Harvest Plus, a research organization funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fortify crops for developing nations, is focusing on using conventional breeding techniques rather than genetic engineering.

A multivitamin for the world’s poor could be found in a cup of corn meal.

Scientists in Spain have engineered African lines of white corn to provide high levels of beta carotene, a key source of vitamin A, a nutrient critical to protecting eyesight.

The grain, which has an orange tint because of the beta-carotene, also contains significant levels of vitamin C and folate.

Less than a cup of the corn could provide the recommended daily intake of vitamin A, scientists reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers said the achievement “opens the way for the development of nutritionally complete” grains.

The corn joins versions of rice and other crops that scientists are trying to breed to alleviate malnutrition in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some 250 million preschool children are deficient in vitamin A, and as many as 500,000 kids go blind each year for lack of the nutrient, according to the World Health Organization.

The Rockefeller Foundation is pushing ahead with an effort to produce large amounts of a vitamin A-enriched rice, known as Golden Rice. At World Food Prize’s Borlaug Dialogue symposium last fall, the foundation’s president, Judith Rodin, said the rice could “save almost 3 million children’s lives, while nourishing as many as 300 million more.”

Like the corn, the rice came from genetic engineering, which involves adding genes to the plant from other species to give the crop new traits.

“We have so many millions of people around the world who have diets that are less than ideal,” said Greg Jaffe, a specialist in agricultural biotechnology with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group in Washington. “We should be using all the tools available to try to improve those diets.

Biotech seed companies such as Monsanto and Pioneer Hi-Bred are focusing their research on crop traits that will be in demand in developed nations, such as soybeans with oils that are better for the heart and corn that is drought tolerant.

Harvest Plus, a research organization funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fortify crops for developing nations, is focusing instead on using conventional breeding techniques rather than genetic engineering.

The group is developing fortified varieties of several crops, including corn, beans, millet, wheat rice and cassava, through conventional crops.

But biotech crops have met resistance in many regions, including Africa, where the fortified versions are targeted.

The first vitamin A-enhanced corn variety is targeted for release in Zambia in 2011 and 2012. Other crops will be fortified with iron and zinc.

Conventional breeding may take longer than genetic engineering, but ultimately the new crop may be available sooner, said Yassir Islam, a spokesman for Harvest Plus, an outgrowth of a network of research centers, called the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

So far in the greenhouse trials, yields of the biotech corn are equivalent to those in conventional varieties, one of the researchers, Paul Christou, wrote in an e-mail. The research has been funded through the Spanish government and a European Union program.

The scientists have been experimenting on white corn because that’s the favored type in their target areas of Africa. But they don’t believe hungry people will turn down the grain if it’s orange.

“Our intended target population is not well-fed people in industrialized countries, rather starving people in Africa, South America and Asia!” Christou wrote.

Philip Brasher is a reporter for The Des Moines Register. E-mail: pbrasher@dmreg.com

Whether by Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter or other technological means, most everybody is “social networking” their brains out these days.

We’re signing on enthusiastically not because we’re starved for more technology.

Rather, in a society that has grown more mobile and global, detached and fragmented, we crave community, and social networking hits the spot.

These are virtual communities, mind you, and don’t expect your Twitter buddies to give you a hug when you need one.

But this is community nonetheless, even if you never see your favorites’ faces or learn their real names.

“In and through community lies the salvation of the world,” author M. Scott Peck wrote in 1986 in “The Different Drum.”

If that’s true, then the world is well on its way to being saved.

At the Tucson Citizen, online commentators have formed such a vivid community that even casual readers know what to expect from Towken1 and leftfield, among others.

At news of the Citizen’s eventual closure, even some of our harshest critics lamented the loss of their virtual community on our Web site. They’ve found a haven here, and they’re loath to let it go.

We understand. Our newsroom is a community, too, and most of us will miss it when it disintegrates – just as most of us miss other neighborhoods and workplaces we have left behind.

But now comes technology, ever ready to fill that void – whether tapping into professional contacts through LinkedIn, chatting about pirates and Cuba on Facebook or merely swapping headlines and inane “going to Wal-Mart” bulletins via Twitter.

Social networking is a great way to conduct public relations and advertising, if done unobtrusively with deftness and decency.

It’s a terrific way to network with professional contacts as well.

And it’s an even better way to catch up with long-lost friends and quickly get a handle on where they are now.

A Facebook connection, for example, led me to get reacquainted with one of my favorite young reporters from yesteryear. She’s now a major network anchorwoman in Chicago.

I’d never have learned about that happy outcome if not for social networking.

I’ve reconnected with many, many more via LinkedIn, thanks to cousin Jennifer Miller who insisted I join that network.

Today, LinkedIn says, my 139 connections link me to more than 644,200 professionals.

Don’t be impressed. High- profile real estate networker Bill Austin of Phoenix has more than 8,700 connections. The number of professionals he’s linked to must be staggering.

Numbers don’t matter as much as consistency, though.

I recently quipped in a column that Twitter must be an incurable genetic disorder. Now I’ve begun to tentatively Tweet, too, so I’m just another twit.

My friend Becky and I used to brag about being anti-tech, able to operate nothing more complex than a toaster. We made Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber look like a high-tech dude.

Not anymore, not for me anyway. I always will prefer the feel of newsprint to the mouse and computer approach, the painting in a gallery to the artwork on a screen.

But nowadays, we can have it all – and we’d better, if we expect to keep up.

Fun chatting with you, but I’m off to a workshop on social networking. See you in cyberspace!

Reach Billie Stanton at 573-4664, bstanton@tucsoncitizen.com or billiestanton@gmail.com. Or tweet @billiemax.

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Social networking

Facebook

MySpace

LinkedIn

Twitter

Gloria Tristani

While the number of radio stations is growing, ownership is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands due to widespread media consolidation.

This means today’s radio often offers national playlists, syndicated programming and other piped-in content that threatens localism and the diversity of voices on the public airwaves.

When I was a member of the Federal Communications Commission, we established low-power radio service in 2000 as a partial antidote to the negative effects of consolidation.

Low-power radio makes new licenses available for nonprofit community organizations, churches, schools and local governments.

LPFM informs people about what is going on in their neighborhood or town, features local musicians and unique programming that reflects the local culture, and breaks from the same homogenized content that have pushed radio listeners away.

When LPFM was created, it was intended to reach across the whole country from rural areas, to towns and cities – excluding only the most congested urban markets such as New York and Los Angeles.

These ambitions were halted when Congress placed unfair restrictions on the service due to existing broadcasters’ exaggerated charges of interference. Congress directed the FCC to commission a study to investigate these claims.

In 2003, MITRE, a not-for-profit engineering and consulting firm, concluded its report and found, as the FCC had from the beginning, that this service would not cause harmful interference to existing radio stations.

There are 800 existing LPFMs, but there is space for hundreds, potentially thousands more if Congress acts to remove the unnecessary restrictions placed on this service.

There are wonderful examples of LPFM in rural areas, playing an important part in bringing communities together. Clay, W.Va., is an Appalachian coal town just north of Charleston and is home to one of the only local radio stations in Clay County.

WYAP-LP is run by a handful of dedicated volunteers and the programming ranges from bluegrass music, to coverage of local sports games – and on Friday they play only West Virginia artists, giving a boost to many old-time musicians throughout the area.

WQRZ-LP in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi brought national attention to the lifesaving potential of LPFM when station manager Bryce Phillips waded through Katrina’s floodwater with a battery-pack strapped to his back to keep the station on air – broadcasting important emergency information – in the face of the deadly storm.

In the fields of southwest Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers immigrant farmworkers who pick tomatoes for the largest fast-food companies and suppliers in the country, have carved out their slice of the airwaves with Radio Conciencia.

WCIW-LP, carries programming in Spanish, Haitian Creole, and a number of indigenous Mayan languages spoken by the workers who are battling against subpoverty wages and in extreme cases, modern-day slavery in Florida’s tomato fields.

With the repeal of Congressional restrictions on LPFM, there could be more stations such as WYAP, WQRZ, or WCIW – not only in rural but also in suburban and urban America.

Low-power radio promotes localism and diversity, not by limiting the rights of existing voices, but by adding new voices to the mix.

Congress must enhance the statutory obligation to “encourage the larger and more effective use of radio in the public interest” by allowing this service to expand.

Bipartisan members of Congress recently have introduced a proposal to do so. President Obama’s past support of similar legislation, and his pledge to encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media and to promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, demonstrate his commitment to expanding low-power radio.

Moreover, the issue of expanding low-power radio is ultimately a popular demand from community and civil rights groups, churches, schools, immigrants and average citizens.

When I served as FCC commissioner, we received scores of calls and letters from people across the country who wanted to use the public airwaves to reach out to their communities or who wanted to hear more diversity and local content that reflects their communities.

These people’s voices have been ignored for far too long. It’s time we hear these voices. We can do so by expanding low-power radio.

Gloria Tristani is a former FCC member. This commentary was distributed by the American Forum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational organization that provides views of state experts on major public concerns to stimulate informed discussion.

There was much hubbub in the media last month about the theory of evolution as posited by Charles Darwin on his 200th birthday.

However, as we approach the anniversary of his April 19, 1882, death, it should be noted that there are many who would question such a thesis – not evolution per se, but that the process of natural selection could conceivably explain it.

This has nothing to do with biblical accounts of creation, but rather on the basis of evidence, or lack of.

As the biological scientists often are wont to say, evolution is a fact, and in that they are correct. There was a general rolling out, over vast time scales, of life on Earth – from the tiniest one-cell creatures to the massive and complex animals and plants we see today.

Somehow it occurred. Darwin had a poor explanation.

The idea itself was beguiling. Darwin said the living world was organized and thrived by an accumulation of small random changes, now called chance mutations, and survival of the fittest.

He stated that these could – and did – produce bursting prodigies of biological craftsmanship. He had deemed a chance-based theory “scientific,” but without any predictability.

So, pure chance is at the root of this stupendous edifice of life. The man himself had no examples of this happening in the wild, but he could observe artificial selection.

He watched farmers intentionally breed animals for certain characteristics and reasoned that the same process, given enough time and chances, would produce new species, and indeed, our whole majestic living world.

Unfortunately, what is true down on the farm is not true in the woods. What goes on in the barn stays in the barn.

Natural selection does occur, but it only helps maintain the growth and fitness of a population or species and does not serve as a ladder to ever more complexity and new forms of life.

The idea that through natural selection life evolved from fish to man is a fish story and not at all persuasive without evidence.

Many scientists are heard to say that Darwin’s theory is “beyond all reasonable doubt,” but that is a bluff. There is no way to measure it in action beyond the confines of a particular species. Strong conviction is weak proof.

It is true that genetics has revealed all the beings on Earth are related, but how it happened is the $64 enigma. One day we all woke up from the womb and this boisterous world was already here in all of its particulars.

With the discovery of the cell, those baroque little beings, the mystery of life became only more perplexing. In the last 50 years, an army of researchers have probed the workings of the cell and discovered a mini-mite-sized world loaded with unexpected surprises – and the biggest surprise of all was that Darwin was wildly off the mark.

Many Darwinists will trumpet the discovery of DNA as a triumph for the theory. It is no such thing. Instead, it makes it all the more improbable.

The widely held assumption that the fossil remains of numerous extinct species implies evolution is not correct. Instead of life forms gradually changing into more complex organisms, geologists discovered that species and groups of species appeared suddenly without any trace of evolutionary development – and then just as quickly, disappeared from the record.

Darwin knew this in 1859 when he published his book, but hoped in time the fossil record would prove him right once more specimens had been uncovered to fill in the blanks. It didn’t.

Darwin’s theory is not a robust theory and never has been, but it has not been replaced because there is literally no other idea to take its place without resorting to mystical explanations, something many scientists frown upon.

They are solidly rooted in the physical, measurable world. No imagination required.

And yet, contrary the contention that without Darwin’s theory we couldn’t do science, the opposite is true. It is for public consumption only, not a necessary tool for research.

The investigation of our planet has nothing to do with a belief in Darwin’s ideas. Evolution has become a fill-in word to describe any phenomena without the slightest understanding of how it happened. So, it has become an almost useless word for passing on information. “Stuff happens” would do as well.

There always have been cracks in the armor of Darwinism, intelligent people mumbling under their breath about the theory. Now the cracks have turned into fissures as more valiant ones have the courage to leap into the breach in the service of truth. Eventually, the whole edifice will collapse.

Today, many are calling Darwin’s beliefs to account and despite the media’s wall of fog, the tide is coming in. Darwin has seen his best days.

In America especially, Darwin’s view is the orthodox view. It is a doctrine badly in need of a reformation.

Contrary to the august tenets of science that everything should be put into question, there is a great fear among some that this most sacred of cows will be shaken and shown empty of content.

Ron Lancaster, a Tucson writer and former teacher, is the author of four books.

Research associate Crystal Pacutin pulls a frozen vial of human embryonic stem cells at the University of Michigan Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich. For all the headlines about the medical promise of embryonic stem cells, there is a sobering reality. The science to prove that promise will take years, and the people who ultimately might benefit most are those who aren't yet sick.

For all the past week’s headlines about embryonic stem cells’ medical promise there is a sobering reality: The science to prove that promise will take years, probably too long for many of today’s seriously ill.

On his desk at Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard stem cell researcher Dr. George Daley keeps a file about 3 inches thick of e-mails and letters from patients and families who hope his work could help them. They are both inspiration and caution.

“It took much of the 20th century to figure out how to deliver chemicals as drugs,” noted Daley. “We should be humble and appreciate it may take us the better part of this century to truly harness the power of cells as medicines.”

Nor is there any way to know which kinds of cells ultimately will work — embryo-derived ones that elicit heated moral debate, or some of the many other types of stem cells that scientists are studying furiously.

President Barack Obama last week lifted restrictions on taxpayer funding of research using human embryonic stem cells, widening the field.

The Bush administration had limited taxpayer money for that research to a small number of stem cell “lines,” or groups that were created before Aug. 9, 2001, lines that in many cases had drawbacks that limited their potential use.

Make no mistake: Federal law forbids taxpayer money from being used to create or destroy embryos, and only Congress could change that, considered unlikely.

The National Institutes of Health now is developing guidelines on what kinds of stem cell studies will be allowed. The rules are due in July.

It’s a young science to be so contentious. University of Wisconsin scientists culled the first human embryonic stem cells — from an embryo no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence — a mere decade ago.

They’re prized because they can turn into any cell of the body. If scientists could control that metamorphosis, they might create replacement tissue to treat a variety of diseases and conditions, from diabetes to Parkinson’s to the paralysis of spinal cord injury.

But that initial culling of the cells does kill the days-old embryo. So critics say using the resulting stem cells — which can propagate in lab dishes indefinitely — makes taxpayers who are morally opposed to embryo research complicit in it.

There are various alternatives. Different types of stem cells can come from fetuses and placenta, blood and bone marrow. So-called “adult” stem cells that already have matured to create a given tissue-type aren’t considered as flexible as embryonic ones, although some recently discovered in men’s testicles seem close.

Then there are recently developed “reprogrammed” stem cells where scientists take, say, an ordinary skin cell and slip genes inside it to turn back the clock and make it embryonic-like again. If those so-called iPS cells truly prove to be as flexible as they appear, they could remove the moral debate — and even leading embryonic stem cell scientists hope that happens.

Meanwhile, critics argue that adult stem cells already can cure people. Indeed, what people once called “bone-marrow transplants” are injections of stem cells destined to grow blood and immune-system cells, and they do treat various blood and immune disorders.

But taking a stem cell destined to produce blood and making it grow heart muscle or nerves instead is very different, stressed Dr. John Gearhart of the University of Pennsylvania.

Adult stem cell injections temporarily helped heart-failure patients a few years ago. The new cells didn’t grow but for a few months secreted substances that helped what was left of the old scarred heart tissue work a little better, he said. New attempts using different stem cells are under way now.

Spinal cord injury may be more amenable to stem cell therapy than diseases that could overtake and damage newly implanted cells. Stem cells have helped paralyzed rodents move again by repairing insulation lost around damaged nerves. In the first attempt at an embryonic stem cell therapy this summer, Geron Corp. will test if a few recently paralyzed people react similarly.

Last week another California company, DaVinci Biosciences, reported injecting a few paralyzed patients in Ecuador with stem cells from their own bone marrow. The researchers reported no side effects and recorded some signs of improvement in movement and bladder function two years later, although there was no way to know if that was due to the stem cells.

Scientists long thought Type 1 diabetes might be the easiest disease for stem cells to tackle. After all, some patients today do well with transplants of donated insulin-producing cells. But Gearhart said it’s proving hard to grow pancreatic cells from any sort of stem cell. They seem to be missing compounds essential for their survival.

“It’s the whole neighborhood” that may have to be recreated, he said.

Desperate patients don’t always recognize those hurdles, laments Gearhart — who has tried to dissuade some heading overseas to clinics advertising stem cell “cures.” Just last month, Israeli doctors reported the sad case of a 9-year-old with a fatal brain-disease whose parents carried him to Russia for injections of purported fetal stem cells. Not only did the injections not help, they apparently triggered a brain tumor discovered four years later.

“You try to give the message there of caution, caution, caution,” Gearhart said.

Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

JACOB APPEL

When physicians at University College in London recently announced the birth of what they described as the world’s first “breast-cancer gene-free baby” – a designer infant pre-screened for the BRCA1 cancer gene – critics focused public debate on the question of whether such screening should be permitted.

Yet as genetic screening becomes increasingly routine, it is the opposite question that will likely raise far more ethical challenges:

If pre-implantation genetic diagnosis during in vitro fertilization (IVF) can successfully prevent children from developing serious illnesses, why shouldn’t such screening be required?

Women who carry the BRCA1 gene have approximately an 80 percent chance of developing breast cancer and a 40 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer. The mother in this particular case opted for screening after the mutant gene had triggered malignancies in her husband’s mother, sister, grandmother and cousin.

While breast cancer can be treated – five year survival rates now stand at 88 percent – a girl born without BRCA1 has a drastically reduced likelihood of confronting mastectomy or chemotherapy.

Since 2005, British doctors have used the same technology to prevent retinoblastoma, a defect that causes blinding pediatric tumors. More recently, parents have been permitted to screen out highly genetic forms of colon cancer. There is no evidence that the procedure causes any adverse side effects for the offspring

The most obvious advantage of mandatory screening is that it will reduce the long-term suffering of the children who are spared disease.

At the same time, preventing future cancers will certainly save tax dollars. These savings could be redirected toward researching new therapies and providing quality care for current patients.

The money might also help to defer the enormous public costs of fertility therapy, coverage for which a growing number of states now require of private insurance plans.

If all policy holders are indirectly subsidizing fertility therapy through higher healthcare premiums, it does not seem so unreasonable for them to ask that the couples who benefit try to produce healthy kids.

While similar screening cannot realistically be imposed upon individuals conceiving “the old-fashioned way,” for obvious reasons of logistics and privacy, these invasive aspects of screening do not apply to IVF.

Opponents of mandatory screening likely will point out that such a rule significantly limits the reproductive autonomy of parents. This is certainly true.

However, Western societies long have acknowledged that parental authority cannot undermine the medical interests of a child. Jehovah’s Witnesses may not deny their children blood transfusions; Christian Scientists cannot substitute prayer for life-saving antibiotics.

As United States Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge wrote in the landmark case of Prince v. Massachusetts, “Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves, but it does not follow that they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children.”

Child welfare laws certainly prevent a mother from intentionally exposing her daughter to an environmental toxin that produces an 80 percent risk of future cancer. Our society would view this act as child abuse – and rightly so.

Similarly, American courts consistently compel pediatric cancer therapy, even when parents object.

Yet once one accepts the right of the government to elevate the best interests of the child over the parents’ private wishes, as we do in our society, the distinction between mandating pre-implantation screening and requiring post-birth care appears to be both arbitrary and indefensible.

The fear expressed by many opponents of genetic screening, both elective and mandatory, is that our civilization is sliding down a slope toward selecting embryos for their skin complexion or their eye-color.

These skeptics equate all forms of eugenics, even benign and socially-beneficial programs, with Nazi sterilization laws and unscientific theories of racial superiority. The reality is that pre-implantation genetic selection, like many technologies, can be used either for good or for evil.

On this continuum, the prevention of serious illness seems like an unambiguous and inimitable good. Maybe the benefits are so clear-cut that opting out shouldn’t be an option.

Jacob Appel, M.D., taught bioethics at Brown University for many years, practiced healthcare law in New York City and Rhode Island, and publishes frequently on issues at the nexus of law, philosophy and medicine. His essays in these fields recently have appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Providence Journal and many academic publications.

Charles Darwin

Whether by random selection or grand design, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were both born 200 years ago on Feb. 12, 1809.

Vastly different in background and education, they grew up to become two of the most polarizing figures of their era.

But while Lincoln is now widely lionized as a unifying leader, Darwin remains one of the few historical thinkers whose very name can provoke a fight.

And what a fight it has been. In the United States, fierce opposition to Darwin – or more specifically to Darwin’s theory of evolution – has been spearheaded for decades by conservative Christians who pit their interpretation of the biblical account of creation against what they see as the false and dangerous idea that human beings and other living things have evolved over time through natural selection.

Unfortunately, the locus of the battle has been and continues to be public schools, institutions largely unprepared and unequipped to broker ideological conflicts between religion and science.

Lawyers and judges haven’t been able to put the controversy to rest despite two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1968, an Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution in schools was declared unconstitutional by the Court under the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

Then in 1987, the Court struck down a Louisiana law mandating “balanced treatment” of evolution and creationism, ruling that the First Amendment bars religious views from being taught as science in public schools.

But opponents of evolution keep coming back to fight another day.

The latest battleground is Texas, where last month the State Board of Education tentatively dropped the requirement that students explore the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution – a provision that many science educators charge has been used to promote creationism in schools.

The new language requires students to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing.” Supporters of teaching evolution aren’t declaring victory yet; a final vote is expected in March.

Opponents of evolution in Texas and other states want to make the debate about the freedom of students to learn about the “weaknesses” of evolution.

Unlike the creationist arguments of the past, this strategy has broad popular appeal. According to a recent Zogby poll, 80 percent of respondents agreed that “teachers and students should have the academic freedom to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution as a scientific theory.”

Of course, who can be against “academic freedom”? But the real question – the one that concerns the science community – is, Who gets to define “weaknesses”?

Yes, there are questions still to be answered about evolution, just as there are unanswered questions about any scientific theory. For the vast majority of scientists, however, the theory of evolution is the foundation of modern biology, and no credible scientific evidence has been found to challenge its major tenets.

Science organizations worry that pushing for evolution’s “weaknesses” to be taught in public schools is little more than a back-door attempt to undermine the teaching of evolution.

They are right to worry. What’s most disturbing about this fight is the damage it does to science education.

I won’t go so far as to blame America’s widespread scientific illiteracy on our culture wars over evolution. But I think it’s fair to say that endless conflicts and lawsuits contribute to dumbed-down textbooks and teacher avoidance of the much-feared “e-word.”

I’m all for exposing students to some of the philosophical, religious and political issues surrounding the challenges to evolution – as part of studying the history of science, for example.

But at a time when American high school students rank 27th among students from developed nations in scientific literacy, and in the face of environmental crisis and economic uncertainty, the U.S. can’t afford for biology classrooms to be church-state war zones.

The Texas state board got it right: Encourage students to evaluate scientific theories, but make sure they learn how to do so using the scientific method.

Love him or hate him, 200 years after Charles Darwin’s birth his theory of evolution has largely won the day in the world of science – forever changing how we understand ourselves and the world around us.

But with religious opposition still at a fever pitch, Darwin is likely to remain a figure of controversy and conflict far into the future. After all, it took 400 years for Galileo to get his apology.

Charles C. Haynes is senior scholar at the First Amendment Center (www.firstamendmentcenter.org). E-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org.

Christmas tradition has threatened a “lump of coal” in the stocking for those who were naughty.

With the challenges facing our economy and energy infrastructure, coal should be looked upon as a special gift providing affordable and domestic energy.

Some lay claim to the notion that Arizona should steer away from the source providing nearly a quarter of its electricity. Instead, some say renewable energy is the answer. In fact, renewables are just part of the answer.

Arizona currently ranks in the top quarter of the country with the highest electric rates. States nearby, such as Utah and Wyoming, are among those with the lowest electricity rates. This is partly due to their reliance on coal to meet their energy needs.

In fact, one of Arizona’s leading energy companies has just requested a 6 percent rate increase to cover the rising cost of natural gas. But utility rate increases aren’t new in Arizona. Energy costs have doubled just during the past five years.

The fact is demand is not waning; it’s increasing as fast as population growth statewide. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that electricity demand will grow 41 percent by 2030.

Solar and wind power are great to work with coal during high-demand energy moments in a day, but they can’t generate enough power and be translated into electricity quickly enough to sustain the requirements of our laptops, cell phones, iPods or our cooling and heating needs.

Coal can serve our energy needs, lighting every twinkling light, iPhone, and Wii through the next 250 years of holiday celebrations.

With the nearly 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves in the U.S. (the equivalent of 800 billion barrels of oil, more than three times Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves), giving coal as gift says, “I believe in our country’s energy independence.”

The median household income in Arizona is $48,308 a year. A recent study of information from the U.S. Department of Energy shows families with an annual household income below $50,000 pay 24 percent of their after-tax earnings on energy.

That’s roughly $5,000 per year on utility bills while their income has had an average increase of only $261 since 2001. That doesn’t leave much for other necessities, let alone holiday gifts and celebrations.

As far as the environment is concerned, coal-based electricity plants are 70 percent cleaner since 1970. At the same time, our use of coal has tripled. New clean coal technologies and continuing investments in emissions control systems also make coal part of the energy mix for the future.

Coal has long been an economic boon for our nation and with constantly evolving clean coal technologies, some developed at Arizona State University and at the WESTCARB Partnership in the Colorado Plateau, coal can be this season’s gift that turns our economy around.

More than $6 billion in clean coal research is underway right now in 41 states, including Arizona, boosting those communities with jobs and revenue.

Global demand for power generating technologies and services is anticipated to create a $480 billion export market over the next three decades and support more than 600,000 jobs in the U.S. power-equipment industry.

Of course, China is diligently working on greenhouse-gas-capturing technologies of its own. But don’t we want the jobs and fiscal strength clean-coal technology will bring to stay right here in the U.S.?

So, go ahead. Put coal in the stocking of your favorite people. Tell them it’s a gift that Arizona cannot overlook in creating a balanced energy strategy that includes efficiency, security, economic development and the environment.

Brad Jones is the west region communications director for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (www.cleancoalusa.org).

WASHINGTON – The agricultural biotechnology business could hardly have had a better friend than George W. Bush.

His administration challenged the European Union’s anti-biotech regulations and avoided imposing rules domestically that would hinder the industry’s growth, with the exception of the most controversial products, such as pharmaceutical crops.

But there are clues President-elect Barack Obama could be an ally of the industry, too, especially in the effort to put biotech crops into widespread use in Africa. These hints come from both statements of policy and the type of people from whom he’s taking advice.

Consider:

• Obama explicitly endorsed genetically engineered crops in an answer to a candidate questionnaire initiated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other scientific groups. He said biotech crops “have provided enormous benefits” to farmers and expressed confidence “that we can continue to modify plants safely.”

• His top scientific advisers during the campaign included Sharon Long, a former board member of the biotech giant Monsanto Co., and Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate who co-chaired a key study of genetically engineered crops by the National Academy of Sciences back in 2000.

• Obama has endorsed the idea of a second Green Revolution, a concept understood to include biotechnology, to feed the world’s growing population. In an exchange of letters in June with Norman Borlaug, the Iowa-born plant breeder who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the first Green Revolution, Obama said he was “deeply committed to greater agriculture research and global agricultural development.”

• Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, an outspoken proponent of agricultural biotechnology, is considered a leading candidate to become Obama’s agriculture secretary. The Biotechnology Industry Organization named him its governor of the year in 2001.

• Obama has called for doubling foreign development aid to $50 billion and establishing a special initiative to provide farmers in poor countries with affordable fertilizer and “improved seeds.” Obama’s official statements on development are “pretty strong on agricultural science,” said Robert Paarlberg, author of the recent book, “Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa.” “I certainly haven’t seen any sense of opposition to technology.”

Obama’s administration will be closely watched to see whether he follows through. Public and congressional interest in boosting world food production could wane, given the recent plunge in commodity prices and the global economic slowdown.

“We need an across-the-board revival of our agricultural development work,” said Paarlberg, a Wellesley College professor.

A doubling of government spending on agricultural research over five years could lift more than 280 million people out of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

However, U.S. spending on foreign agricultural research has fallen dramatically since the 1980s.

And even though Congress inserted $150 million in agricultural development assistance in an emergency spending bill this year at a time when food prices were soaring worldwide, that extra money only compensated for a cut that lawmakers had made earlier in the aid budget.

Paarlberg says U.S. agricultural aid is needed to help African scientists do their own modification of food crops.

“Let them get comfortable with the technology, and let them sell it to their governments,” he said.

In the long run, he says, that would make biotechnology more acceptable in Africa than continuing to push the biotech products from U.S. seed companies like Monsanto and Pioneer Hi-Bred.

Africa is home to more than 900 million people, or 14 percent of the world’s population. Regardless of how it’s done, the U.S. industry would surely count any president a friend who opens that continent to biotechnology.

Philip Brasher is a reporter for The Des Moines Register. Contact him at pbrasher@dmreg.com.

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Biotech crops expand

The popularity of biotech crops is growing in major regions of the world, including China, India and South America. Not so in Africa. The exceptions:

• South African farmers grew about 4 million acres of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton in 2007, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications.

• Egypt and Burkina Faso recently have decided to allow biotech versions of corn and cotton, respectively.

Not enviropigs - just plain pigs

Green pork, anyone?

A group of 21 hogs living at a Canadian university have been genetically engineered so their manure will be less polluting even if it’s just as smelly as a conventional pig’s.

Scientists at the University of Guelph envision these Enviropigs’ pork someday being marketed as good for the environment.

No one has eaten it yet, but the scientists say the pork should taste like a conventional Yorkshire’s. They “look like regular pigs, they act like other pigs, and they regrettably smell like other pigs,” said Cecil Forsberg, one of the Guelph scientists.

But for now, the pigs can’t leave the lab, although the Food and Drug Administration is considering an application from the university to allow the pork to go to market.

The FDA recently proposed guidelines for regulating genetically engineered animals such as the Enviropigs, but consumer activists say the rules are inadequate: The guidelines won’t require developers to disclose key details, such as what genes have been used to give the animals’ their distinctive traits, and food from the animals won’t have to be labeled.

Even if the FDA approves the Enviropigs or other biotech animals, it’s unclear whether farmers and processors will consider commercializing them.

There’s no evidence consumers are clamoring for high-tech foods.

“We more often hear the cries for something that is closer back to nature,” said Scott Eilert, vice president for research and development at Cargill Meat Solutions Corp., one of the largest U.S. meatpackers.

Eilert didn’t rule out ever marketing biotech meat, but he said it was “hard for me to imagine today.” He spoke at a recent forum on the issue sponsored by the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest and a liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress.

The dairy industry would be concerned about both domestic and international acceptance of milk from transgenic cattle.

About 10 percent of U.S. milk production is exported, and domestically, “there’s some consumer skepticism about the appropriateness of having food from transgenic animals,” said Jamie Jonker, director of regulatory affairs for the National Milk Producers Federation.

As for the pork industry, there’s little interest in genetically engineered hogs, said Mark Bogges, who follows swine research for the National Pork Board.

“Nobody wants that fight right now,” he said.

Greg Jaffe, who follows biotechnology issues for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says consumers could warm up to the idea of biotech meat and milk, but they’ll have to see the benefits and have confidence in government regulators.

He also said data about the animals should be made public while they are still under review at the FDA. That way, the public can “chime in to the process before it’s a fait accompli,” he said.

The Canadian scientists think their Enviropigs would fit the bill of providing a public benefit.

The pigs produce an enzyme in their saliva that can digest the phosphorus in their feed. That’s good for the environment because it means less phosphorus winds up in the manure and potentially foul rivers and streams.

The pigs also could cost slightly less to feed because they don’t need a phosphorus supplement.

The scientists say they’ll make all the data available to the public once the FDA finishes its review and will insist that the pigs’ pork carry special labels.

Still, they know the pigs could be a tough sell, even if the pork is marketed as environmentally friendly. That just isn’t considered something that consumers want.

“There’s no profit stream for producing our animals,” said John Phillips, another of the researchers. “Nobody makes money by protecting the environment.”

The FDA has given no timetable for finalizing its guidelines. So the rules — and the Enviropigs — may well greet the new Obama administration.

Philip Brasher is a reporter for The Des Moines Register. E-mail: pbrasher@dmreg.com

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Biotech animals in development

• Livestock resistant to diseases, such as cattle immune to mad cow.

• Pigs with omega-3 fatty acids that are good for human nutrition.

• Animals whose tissues and organs could be transplanted into humans.

• Hypoallergenic pets.

A group of academics, think-tank and industry representatives from around the Midwest recently gathered in Chicago to assess how globalization has impacted the heartland.

They talked about the loss of manufacturing, the shift to low-wage jobs and the brain drain that’s accompanied the removal of trade barriers.

And the former governors, university heads and others, brought together by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, brainstormed on how the region could make a comeback.

Two words kept coming up: science and education.

“We must put science at the forefront,” declared Roger Beachy, the founding president and director of the Danforth plant-science center in St. Louis.

While the Indian and Chinese governments make massive investments in biotechnology and agriculture, he said, our government has lagged in the basic research that could some day lead to new products.

We must elect a president who supports science, said Beachy.

Noting there are big differences in John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s approaches, Beachy referred the group to www.Sciencedebate2008.com, where both candidates answered 14 questions on a range of science issues. Responses are posted, and readers can grade them.

Sciencedebate2008 is a nonprofit organization sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the Council on Competitiveness, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, among others. It doesn’t endorse candidates.

Some of the candidates’ differences are ideological, though the answers are nuanced enough to make those subtle.

There is no mention, for example, of McCain runningmate Sarah Palin’s past stated support for allowing creationism along with evolution in schools.

And on embryonic stem-cell research, both McCain and Obama say they support federal funding, though only Obama said he would immediately lift the ban on it. Palin supports the ban.

Other answers reflect different views of the role of government. Shawn Otto, the CEO of sciencedebate2008, noted that on scientific innovation, Obama wants to double government funding of basic research in 10 years.

While McCain says he’d fund research in certain emerging fields, his plan centers on providing incentives to industry, through deregulation and lower taxes.

“Innovation is really what drives the American economy,” said Otto, stressing that science and technology have been responsible for half the nation’s economic growth since World War II.

Corporations, however, invest only 4 percent of their research and development money in basic research because of the time it takes to turn that into new products, he said.

On science education, McCain likewise said he’d bring corporations in, along with encouraging teacher development. Obama would support research on teaching strategies and create an office of Science, Technology Engineering and Math education. Obama scores significantly higher than McCain on every question with the roughly 1,300 online voters; McCain’s answers earned many F’s.

Science and technology directly affect our competitive edge and economic well-being. We need job-creating, energy-producing, environment-protecting innovations that take advantage of our natural resources and tap our brainpower. We need to imagine new cures to illnesses and new ways to improve life.

It’s not partisan to want a pro-science president. It’s practical.

Rekha Basu is an editorial columnist for the Des Moines Register. E-mail: rbasu@dmreg.com.

Alex Nelson

Arizonans are running on empty, and they’re not alone. People all across the country are suffering because our transportation system – the backbone of our economy for decades – is broken.

Our overdependence on oil and neglect of our roads has resulted in an overburdened, frail transportation system.

A lack of transit options has stranded too many Arizonans as gas prices rise and buying power falls.

Yet Arizona leaders in both major parties have failed to take serious action on policy to reduce our dependence on oil and alleviate stress on our pocketbooks.

Investment in public transit infrastructure needs to be a key part of our economic recovery.

With high gas prices, decreasing household budgets and a lagging economy, we can strengthen our state and communities by building a 21st century transportation system.

That project will create jobs, save Arizonans money, reduce our dependence on oil, revitalize communities, cut Arizona’s global warming emissions and decrease air pollution and its public health impacts.

The Arizona Public Interest Research Group Education Fund recently joined with Transportation for America to advocate for a five-point plan to move us in a new direction. We need to:

• Build to compete: We must catch and pass competitors in Asia and Europe by modernizing and expanding rail and transit networks to reduce oil dependence and connect the metro regions that are the engines of the modern economy.

• Invest in a clean, green recovery: Our state and nation will need cleaner vehicles and new fuels, but we also must support the cleanest forms of transportation – modern public transit, walking and biking – and energy-efficient, sustainable development.

• Fix what’s broken: Before building new roads to be maintained, we must restore our crumbling highways, bridges and transit systems.

• Stop wasteful spending: Re-evaluate projects in the pipeline to eliminate those with little economic return that could deepen, rather than relieve, our oil dependence.

• Save money: Provide more transit options that are affordable and efficient, while helping people to avoid high gas costs and traffic congestion.

Save taxpayer dollars by asking the private developers who reap real estate rewards from new rail stations and transit lines to contribute toward that service.

Acting on this five-point agenda has the potential to support 6.7 million jobs building $240 billion in ready-to-go rail and rapid bus projects in 78 metro areas; 14.8 million jobs over the next five years repairing crumbling bridges, roadways and transit systems for a $512 billion investment; reduce oil consumption; save money for our families; and help communities with growth and congestion.

In every recent recession, Congress has invested in infrastructure to spur recovery. Our future prosperity requires investment in our infrastructure, and our tax base depends on it.

Government cannot do this alone. Business and civic leaders as well as individuals must share a commitment to getting our state and nation moving again.

The next president, Congress and Arizona decision-makers can put us on the right path by committing to work together and adopt a bold plan.

The plan can guarantee that our transportation system produces the best returns for our economy and our communities.

Alex Nelson is with the Arizona PIRG Education Fund. E-mail: anelson@arizona pirg.org

Element to fuel cars abundant – stations aren’t

The Chevrolet Equinox fuel-cell vehicle draws onlookers at the University of Arizona Mall.

The last time I heard anyone talk about using hydrogen for transportation, some guy on an old newsreel was yelling, “Oh, the humanity” and the Hindenburg was crumbling to the ground in a huge fireball.

That, J. Byron McCormick assures me, will not happen with the fleet of hydrogen-powered SUVs General Motors has deployed under his leadership.

No explosions. No fireballs. No newsreel spectacular.

But also no gasoline. And no exhaust except for water and warm air. And a very green vehicle running on a fuel that could be manufactured with power from the sun.

Technically, it is possible – and it is being done now on a very small scale. Jay Leno drives a GM car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

But daunting practical barriers must be overcome before you can buy a car that runs on hydrogen and ditch the gasoline habit forever.

McCormick is executive director of fuel cell activities at GM – and he got his start at the University of Arizona, where he received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering. (For UA history buffs, McCormick is not related to a former UA president with the identical name: J. Byron McCormick.)

It was at UA that this McCormick first became interested in the technology of fuel cells, a device that breaks hydrogen into its two chemical components – oxygen and water – and in the process produces power to run an electric motor.

The technology is used on space vehicles and in nuclear submarines – mostly to produce water and oxygen, not power.

This week, McCormick returned to the UA campus with two Chevrolet Equinox sport utility vehicles that have been modified to run on hydrogen instead of gasoline. Except for fuel cell graphics plastered all over the SUVs, there was little obvious difference.

The vehicle drives like an “ordinary” one. But with an electric motor, it is totally silent while stopped and makes only a low hum when moving. Acceleration is impressive, with the vehicle leaping away from stops faster than gasoline-powered cars.

It will go about 200 miles on a hydrogen fill-up – but then what? There are no hydrogen pumps at your neighborhood gasoline station. There are a few around, but they are inaccessible to the public.

That’s the chicken-and-egg problem keeping all of us from driving hydrogen-powered cars: There isn’t a network of hydrogen fuel stations because there aren’t any hydrogen cars. And there aren’t any hydrogen cars because they have nowhere to fill up.

To nudge this problem off dead center, GM has hand-built about 100 hydrogen-powered SUVs and lent them – free – to drivers who live where there are a few fueling stations. Most are in the Los Angeles area, with a few in New York state and a handful in Washington, D.C.

Late-night host Jay Leno, well known as an automobile connoisseur, received one of the coveted vehicles. Most went to ordinary people willing to drive them and report any problems.

More will be built and distributed in Germany, South Korea, Japan and China, which have better-established hydrogen distribution networks.

There is no shortage of hydrogen. Vast quantities are vented as waste, often in the processing of petroleum. Or it can be made as needed, using electricity. If the electricity comes from solar cells, wind or some other renewal resource, the process is totally clean.

However, hydrogen also can be extracted from natural gas, releasing carbon dioxide. That makes the process less environmentally friendly.

McCormick predicts that production models of a GM hydrogen-powered vehicle will be rolling off the assembly lines by 2015 – only seven years from now. At first they are likely to be expensive boutique vehicles, but within five more years, they should be comparable in price to gasoline-powered vehicles of that time, McCormick said.

And what about the specter of scads of vehicles carrying Hindenburg-type fuel? Don’t worry. Fuel tanks are protected with Kevlar. And should they leak, the gas dissipates far faster than gasoline does, McCormick said.

Whew.

Mark Kimble appears Fridays on “Arizona Illustrated” on KUAT-TV, Channel 6. Reach him at mkimble@tucsoncitizen.com or 573-4662.

UA graduate student Grace Shih checks out the interior of the hydrogen-powered SUV.

McCormick

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THE BENEFITS OF HYDROGEN

• Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is available from a wide range of sources on Earth.

• There are large hydrogen production sites throughout the United States.

• Enough hydrogen is produced each year to fuel 180 million fuel-cell vehicles. Production is forecast to increase by 45 percent in three years.

• At current costs and production rates, hydrogen for a vehicle would cost the equivalent of $2.50 per gallon of gasoline, on a cost-per-mile basis. In the long term, that is expected to drop to $1-$1.50 per gallon.

• The only emissions from a hydrogen-powered vehicles are water and a little warm air.

The failure to get them to the ballot resulted from almost a comedy of errors. The initiative drives were launched too late in the political season. Management was turned over to political consultants loyal to Napolitano but with scant experience in ballot measure campaigns.

The first thing that needs to be observed about the demise of the transportation sales tax initiative is that it represents an astonishing debacle for Gov. Janet Napolitano’s political operation.

The transportation sales tax, along with an initiative to preserve state trust lands, were to be Napolitano’s legacy markers.

They were largely her creations. She negotiated the policy and political deals that formed the initiatives.

The failure to get them to the ballot resulted from almost a comedy of errors. The initiative drives were launched too late in the political season. Management was turned over to political consultants loyal to Napolitano but with scant experience in ballot measure campaigns.

Given the tightness of time, standard verification checks appear to have been skipped or done shoddily. Then the Democrat’s legal A-team for election issues missed a filing deadline to challenge invalidations by the Secretary of State’s Office.

Make no mistake about it: Napolitano still rules the political roost in Arizona. Still, this is a big and should be a deeply embarrassing failure.

Not being able to get legacy markers to the ballot shouldn’t happen to a politician of Napolitano’s stature and clout.

Rather than blame events, surprising legal requirements or others, there should be some soul-searching in Napolitano- land.

Substantively, however, the demise of the transportation sales tax initiative is a very good thing. This was a monumentally bad transportation finance plan. Its demise provides the opportunity to start over and do transportation finance right, if anyone has the inclination to do so.

Rather than being based on the prioritization of transportation needs and sound transportation finance principles, this initiative was based upon a series of political calculations.

The first political calculation was about what revenue source would be politically the easiest and how much could voters be persuaded to pony up? The answer was a one-cent increase in the state sales tax.

After that, the allocation of the money wasn’t driven by transportation needs, but stitching together the political coalitions necessary to get it passed.

As a result, huge pots of money were simply given over to local governments throughout the state to do with pretty much whatever they want. Another big pot was set aside for environmental stuff.

While some highway improvements have been specified, most of the money was designated for stuff that hasn’t even been fully conceptualized, such as passenger rail, or without any specificity at all, such as the local subventions.

Here are what would be some elements of a sensible approach:

• First, there shouldn’t be a statewide proposal. Whenever there is one, the urban areas end up heavily subsidizing the rural areas.

In this transportation proposal, for example, rural areas were to receive nearly 40 percent of the funding even though they constitute less than a quarter of the state’s population.

Yes, urban residents use roads statewide and some degree of subsidization is probably in order. But that should be discussed separately, not as a political price of admission to get the funds the urban areas want to devote to their own transportation improvements.

• Second, transportation needs should be considered separately rather than all together in one comprehensive package. Lower priority items shouldn’t be permitted to free ride on higher priority items. Each should stand on its own merits to justify its funding.

• Third, no funding commitments to projects until there are specific proposals to consider. Passenger rail may very well be an important transportation option for the future and funding to study and develop a specific proposal would be in order. This transportation proposal committed nearly $7 billion to building passenger rail when there is no specific proposal on the table.

• Fourth, to the extent possible, keep to the concept of user pays, at least for roads. Many of the major new highway improvements needed are to connect developing nodes with the already developed urban areas.

That’s a situation where toll roads, or benefit districts or impact fees are highly appropriate. This transportation proposal jumped instantly to the sales tax, which should be the last rather than the first resort.

Existing funding sources probably can’t get the job done for Arizona’s transportation future. However, a rigorous evaluation needs to take place about how existing funds are being used and how far reprioritization could take us.

There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to go about transportation finance. The right way is more painstaking than trying to calibrate the politics of raising a big pot of money for purposes to be decided later.

But it would be fairer and cheaper to taxpayers, and do more to actually improve transportation.

Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist, writes about public policy and politics in Arizona. E-mail: robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com

Transportation in America was once an engine of progress and an inspiration. Railroads opened the West, and automobiles brought mobility for a footloose nation after World War II.

Nowadays, getting around is a source of more problems than solutions. Traffic delays waste an average of 38 hours a year for urban commuters – almost an entire work week and more than twice as much as in 1985.

The major source of our addiction to expensive foreign oil, transportation consumes two out of every three barrels and is the fastest-growing source of global warming pollution.

The $130-plus cost per barrel of oil and our crumbling infrastructure are drags on the economy.

And the once-flush federal transportation trust fund, like many of its state counterparts, is expected to run out of money in the next two years.

Since fulfilling President Eisenhower’s 1956 vision of an interstate system to link our major cities, national transportation policy has stumbled on without a clear purpose.

Federal transportation spending has become little more than a giant public works program.

To keep our nation moving efficiently, the federal government must ensure dedicated funding and hold states accountable for roadway upkeep.

The responsibility today is left almost entirely up to states, where it competes for scarce dollars with popular programs and typically loses out to expensive projects that offer big headlines and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

Federal transportation funds also continue to be distributed through the false assumption that more is better when it comes to roadways.

States receive highway funds based on three outdated criteria: the previous year’s gasoline consumption, lane-miles of federal highways and the previous year’s vehicle miles traveled.

So more driving garners more federal dollars. States that do their part to reduce America’s oil dependence and global warming would lose out on federal dollars.

The federal government should reward states and localities that reduce gas consumption and miles driven by emphasizing public transportation.

Light rail, rapid bus transit, commuter rail, high-speed intercity rail and other forms of public transit are energy efficient and encourage development patterns that require less driving.

A recent report by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund shows that public transit saved 3.4 billion gallons of oil in 2006 – saving $9 billion at the pump and preventing 26 million tons of emissions.

Public transit trips have been growing more quickly than auto miles or population since 1995.

Likewise, 53 percent of Americans tell pollsters they would take more public transportation if it were available near where they live and work.

Giving people the transportation choices they want will require Congress to make changes.

Since 1956, federal, state and local governments have spent nine times more on highway subsidies than on public transportation. This ratio has improved, but not fast enough.

President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget would take us back in time, cutting federal transit money by $200 million, slashing Amtrak’s budget by 40 percent, and diverting $3.2 billion from the federal transit account to highways. Such cuts would move the country in exactly the wrong direction.

Congress will have a golden opportunity when the transportation authorization bill expires next year.

Public leaders must recognize that our transportation problems stem from a lack of purpose. They must rewrite policy to address our rapidly aging infrastructure, urban congestion, oil dependence and an overheating planet.

Instead of simply “reauthorizing” the transportation act with higher spending levels, Congress must reinvent how it funds transportation.

Diane E. Brown is executive director of the Arizona Public Interest Research Group, a public interest advocacy organization. E-mail: dbrown@arizonapirg.org