.

I wish we could get every person to make this mental calculation every time we see a percent growth rate of anything in a news story. For example, if you saw a story that said things had been growing at 7% per year for several recent years, you wouldn't bat an eyelash. But when you see a headline that says crime has doubled in a decade you say, my heavens what's happening.

Ok what is happening? Seven percent growth per year, divide the seven into seventy, the doubling time is ten years. But notice if you want to write a headline to get people's attention, you'd never write, crime is growing at seven percent per year, no body would know what it means. Now, do you know what seven percent means?

Let's take an example, another example from Colorado, the cost of an all day lift ticket to ski at Vale. It's been growing about seven percent per year ever since Vale first opened in 1963. At that time you paid $5 for an all day lift ticket. What's the doubling time for seven percent growth? Ten years. So what was the cost ten years later in 1973, ten years later in 1983 and ten years later in 1993, what was it in 2003, and what do we have to look forward to? (Audience laughter)

This is what 7% means. Most people don't have a clue. And how is Vale doing? They are pretty much on skip.

Let's look at a generic graph of something that is growing steadily. After one doubling time the growing quantity is up to twice its initial size, two doubling times, it's up to four times its initial size, then it goes to 8-16-32-64-128-256-512, in ten doubling times it's a thousand times larger than when it started. You can see if you try to make a graph of that on ordinary graph paper the graph is going to go right through the ceiling.

Now let me give you an example to show the enormous numbers you can get with just a modest number of doublings.

Legend has it that the game of chess was invented by a mathematician who worked for a king. The king was very pleased, he said, "I want to reward you". The mathematician said " My needs are modest, please take my new chess board and on the first square place one grain of wheat, on the next square double the one and make two, on the next square double the two and make four, just keep doubling until you've doubled for every square, that would be an adequate payment". We can guess the king thought this a foolish man. "I was ready to give him a real reward; all he asked for was just a few grains of wheat".

But let's see what is involved in this; we know there are 8 grains on the forth square. I can get this number 'eight' by multiplying three twos together. Its 2x2x2, its one two less than the number of the square, now that continues in each case. So on the last square, I find the number of grains by multiplying 63 two's together.

Now let's look at the way the totals build up. When we add one grain on the first square, the total on the board is one. We add two grains that makes a total three. We put on four grains, now the total is seven. Seven is a grain less that eight, it's a grain less than three two's multiplied together. Fifteen is a grain less than four two's multiplied together. That continues in each case, so when were done, the total number of grains will be one grain less than the number I get multiplying 64 two's together. My question is how much wheat is that?

You know, would that be a nice pile here in the room? Would it fill the building? Would it cover the county to a depth of 2 meters? How much wheat are we talking about?

The answer is that it's roughly four hundred times the 1990 world wide harvest of wheat. That could be more wheat than humans have harvested in the entire history of the earth. You say, how did you get such a big number and the answer is, it was simple. We just started with one grain, but we let the numbers grow steadily till it had doubled a mere 63 times.

Now there's something else that is very important, the growth in any doubling time is greater than the total of all the preceding growth. For example, when I put eight grains on the 4th square the eight is larger than the total of seven that were already there. I put thirty two grains on the 6th square; the thirty two is larger than the total of thirty one that were already there. Every time the growing quantity doubles, it takes more than all you'd used in all the proceeding growth.

Well, let's translate that into the energy crisis. Here is an add from the year 1975, it asks the question could America run out of electricity? America depends on electricity; our need for electricity actually doubles every 10 or 12 years. That's an accurate reflection of a very long history of steady growth of the electrical industry in this country. Growth of a rate around 7% per year which gives you doubling every 10 years.

Now with all that history of growth, they just expect that growth will go on forever. Fortunately it stopped, not because anyone understood arithmetic, it stopped for other reasons. Well, let's ask what if. Suppose the growth had continued then we would see here the thing we just saw with the chess board. In the ten years following the appearance of this ad, in that decade, the amount of electrical energy we would have consumed in this country would have been greater than the total of all the electrical energy we had ever consumed in the entire proceeding history of the steady growth of that industry in this country.

Now did you realise that anything as completely acceptable as 7% growth per year could give such an incredible consequence, that in just ten years you'd use more than the total of all that had been used in all the proceeding growth?

Well that's exactly what President Carter was referring to in his speech on energy. One of his statements was this. He said, in each of those decades more oil was consumed than in all of humankind's pervious history. By itself it's a stunning statement.

Now you can understand that the president was telling us the simple consequences of the arithmetic of 7% growth each year in world oil consumption, and that was the historic figure up until the 1970's.

There's another beautiful consequence of this arithmetic. If you take seventy years as a period of time and note that that's roughly one human lifetime, then any percent growth continued steadily for seventy years gives you an overall increase by a factor that's very easy to calculate. For example 4% per year for 70 years, you find the factor by multiplying four two's together it's a factor of 16.

A few years ago, one of the newspapers of my hometown of Bolder Colorado, quizzed the nine members of the Bolder City Council and asked them what rate of growth was Boulders population. You'd think it would be good to have in the coming years. Well the nine members of the Boulder City council gave answers ranging from a low of 1% per year, now that happens to match the preset rate of growth of the population of the United States. We are not at zero population growth, right now, the number of Americans increases every year by over three million people. No member of the council said Boulder should grow less rapidly than the United States is growing.

Now the highest answer any council member gave was 5% per year. You know I felt compelled, I had to write them a letter and say did you know that 5% per year for just 70 years - I can remember when just 70 years seemed like an awful long time, it just doesn't seem so long now. (audience laughter). Well that means Boulders population would increase by a factor of 32, and that is for today. We have one over loaded sewer treatment plant, in seventy years we will need 32 overloaded sewer treatment plants.

Now did you realise anything as completely all American as 5% growth per year could give such an incredible consequence in such a modest period of time? Our city council people have zero understanding of this very simple arithmetic.

Well, a few years ago, I had a class of non science students, who were interested in problems of science and society; we spent a lot of time learning to use semi logarithmic graph paper. It's printed in such a way that these equilaterals( 09:53)*** on the vertical scale each represent an increase by a factor of 10. So you go from one thousand to 10 thousand to a hundred thousand, and the reason you use this special paper is that on this paper a straight line represents steady growth.

Now we worked on a lot of examples, I said to the students lets talk about inflation, let's talk about 7% per year. It wasn't this high when we did this, it's been higher since then, fortunately it's lower now. And I said to the students, as I say to you, you have roughly sixty years life expectancy ahead of you, lets see what some common things will cost if we had sixty years of 7% annual inflation.

The students found that a 55cents gallon of gasoline would cost $35.20 - $2.50 for a movie would be $160. The $15 sack of groceries my mother used to buy for doallar and a quarter, that will be $960. A thousand dollar suit of clothes $6,400 a $400 automobile will cost a quarter of a million dollars and a $45,000 home will cost nearly three million dollars.

Well I gave the students this data, (shows overhead) these cam from a blue cross, blue shield ad, the add appeared in Newsweek magazine and gave these figures to show the cost escalation of gall bladder surgery in the year since 1950, when that surges cost $361. I said make a semi logarithmic plot, let's see what's happening. The students found the first four points lined up on a straight line whose slope indicated inflation of about 6% per year, but the fourth, fifth and sixth where on a steeper line almost 10% inflation per year. Well, then I said to the students, run that steeper line on out to the year 2000, lets get an idea of what a gall bladder operation might cost, 2000 was four years ago, the answer is $25,000. The lesson there was awfully clear. If you're thinking about gall bladder surgery do it now. (audience laughter)

In the summer of 1986 the news reports indicated that the world population had reached the number of five billion people growing at the rate of 1.7% per year. Well your reaction to 1.7% might be to say that that's so small nothing bad could ever happen at 1.7% per year. So you calculate the doubling time you find its only 41 years, now that was back in 1986, more recently in 1999 we read that the world population had grown from five billion to six billion . The good news is that the growth rate had dropped from 1.7% to 1.3% per cent per year. The bad news is that in spite of the drop in the growth rate, the world population today is increasing by about 75 million additional people every year.

Now, if this current modest 1.3% per year could continue, the world population would grow to a density of one person per square meter on the dry land surface of the earth in just seven hundred and eighty years and then the mass of people would equal the mass of the earth in just twenty four hundred years. Well we can smile at those, we know they couldn't happen. This one make for a cute cartoon, the caption says, "Excuse me sir, but I am prepared to make you a rather attractive offer for your square".

There's a very profound lesson in that cartoon. The lesson is that zero population growth is gonna happen. Now we can debate whether we like zero population growth or don't like it, its going to happen whether we debate it or not, whether we like it or not. It's absolutely certain people could never live at that density on the dry land surface of the earth. Therefore today's high birth rates will drop; today's low death rate will rise till they have exactly the same numerical value. That will certainly be in a time shorter than several hundred years. So maybe you're wondering then, what options are available if we wanted to address the problem.

In the left hand column I've listed some of those things we should encourage if we want to raise the rate of growth of population and in so doing make the problem worse. Just look at the list. Every thing in the list is as sacred as mother hood, there's immigration, medicine, public health, sanitation. These are all devoted to the humane goals of lowering the death rate and that's very important to me, if it's my death they are lowering. Then I've got to realise that anything that just lowers the death rate makes the population problem worse.

There's peace, law and order, scientific agriculture has lowered the death rate due to famine that just makes the population problem worse. It's widely reported that the 55 mph speed limit saved thousands of lives that just makes the population problem worse. Clean air makes it worse.

Now in this column are some of the things we should encourage if we want to lower the rate of growth of the population and in so doing help solve the population problem. Well, there's abstention, contraception, abortion, small families, stop immigration, disease, war, murder, famine, accidents. Now smoking clearly raises the death rate, will that help solve the problem?

Remember our conclusion from the cartoon of one person per square meter; we concluded that zero population growth is gonna happen. Lets state that conclusion in other terms and say its obvious nature is going to choose from the right hand list and we don't have to do anything except be prepared to live with whatever nature chooses from that right hand list. Or we can exercise the one option that's open to us, and that option is to choose first from the right hand list. We gotta find something here we can go out and campaign for. Anyone here for promoting disease? (Audience laughter)

We now have the capabilities of incredible war, would you like more murder, more famine, more accidents? Well, here we can see the human dilemma, every thing we regard as good makes the population problem worse, everything we regard as bad, helps solve the problem. There is a dilemma if ever there was one.

The one remaining question is education, does it go on the left hand column or the right hand column. I'd have to say thus far in this country it's been in the left had column and it's done very little to reduce the ignorance of the problem. So where do we start. Well, let's start in Bolder Colorado, here in my home town. Here is the 1950's census figure, the1960, -1970 in that period of twenty years the average growth rate of Boulders population was 6% per year. With big efforts, we've been able to slow the growth somewhat. There's the year 2000 census figure. I'd like to ask people, let's start with that 2000 figure go another 70 years, one human life time, and ask, what rate of growth would we need in Boulders population in the next seventy years so that the end of seventy years the population of Boulder would equal today's population of your choice of major American cities?

Boulder in seventy years could be as big as Boston is today if we just grew 2.58% per year. Now if we thought Detroit was a better model we would have to shoot for 3.1/4% per year. Remember the historic figure on the preceding slide 6% per year. If that could continue for one life time, the population of Boulder would be larger than the population of Los Angeles. Well, I'll just tell you, you couldn't put the population of Los Angles in the boulder valley, therefore its obvious. Boulders population growth is going to stop and the only question is will we be able to stop it while there is still some open space or will we wait until its wall to wall people and we're all chocking to death?

Now, every once in a while someone says to me, you know a bigger city just might be a better city and I have to say, wait a minute, we've done that experiment already. We don't need to wonder what will be the affect of growth on Boulder because Boulder tomorrow can be seen in the Los Angles of today, and for the price of an airplane ticket we can step seventy years into the future and see exactly what its like. What is it like? Here's an interesting headline from Los Angeles. (Shows slide) Maybe that has something to do with this headline from Los Angles. (Shows slide)

So how are we doing in Colorado? Well, we're the growth capital of the USA today and proud of it. The Rocky Mountain News tells us to expect another million people in the front range in the next 20 years, and what are the consequences of all this? They are totally predictable and no surprises, we know exactly what happens when you crowd more people into an area.

Well as you can imagine growth control is very controversial and I treasure the letter from which these quotations are taken. Now this letter was written to me by a leading citizen of our community. He's a leading proponent of controlled growth, controlled growth just means growth. This man writes "I take no exception to your arguments regarding exponential growth; I don't believe the exponential argument is valid at the local level."

So you see, arithmetic doesn't hold in Boulder. (Audience laughs) I have to admit that man has a degree form the University of Colorado; it's not a degree in mathematics in science or in engineering. Alright, let's look now at what happens when we have this kind of steady growth in a finite environment.

Bacteria grow by doubling. One bacterium divides to become two, the two divide to become 4, become 8, 16 and so on. Suppose we had bacteria that doubled in number this way every minute. Suppose we put one of these bacterium into an empty bottle at eleven in the morning, and then observe that the bottle is full at twelve noon. There's our case of just ordinary steady growth, it has a doubling time of one minuet, and it's in the finite environment of one bottle. I want to ask you three questions.

Number one; at which time was the bottle half full? Well, would you believe 11:59,one minuet before 12, because they double in number every minute.

Second Question; if you were an average bacterium in that bottle at what time would you first realise that you were running of space? Well let's just look at the last minute in the bottle. At 12 noon its full, one minute before its half full, 2 minutes before its ¼ full than 1/8th than a 1/16th . Let me ask you, at 5 minutes before 12 when the bottle is only 3% full and is 97% open space just yearning for development, how many of you would realise there's a problem?

Now in the ongoing controversy over growth in Bolder, someone wrote to the newspaper some years ago and said look, there's no problem with population growth in Boulder, because the writer said, we have fifteen times as much open space as we've already used. So let me ask you what time was it in Boulder when the open space was fifteen times the amount of space we had already used? And the answer is, it was four minutes before 12 in Boulder valley. Well suppose that at 2 minutes before 12, some of the bacterium realised they were running out of space, so they launch a great search for new bottles. They searched offshore and on the outer continental shelf and the overthrust belt and the Artic, and they find three new bottles. Now that's an incredible discovery, that's three times the total amount of resource they ever new about before, they now have four bottles, before their discovery they had one. Now surely this will give them a sustainable society, wont' it?

You know what the third question is? How long can the growth continue as a result of this magnificent discovery? Well look at the score, at 12 noon, one bottles filled, there are three to go, 12:01 two bottles are filled, there's two to go and at 12:02 all four are filled and that's the end of the line. Now you don't need any more arithmetic than this to evaluate the absolutely contradictory statements that we've all heard and read from experts who tell us in one breath we can go on increasing our rates of consumption of fossil fuels and then in the next breath don't worry, we will always be able to make the discoveries of new resources that we need to meet the requirement of that growth.

Well a few years ago in Washington our energy secretary observed that in the energy crisis we have a classic case of exponential growth against a finite source. So let's look now at some of these finite sources. We turn to the work of the late Dr M. King Hubbert, he's plotted here a semi logarithmic graph of world oil production. You can see the lines been approximately straight for about 100 years, clear up here to 1970, average growth rate very close to 7% per year. It's logical to ask how much longer can that 7% growth continue. That's answered by the numbers in this table (shows slide). The numbers in the top line tell us that in the year 1973, world oil production was twenty billion barrels, the total production in all of history, three hundred billion, the remaining reserves, seventeen hundred billion.

Now those are data, the rest of this table is just calculated out assuming the historic 7% growth continued in the years following 1973 exactly as it had been for the proceeding one hundred years. Now in fact the growth stopped, it stopped because OPEC raised their oil prices so we're asking here, what if? Suppose we just decided to stay on that 7% growth curve, let's go back to 1981, by 1981 on the 7% curve, the total usage in all of history would add up to five hundred billion barrels, the remaining reserves, fifteen hundred billion. At that point the remaining reserves are three times the total of every thing we have used in all history. That's an enormous reserve, but what time is it when the remaining reserve is three times the total of all you've used in all of history? The answer is its two minutes before twelve.

We know with 7% growth, the doubling time is 10 years. We go from 1981 to 1991, by 1991 on the 7% curve, the total usage in all of history would add up to a thousand billion barrels, there would be a thousand billion left. At that point the remaining oil would be equal in quantity to the total of everything we've used in the entire history of the oil industry on this earth. One hundred and thirty years of oil consumption. You'd say, That's an enormous reserve, but what time is it when the remaining reserves is equal to all you've used in all of history? The answer is its one minute before twelve. So we go one more decade to the turn of the century, that's like right now, that's when 7% would finish using up the oil reserves of the earth.

So let's look at this in a very nice graphical way. Suppose the area of this tiny rectangle represents all the oil we used on this earth before 1940, then in the decade to the 40's we used this much, that's equal to all that had been used in all of history. In the decade of the 50's we used this much, and that's equal to all that had been used in all of history. In the decade of the 60's we used this much, again that's equal to the total of all the proceeding usage. Here we see graphically what president Carter told us. Now if that 7% growth had continued through the 70's. 80's and 90's there's what we mean. That's all the oil there is.

Now there's a widely held belief that if you throw enough money at holes in the ground oil is sure to come up. Well there will be discoveries in new oil and maybe major discoveries, but look, we would have to discover this much new oil if we would have that 7% growth continue ten more years. Ask yourself, what do you think is the chance that oil discovered after the close of our meeting today will be in an amount equal to the total of all we've known about in all history. Then realise if all that new oil could be found that would be sufficient to let the historic 7% growth continue ten more years. Well it's interestingly to see what the experts say.

Here's from an interview in Time magazine, an interview with one of the most widely quoted oil experts in all of Texas, they asked him, "but haven't many of our bigger fields been drilled nearly dry"? He responded saying "there's still as much oil to be found in the US as has ever been produced" Now lets assume he's right. What time is it? And the answer is, one minute before twelve. I've read several things this guy's written; I don't think he has any understanding of this very simple arithmetic.

Well in the energy crisis about thirty years ago we saw ads such as this (shows slide) This is from the American Electric Power Company, it's a bit reassuring, sort of saying, now don't worry to much because we're sitting on half of the worlds known supply of coal enough for over 500 years. Where did that 500 year figure come from? It may have had its origin in this report to the committee on Interior and Insular Affairs of the United States Senate, because in that report we find this sentence "at current levels of output***** (27.23) these American coal reserves can be expected to last more than 500 years"

This is one of the most dangerous statements in the literature. It's dangerous because its true, it isn't the truth that makes it dangerous, the danger lies in the fact that people take the sentence apart, they just say coal will last 500 years. They forget the caveat with which the sentence started. Now what were those opening words, "at current levels", what does that mean? That means if, and only if we maintain zero growth of coal production.

So let's look at a few numbers. We go to the annual energy review, published by the dept of energy (DOE). They give this as a coal demonstrated reserve base in the United States, it has a footnote that says about half the demonstrated reserve base is estimated to be recoverable. You can not recover and get out of the ground and use 100% of the coal that's there. So this number then, is ½ of this number. We will come back again to those in just a moment. The report also tells us that in 1971 we were mining coal at this rate, twenty years later its at this rate, put those numbers together and the average growth rate of coal production in that twenty years is 2.86% per year. And so we have to ask, well, how long would a reserve last if you have steady growth in the rate of consumption until the last bit of it is used.

I'll show you the equation here for the expiration time. I'll tell you it takes first year college calculus to derive that equation, so it can't be very difficult. You know I have a feeling there must be dozens of people in this country who've had first year college calculus, but let me suggest, I think that equation is probably the best kept scientific secret of the century!

Now let me show you why, if you used that equation to calculate the life expectancy of the reserve base, or the one half they think is recoverable for different steady rates of growth, you'll find if the growth rate is zero, the small estimate would go about 240 years and the large one would go close to 500 years. So that report to the congress was correct. But look what we get if we plug in steady growth. Back in the 1960's it was our national goal to achieve growth of coal production up around 8% per year. If you could achieve that and continue it, coal would last between 37 - 46 years. President Carter cut that goal roughly in half, hoping to reach 4% per year if that could continue coal would last between 59-75 years. Here's that 2.86%, the average for the recent period of twenty years, if that could continue coal would last between 72-94 years. That's within the life expectancy of children born today. The only way you are going to get any where near this wild quote, this 500 year figure, is to be able to simultaneously do two highly improbable things.

Number one, you got to figure out how to use 100% of the coal that is in the ground. Number two, you got to figure out how to have 500 years of zero growth of coal production. Look at those figures, those are facts.

Back in the 1970's there was great national concern about energy. But these concerns disappeared in the 80's, now the concerns about energy in the 70's prompted experts, journalists, and scientist to assure the American people that there was no reason to be concerned. So let's go back now and look at some of those assurances from the 70's so we can see what to expect now that the energy crisis is returning.

Here is the director of the energy division of the Oakridge National laboratory telling us how expensive it is to import oil, telling us we must have big increases and rapid growth in our use of coal. Under these conditions, he estimates America's coal reserves were so huge they can last a minimum of three years, probably a maximum of a thousand years. You've just seen the facts, now you see what an expert tells us and what can you conclude? There was a three hour television special on CBS on energy, the reporter said; by the lowest estimate we have enough coal for 200 years, by the highest, enough for more than a thousand years. You've just seen the facts now you can see what a journalist tells us after careful study, and what can you conclude?

In the journal of Chemical education, on the page for high school chemistry teachers in an article by the scientific staff of the journal, they tell us our proven coal reserves are enormous and they give a figure. These can satisfy present US energy needs for nearly a thousand years. Well, let's do long division. You take the coal they say is there and divide by what was then the current rate of consumption, you get 180 years. Now they didn't say, current rate of consumption, they said present US energy needs. Coal today supplies about one fifth, about 20% of the energy we use in this country, so if you'd like to calculate how long this quantity of coal can satisfy present US energy needs, you have to multiply this denomination by five. When you do that you get thirty six years. They said nearly a thousand years. Newsweek magazine, in a cover story on energy, said, at present rates of consumption we have enough coal for 666.5 years, the point 5 means they think it will run out in July instead of January. (audience laughter)

If you round that off, and say roughly 600 years, that's close enough to 500 to lie within the uncertainty of our knowledge of the size of the reserves. So with that observation that's a reasonable statement, but what this lead into was a story about how we have to have major rapid growth in coal consumption. Well its obvious isn't? If you have the growth that they re writing about, it won't last as long as they said it would last with zero growth. They never mention this. I wrote them a long letter, told them I thought it was a serious misrepresentation to give readers the feeling we could have all this growth that they were writing about and still have coal around for 600 years. I got back a nice form letter; it had nothing to do with what I'd tried to explain to them.

I gave this talk at a high school in Omaha, and after the talk the high school physics teacher came to me, and he had a booklet, and he said have you seen this, and I hadn't seen it, and he said look at this, we've got coal coming out of our ears, as reported by Forbes magazine, that's a prominent business magazine, the United States has 437 billion tons of coal reserves. That is a good number; this is equivalent to a lot of BTU's or its enough energy to keep 100 million large generating plants going for the next 800 years or so. And the teacher said to me, how can that be true, that's one large electric generating plant for every two people in the United States. I said of course it can't be true, its absolute nonsense. Let's do long division to see how crazy it is. So you take the coal they say is there, divide by what was then the current rate of consumption, you find you couldn't keep that up for 800 years and we hardly at that time had 500 large electric plants, they said it would be good for a hundred million such plants.

Time magazine tells us that beneath the pit heads of Appalachia in the Ohio valley and under the sprawling strip mines of the west lie coal seams rich enough to meet the countries power needs for centuries, no matter how much energy consumption may grow. So I give you a very fundamental observation, don't believe any perditions of the life expectancy of a non renewable resource until you have confirmed the prediction by repeating the calculation. As a colliery we have to note that the more optimistic the prediction the greater is the probability that it is based on faulty arithmetic or on no arithmetic at all.

Again from Time Magazine, energy industries agree that to achieve some form of energy self sufficiency the US must mine all the coal that it can. Now think about that for just a moment. Let me paraphrase it. The more rapidly we consume our resources the more self sufficient we will be. Isn't that what it says?

David Bower calls this the policy of strength to exhaustion. Here's an example of strength to exhaustion. Here is William Simon, energy advisor to the president of the United States, Simon says we should be trying to get as many holes drilled as possible, to get the proven oil reserves. The more rapidly we can get the last of that oil up out of the ground and finish using it, the better off we'll be.

So let's look at Dr Hubberts graph for the lower 48 states in oil production, again its semi logarithmic. Here we have a straight line section of steady growth, but for quite a while now production has fallen below the growth curve while our demand continued on up this graph curve until the 1970's. It's obvious the difference between the two curves has to be made up with imports. It was in early 1995 that we read that the year 1994 was the first year in our nation's history in which we had to import more oil than we were able to get of our own ground.

Well, maybe you're wondering, does it make any sense to imagine that we can have steady growth with a rate of consumption of a resource till the last bit of it was used, then the rate of consumption would plunge abruptly to zero. I say no, that doesn't make sense. Okay, you say, why bother us with the calculation of this expiration time, my answer is this. Every segment of our society, our business, leaders government leaders, political leaders, at the local level, state level, national level, everyone aspires to maintain a society in which all measures of material consumption continue to grow steadily year after year after year; a world without end.

Since that's so central to every thing we do, we ought to know where it would lead. On the other hand we should recognise there's a better model and again we turn to the work of the late Dr Hubbert. He's plotted the rate of consumption of resources that have already expired, he finds yes, there's is an early period of steady growth, and a rate of consumption. But then the rate goes through a maximum and comes back down in a nice cemetric bell shape curve. Now when he did this some years ago and fitted it to the oil production in the US, he found at that time we were right there. We were at the peak; we were halfway through the resource, that's exactly what that Texas expert said that I quoted a minute ago.

Now let's see what it means. It means that from now on domestic oil production can only go down hill and its down hill all the rest of the way and it doesn't' matter what they say inside the beltway in Washington DC.

Now it means we can work hard and put some bumps on the down hill side of the curve, you'll see there's bumps on the uphill side. The debate is heating up over drilling in the Artic wildlife refuge. I've seen the estimate that they might find 3.2 billion barrels of oil up there. 3.2 billion is the area of that little tiny square; that's less than one years consumption in the United States. So let's look at the curve in this way, the area under the total curve that represents a total resource in the United States. It's been divided into three parts, here is the oil we've taken from the ground, we've used it, its gone. This vertical shaded band, that's the oil we've drilled into; we've found it, were pumping on it today. Shaded in green on the right is the undiscovered oil. We have very good ways now of estimating how much oil remains undiscovered. This is the oil we gotta find if were going to make it down the curve on schedule. Now every once in a while somebody says to me, but you know, a hundred years ago somebody did a calculation and predicated the US would be out of oil in 25 years, the calculation must've been wrong, therefore, of course, all calculations are wrong. Let's understand what they did. One hundred years ago this band of discovered oil was over in here some where (points to slide), all they did was to take the discovered oil divide it by how rapidly it was being used and came up with 25 years. They had no idea then how much oil was undiscovered. Well it's obvious; you got to make a new calculation every time you make a new discovery. We're not asking today how long will the discovered oil last, we're asking about the discovered and the undiscovered, we're now talking about the rest of the oil. What does the US geological survey tell us?

Back in 1984 they said the estimated US supply from undiscovered resources and demonstrated reserves were thirty six years at present rates of production or nineteen years in the absence of imports. Five years latter in 1989, that thirty six years is down to thirty two years, the nineteen years down to sixteen years. So the numbers are holding together as we march down the right hand side of Hubbert's curve.

Well every once in awhile we run into somebody who says we shouldn't worry about the problem, we can solve it. In this case we can solve it by growing corn, distilling it in ethanol, and run all the vehicles in the United States on ethanol. Lets just look what he says, he says today ethanol production displaces over 43 ½ million barrels of imported oil annually. That sounds pretty good doesn't it, until you think. First question you have to ask. Forty three and a half million barrels, what fraction is that of US vehicle consumption in a year. The answer is its 1%.

You would have to multiply corn production devoted to ethanol by a factor of 100 just to make the numbers look right. There isn't that much total agricultural land in the United States. There's a bigger problem. It takes diesel fuel to plough the ground to plant the corn to make the fertiliser to make the corn grow, to tend the corn, to harvest the corn. It takes more energy to distillate it, you finally get a gallon of ethanol, you will be lucky if there's as much energy in the gallon as it took to produce it. In general it's a looser. But this guy says not to worry; we can solve it that way.

Back in 1956, Dr Hubbert addressed a convention of petroleum geologists and engineers. He told them that his calculations led him to believe that the peak of US oil and gas production could be expected to occur between 1966 - 1971, no one took him seriously. So let's see whats happened. The data here is from the Department of Energy, DOE. Here is steady growth; here is 1956, when Dr Hubbert did his analysis. He said at that time that peak would occur between 1966-1971. There's the peak, 1970. It was followed by a very rapid decline. Then the Alaskan pipeline started delivering oil, and it was a partial recovery. That production has now peaked and every things going down hill in unison in the right hand side of the curve. And when I go to my home computer to figure out the parameters of the curve, that's the best fit to the data, from that fit it looks to me that we have consumed ¾ of the recoverable oil that was ever in our ground in the United States and we are now coasting down hill on the last 25% of that once enormous resource. So we have to ask about world oil.

Dr Hubbert in 1974, predicted that the peak of would oil would occur around 1995, so lets see what's happened. Here we have the data from the Department of energy (DOE). A long period of steady growth, there's quite a big drop there, and then there was a speedy recovery, then an enormous drop and a very slow recovery. Those drops are each due to a price hike from OPEC. Well it's clear we're not yet over the peak, so when I now go to fit the curve, I need one more bit of information before I can do the fit. I have to got to the geology literature and ask the literature what do you think is the total amount of oil we will ever find on this earth. The consensus figure in the literature is two thousand billion barrels. Now that's quite uncertain, plus or minus, maybe 40 -50%. If I plug that in and do the fit, the peak is this year. (2004) If I assume there is 50% more than the consensus figure the peak moves back to 2019. If I assume there's twice as much as the consensus figure, the peak moves back to 2030.

So no matter how you cut it, in your life expectancy, you are going to see the peak of world oil production. You've got to ask yourself, what is life going to be like when we have declining world production of petroleum and we have a growing world population and we have a growing world per capita demand for oil. Think about it.

In the March 1998 issue of the Scientific American, there was a major article by two real petroleum geologists, they said this peak would occur before 2010, so we are all in the same ball park. Now that article in Scientific American triggered a lot of discussion. Here is an article in Fortune magazine, Nov, 1999, talking about oil forever, and in that article we see a criticism of the geologist's analysis, and this is from an Emirates Professor of economics at MIT. And he said this analysis by the geologists is a piece of foolishness, the world will never run out of oil, not in 10,000 years. So let's look at what's been happening.

Here we have two graphs, on one scale, we have here in the bar graph graphs that's the annual discovery of oil each year, here is the annual production of oil each year. Notice since the 1980's we've been producing about twice as much as we've been finding. Yet you've seen and read and heard statements from PhD's and non scientists saying that we have greater resources of petroleum now than ever before in history. What in the world are they smoking?

Now here is another look at world oil production, but this is per capita. This is litres per person each day. There is two litres, a litre is about a quart, and so two litres is about ½ gallon. The upper curve assumes there was no growth in the world population since 1920, that it stayed fluid at 1.8 billion. This then is just a copy of that earlier curve. The lower curve uses the actual population of the world and what you find is that with a growing world population this curve is pulled down more and more as you go farther to the right. And notice that peak is at about 2.2 litres per person a day in the 1970's. It is now down to about 1.7 litres a person a day, so we can say that on any day any one of us uses more than 1.7 litres of petroleum directly or indirectly, we're using more than our share. Just think about what that means.

Well, we do have to ask about new discoveries. Here is a discussion from about eleven years ago about the largest discovery of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, in the past twenty years an estimated seven hundred million barrels of oil. That's a lot of oil, but a lot compared to what? At that time we were consuming 16.6 million barrels every day in the United States. Divide the 16.6 into seven hundred and you'd find that discovery would meet US needs for forty two days.

On the front page of the Wall Street Journal, we read about the new Hibernia oil field off the south coast of Newfoundland. Please read this one line in the headline " Now it will last fifty years" That gives you some kind of a feeling for what amount of oil may be out there, so lets follow up and read from that story in the Wall Street Journal. "The Hibernia field, one of the largest oil discoveries in North America in decades, should deliver its first oil by the end of the year. At least 20 more fields may follow offering well over one billion barrels of high quality crude providing a steady flow of oil, just a quick tanker away from the energy thirsty east coast".

So let's do some arithmetic. We take the amount of oil that we think is up there, a billion barrels. At that time the US consumption has grown to about 18 million barrels a day, divide the 18 million into the one billion and you would find that would meet US needs for fifty six days.

Now what was the impression you had from that line in the headline in the Wall Street Journal? And as you think about this, think about the definition of modern agriculture (*****48.13) use of land to convert petroleum into food and we can see the end of the petroleum.

Dr Hubbert testified before a committee of the congress, he told them that the exponential phase of the industrial growth which has dominated human activities during the last couple of centuries is now drawing to a close. Yet during the last two centuries of unbroken industrial growth we have evolved to what amounts to an exponential growth culture. I would say it's more than a culture it's our national religion, because we worship growth. Pick up any newspaper; you'll see headlines such as this, "State forecasts robust growth."

Have you ever heard of a physician diagnosing a cancer in a patient and telling the patient you had a robust cancer. It isn't just in the United States that we have this terrible addiction, the Japanese are so accustomed to growth that economists in Tokyo usually speak of a recession any time the growth rate dips below 3% per year.

So, what do we do?

In the words of Winston Churchill, "sometimes we have to do what is required." First of all as a nation we have to get serious about renewable energy. For a start we ought to have a big increase in the funding for research in the development and dispersion of renewable energy. We have to educate all of our people to understand the arithmetic and the consequences of growth, especially in terms of populations and in terms of the earth's finite resources. We must educate people to recognise the fact that growth in rates of population and growth in rates of consumption of resources can not be sustained. What's the first law of sustainability? You've heard thousands of people talking endlessly about sustainability; did they ever tell you the first law? Here it is, population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained. That's simple arithmetic Yet nobody that I'm encountering will tell you about that when talking about sustainability. So I think it's intellectually dishonest to talk about saving the environment, which is sustainability, without stressing the obvious facts that stopping population growth is a necessary condition for saving the environment and for sustainability.

We must educate people to see the need to examine carefully the allegations of the technological optimist who assure us that science and technology will always be able to solve all of our problems of population growth, food, energy and resources.

Chief amongst these optimists was the late Dr Julian Simon, formerly professor of economics and business administration at the University of Illinois, and later the university in Maryland. With regard to copper, Simon has written that we will never run out of copper because copper can be made from other metals. The letters to the editor jumped all over and told him about chemistry, but he just brushed it off, "don't worry he said if its ever important we can make copper out of other metals.

Now Simon had a book that was published by the Princeton University press. In that book he's writing about oil form many sources including bio mass and he says clearly there are not many ***51:33? for this source except for the sun energy. He goes on to note but even if our sun was not so vast as it is, there well may be other suns elsewhere. Well Simons right, there are other suns elsewhere, but the question is, would you base public policy on the belief that if we need another sun we will figure out how to go get it and haul it back into our solar system.

Now you cannot laugh, for decades before his death, this man was a trusted policy advisor at the very highest levels in Washington DC. Bill Moyes interviewed Ivan Kasanof, he asked Kasanof what happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if this population growth continues and Kasanof Says, it'll be completely destroyed.

I'd like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and they had two bathrooms then they both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want, stay as long as you want, for whatever you need, and everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the constitution. But if you have twenty people in the apartment and two bathrooms, then no matter how much every person believes in the freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person; you have to bang on the door, aren't you through yet and so on. Kasanof concluded with one of the most profound observations I've seen in years, he says, in the same way, democracy can not survive over population. Human dignity can not survive over population. Convenience and decency cannot survive over population. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only decline it disappears. It doesn't matter if some one dies, the more people, there are the less one individual matters. And so, central to the things that we must do is to recognise that population growth is the immediate cause of all our resource and environmental crisis.

And in the last one hour the world population has increased by about ten thousand people and the population of the United States has increased by about two hundred and eighty people. And so to be successful with this experiment of human life on earth, we have to understand the laws of nature, as we encounter them in the study of science and mathematics. We should remember the words of Aldous Huxley that "facts do not cease to exist because they're ignored". We should remember the words of Eric Severson; he observed that the chief source of problems is solutions. This is what we encounter everyday, solutions to problems just make the problems worse. We should remember the message of this cartoon "thinking is very upsetting, it tells us things we'd rather not know" We should remember the words of Galileo; he said "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same god who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use". If there is one message it is this. We can not let other people do our thinking for us.

Now, except for those petroleum graphs the things I've told you are not predictions of the future, I'm only reporting facts, and the results of some very simple arithmetic. I do with confidence that these facts, this arithmetic and more important our level of understanding of them, will play a major role in shaping our future. Now, don't take what I've said blindly or uncritically, because of the rhetoric, or for any other reason. Please, you check the facts; please check my arithmetic, if you find errors please let me know. If you don't find errors, then I hope you'll take this very very seriously.

Now you are important people because you can think. If there's anything that is in short supply in the world today its people who are willing to think. So here's a challenge. Can you think of any problem, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long term solutions is in any demonstratable way, aided, assisted or advanced by having larger populations in our local levels, state levels, national level, or global level? Can you think of anything that can get better if we crowd more people into our cities, our towns, into our state our nation or on this earth?

Now I'll close with these words from the Late reverend Martin Luther King Jnr who said, unlike the plagues of the dark ages, our contemporary diseases, which we do not yet understand, the modern plague of over population is solvable with means we have discovered and with resource we posses. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution, but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and the education of the billions who are its victims.

So I hope I've made a reasonable case for my opening statement, that I think the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand this very simple arithmetic.

Thank you very, very much.