Last week, I attended a high-level CEO dialogue at the U.S.-India Energy Partnership Summit, organized by Yale and the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)-North America. The dialogue, held in Washington, explored how businesses can accelerate the development and adoption of green technology and how U.S-India collaboration is at the forefront of efforts to promote clean energy.
U.S. leaders present included Yale’s president, Dr. Richard C. Levin, Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan B. Poneman, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Dr. John P. Holden, and Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.). Leaders from India included the president of TERI-North America, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri; the Indian Ambassador to the U.S., Her Excellency Ms. Nirupama Rao; the Indian government’s principal scientific adviser, Dr. Rajagopala Chidambaram; and the chairman and director of PTC India Ltd., Tantra Narayan Thakur.
With the economy on a shaky road to recovery, it has become clear that the Great Recession triggered a fundamental change in the way Americans are forced to operate in the globalized economy. Everyone is feeling the strains. The archetype of the “company man” is fast going extinct, schools and other public services are facing record budget cuts, our infrastructure is antiquated and deteriorating every day, and access to global labor markets has created a flat line in wage increases for the poorest Americans.
But it’s not all gloom and doom. America has long been the global destination for the planet’s most daring and innovative minds, and globalization has only fueled our ability to tap into the global intellectual fountain. Think of the recent slump as growing pains. With the sheer amount of change in the last generation, it is inevitable that there will need to be an adjustment period where we as a nation reinvent how we operate our economy and start to implement long-term solutions that will ensure a 21st century of unimaginable progress for all Americans.
Technology has always played a key role in driving the U.S. economy forward. But over the past decade or so, it is not just the big players — government, Fortune 500 companies and research universities — that are benefiting. Personal computers, broadband Internet and now smartphones have put cutting-edge technology into the hands of small-business owners, nonprofit leaders and entrepreneurs, creating immense opportunities for each person to do what he or she does best.
Facing serious economic and political constraints, how can the United States effectively engage Arab countries in the midst of transition and help support Arab voices for dignity, opportunity and greater inclusion? At the Institute for Education’s first session of its 21st INFO season, Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs Robert Hormats weighed in on this critical question, and Indonesia’s ambassador to the United States, Dino Djalal, pointed to the power of example in Indonesia’s experience with democracy.
Fresh from a trip to the Middle East, where he met with students in Tahrir Square, Secretary Hormats argued that the United States cannot — and should not — try to micromanage transitions in the Arab world or dictate what democracy should look like in each Arab nation trying to find its way.
The United States has advocated democratic and liberal reforms in the Middle East for over half a century. Sometimes it has worked behind the scenes. Other times, it has been out in front, trying to catalyze change.
Whatever the strategy, U.S. policymakers have repeatedly found their efforts stymied by the grip of longstanding authoritarian regimes, the persistence of deeply rooted cultures and social norms, and hostility to Western “meddling.” How ironic, then, that, when change finally arrived in the Middle East, the United States was taken by surprise — just like everyone else watching from the outside — and left scrambling to keep up as the situation on the ground changed on almost a daily basis. Even more ironic, now that the historic transition that the United States has long supported is finally under way, American policymakers — like their counterparts in Europe — are hardly in a position to lend the Arab world much support.
In the end, it wasn’t a grand bargain that averted the possibility of yet another government shutdown this week and kicked the fiscal can down the road for at least another month and a half. There wasn’t any shelving of politics for the greater good. And there certainly weren’t any heroes. In the end, FEMA’s announcement that it had found $114 million — enough to limp through to the end of the fiscal year — cut the Gordian Knot of perpetual Washington political wrangling. And with $1 billion less to draw on during the next fiscal year, it will be disaster victims who bear the brunt.
Anders Breivik’s rampage in Norway last week has intensified scrutiny of the EU’s attitude toward immigration. Many Europeans are increasingly vocal in declaring multiculturalism a failure and complaining that immigrants exploit their generous welfare systems without attempting to assimilate.
America’s also in the midst of an important immigration debate — but one that is mind-boggling compared to the one taking place across the pond. While we debate incessantly about how to stop illegal immigration, we barely talk about how to ensure that we continue to attract the world’s best: the brightest students, the most productive researchers and the most innovative entrepreneurs. At a time when our leaders can’t seem to agree on anything, one would think policies to bring and keep such talent here would earn nonpartisan support (there are some who joke that we should staple a green card to the visa of every immigrant who graduates from an American college or university).
In 1971, this sentence started popping up on computer screens all across ARPANET, the network we recognize today as the ancestor of the modern Internet. The whimsical message, it soon emerged, was the work of “Creeper,” the first-ever self-replicating computer program. Created by a Massachusetts researcher, Creeper traveled from computer to computer, displaying its simple message before hopping to the next one. It didn’t delete any files, it didn’t snatch any personal information — it just said hello. Someone even developed a companion program, “Reaper,” that followed Creeper around, removing it from infected systems.
In light of the recent Japanese nuclear accident caused by one of the largest earthquakes the country had experienced in more than 300 years, I reflect on the future of nuclear power and how public perception has certainly been affected. These events are devastating, there is no doubt. It might, however, be an opportune time for us to step back and look at recent events objectively. An initial knee-jerk reaction is to point to this accident as a confirmation that nuclear energy is dangerous and causes dramatic public harm. However, giving up on nuclear energy would be hasty, short-sighted and counterproductive.
Our current energy supply and consumption trends are unsustainable in the long term. We live in a word increasingly constrained by multiple objectives competing for finite resources (time, money, technology, availability, etc.). Countries are playing a balancing act between reducing greenhouse gas emissions, addressing climate change concerns, achieving energy security by ensuring an adequate, reliable and safe supply shielded from volatile prices and ensuring economic growth. While there is certainly no silver bullet, nuclear energy does indeed play a critical role in bridging these objectives.
The unrest that continues to grip the Middle East is, first and foremost, a reminder of a truth that is too often forgotten: The desire to live in dignity is more powerful than any dictator or army.
It’s also a reminder of another truth that most would prefer to overlook: our ability to discern the geopolitical signs of the times remains remarkably poor. Recent history is replete with examples of such failures — failures to predict as well as predictions that turned out to be incorrect, often egregiously so.
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