The truth about recycling

Jun 7th 2007
From The Economist print edition

IT IS an awful lot of rubbish. Since 1960 the amount of municipal waste being collected in America has nearly tripled, reaching 245m tonnes in 2005. According to European Union statistics, the amount of municipal waste produced in western Europe increased by 23% between 1995 and 2003, to reach 577kg per person. (So much for the plan to reduce waste per person to 300kg by 2000.) As the volume of waste has increased, so have recycling efforts. In 1980 America recycled only 9.6% of its municipal rubbish; today the rate stands at 32%. A similar trend can be seen in Europe, where some countries, such as Austria and the Netherlands, now recycle 60% or more of their municipal waste. Britain's recycling rate, at 27%, is low, but it is improving fast, having nearly doubled in the past three years.

Even so, when a city introduces a kerbside recycling programme, the sight of all those recycling lorries trundling around can raise doubts about whether the collection and transportation of waste materials requires more energy than it saves. “We are constantly being asked: Is recycling worth doing on environmental grounds?” says Julian Parfitt, principal analyst at Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a non-profit British company that encourages recycling and develops markets for recycled materials.

Studies that look at the entire life cycle of a particular material can shed light on this question in a particular case, but WRAP decided to take a broader look. It asked the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste to conduct a review of 55 life-cycle analyses, all of which were selected because of their rigorous methodology. The researchers then looked at more than 200 scenarios, comparing the impact of recycling with that of burying or burning particular types of waste material. They found that in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment.

Based on this study, WRAP calculated that Britain's recycling efforts reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions by 10m-15m tonnes per year. That is equivalent to a 10% reduction in Britain's annual carbon-dioxide emissions from transport, or roughly equivalent to taking 3.5m cars off the roads.Similarly, America's Environmental Protection Agency estimates that recycling reduced the country's carbon emissions by 49m tonnes in 2005.

Recycling has many other benefits, too. It conserves natural resources. It also reduces the amount of waste that is buried or burnt, hardly ideal ways to get rid of the stuff. (Landfills take up valuable space and emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas; and although incinerators are not as polluting as they once were, they still produce noxious emissions, so people dislike having them around.) But perhaps the most valuable benefit of recycling is the saving in energy and the reduction in greenhouse gases and pollution that result when scrap materials are substituted for virgin feedstock. “If you can use recycled materials, you don't have to mine ores, cut trees and drill for oil as much,” says Jeffrey Morris of Sound Resource Management, a consulting firm based in Olympia, Washington.

Extracting metals from ore, in particular, is extremely energy-intensive. Recycling aluminium, for example, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 95%. Savings for other materials are lower but still substantial: about 70% for plastics, 60% for steel, 40% for paper and 30% for glass. Recycling also reduces emissions of pollutants that can cause smog, acid rain and the contamination of waterways.

The China question

But the practice of shipping recyclables to China is controversial. Especially in Britain, politicians have voiced the concern that some of those exports may end up in landfills. Many experts disagree. According to Pieter van Beukering, an economist who has studied the trade of waste paper to India and waste plastics to China: “as soon as somebody is paying for the material, you bet it will be recycled.”

In fact, Dr van Beukering argues that by importing waste materials, recycling firms in developing countries are able to build larger factories and achieve economies of scale, recycling materials more efficiently and at lower environmental cost. He has witnessed as much in India, he says, where dozens of inefficient, polluting paper mills near Mumbai were transformed into a smaller number of far more productive and environmentally friendly factories within a few years.

Still, compared with Western countries, factories in developing nations may be less tightly regulated, and the recycling industry is no exception. China especially has been plagued by countless illegal-waste imports, many of which are processed by poor migrants in China's coastal regions. They dismantle and recycle anything from plastic to electronic waste without any protection for themselves or the environment.

The Chinese government has banned such practices, but migrant workers have spawned a mobile cottage industry that is difficult to wipe out, says Aya Yoshida, a researcher at Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies who has studied Chinese waste imports and recycling practices. Because this type of industry operates largely under the radar, it is difficult to assess its overall impact. But it is clear that processing plastic and electronic waste in a crude manner releases toxic chemicals, harming people and the environment—the opposite of what recycling is supposed to achieve.

Under pressure from environmental groups, such as the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, some computer-makers have established rules to ensure that their products are recycled in a responsible way. Hewlett-Packard has been a leader in this and even operates its own recycling factories in California and Tennessee. Dell, which was once criticised for using prison labour to recycle its machines, now takes back its old computers for no charge. And last month Steve Jobs detailed Apple's plans to eliminate the use of toxic substances in its products.

Far less controversial is the recycling of glass—except, that is, in places where there is no market for it. Britain, for example, is struggling with a mountain of green glass. It is the largest importer of wine in the world, bringing in more than 1 billion litres every year, much of it in green glass bottles. But with only a tiny wine industry of its own, there is little demand for the resulting glass. Instead what is needed is clear glass, which is turned into bottles for spirits, and often exported to other countries. As a result, says Andy Dawe, WRAP's glass-technology manager, Britain is in the “peculiar situation” of having more green glass than it has production capacity for.

Britain's bottle-makers already use as much recycled green glass as they can in their furnaces to produce new bottles. So some of the surplus glass is down-cycled into construction aggregates or sand for filtration systems. But WRAP's own analysis reveals that the energy savings for both appear to be “marginal or even disadvantageous”. Working with industry, WRAP has started a new programme called GlassRite Wine, in an effort to right the imbalance. Instead of being bottled at source, some wine is now imported in 24,000-litre containers and then bottled in Britain. This may dismay some wine connoisseurs, but it solves two problems, says Mr Dawe: it reduces the amount of green glass that is imported and puts what is imported to good use. It can also cut shipping costs by up to 40%.

The future of recycling

This is an unusual case, however. More generally, one of the biggest barriers to more efficient recycling is that most products were not designed with recycling in mind. Remedying this problem may require a complete rethinking of industrial processes, says William McDonough, an architect and the co-author of a book published in 2002 called “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”. Along with Michael Braungart, his fellow author and a chemist, he lays out a vision for establishing “closed-loop” cycles where there is no waste. Recycling should be taken into account at the design stage, they argue, and all materials should either be able to return to the soil safely or be recycled indefinitely. This may sound like wishful thinking, but Mr McDonough has a good pedigree. Over the years he has worked with companies including Ford and Google.

An outgrowth of “Cradle to Cradle” is the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a non-profit working group that has developed guidelines that look beyond the traditional benchmarks of packaging design to emphasise the use of renewable, recycled and non-toxic source materials, among other things. Founded in 2003 with just nine members, the group now boasts nearly 100 members, including Target, Starbucks and Estée Lauder, some of which have already begun to change the design of their packaging.

Sustainable packaging not only benefits the environment but can also cut costs. Last year Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, announced that it wanted to reduce the amount of packaging it uses by 5% by 2013, which could save the company as much as $3.4 billion and reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by 667,000 tonnes. As well as trying to reduce the amount of packaging, Wal-Mart also wants to recycle more of it. Two years ago the company began to use an unusual process, called the “sandwich bale”, to collect waste material at its stores and distribution centres for recycling. It involves putting a layer of cardboard at the bottom of a rubbish compactor before filling it with waste material, and then putting another layer of cardboard on top. The compactor then produces a “sandwich” which is easier to handle and transport, says Jeff Ashby of Rocky Mountain Recycling, who invented the process for Wal-Mart. As well as avoiding disposal costs for materials it previously sent to landfill, the company now makes money by selling waste at market prices.

EPAIt does get recycled, honest

Evidently there is plenty of scope for further innovation in recycling. New ideas and approaches will be needed, since many communities and organisations have set high targets for recycling. Europe's packaging directive requires member states to recycle 60% of their glass and paper, 50% of metals and 22.5% of plastic packaging by the end of 2008. Earlier this year the European Parliament voted to increase recycling rates by 2020 to 50% of municipal waste and 70% of industrial waste. Recycling rates can be boosted by charging households and businesses more if they produce more rubbish, and by reducing the frequency of rubbish collections while increasing that of recycling collections.

Meanwhile a number of cities and firms (including Wal-Mart, Toyota and Nike) have adopted zero-waste targets. This may be unrealistic but Matt Hale, director of the office of solid waste at America's Environmental Protection Agency, says it is a worthy goal and can help companies think about better ways to manage materials. It forces people to look at the entire life-cycle of a product, says Dr Hale, and ask questions: Can you reduce the amount of material to begin with? Can you design the product to make recycling easier?

If done right, there is no doubt that recycling saves energy and raw materials, and reduces pollution. But as well as trying to recycle more, it is also important to try to recycle better. As technologies and materials evolve, there is room for improvement and cause for optimism. In the end, says Ms Krebs, “waste is really a design flaw.”

U.S. nuclear deal protests disrupt Indian parliament

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Noisy protests against a historic but controversial nuclear energy deal between India and the United States disrupted the Indian parliament on Monday as lawmakers demanded the government cancel the agreement.
Members of the regional Samajwadi Party, which is opposed to warming ties between Washington and New Delhi, shouted slogans against the deal in the centre of the lower house and refused to return to their seats. "Cancel the nuclear deal", "We don't want to be American stooges", the MPs shouted despite pleas by the speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, to allow the house to function.
Chatterjee said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would make a statement on the deal at 2:00 p.m. (0430 EDT) and address concerns over the landmark deal, seen as a symbol of a blossoming friendship between the two democracies.
But the angry lawmakers were unrelenting, forcing the house to be adjourned until Singh's statement.
The nuclear deal aims to give India access to U.S. nuclear fuel and equipment for the first time in 30 years to help meet its soaring energy needs, even though it has stayed out of non-proliferation pacts and tested nuclear weapons.
First agreed in principle two years ago, the framework deal was approved by the U.S. Congress last December and the pact that governs nuclear trade between the two, called the 123 agreement, was finalized last month.
The 123 agreement has to get the backing of the U.S. Congress after India secures other international approvals.
The deal has been opposed by critics in both countries who say their governments are making too many compromises in their eagerness to seal it.
India's communist parties, whose support is crucial for the survival of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government, have rejected the deal but Singh has said he would not go back on it and dared the left parties to withdraw support.
The opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which initiated a process of bringing New Delhi and Washington closer when it was in power between 1998 and 2004, has also slammed the deal.

Illegal immigration: our best foreign aid

Chinese swimmers reached the finals for Group B in L.A., while 3 silver and 1 bronze medals were snatched at the 24th Games, 7 Asian bests were created, and 10 national records were bettered. The heartening achievements, a break through zero, helped open a new era in China's swimming history. Chinese women rowers sprang a surprise by taking a silver and a bronze in the coxed fours and coxed eights respectively. Before that, no Asian athletes had ever entered the finals. In addition, the number of Chinese athletes in track and field witnessed a big increase, and notably, woman shot-putter Li Meisu gained a bronze—the only track and field medal for Asia at the Games.

Undocumented students deserve aid too

THE UTTER collapse of immigration reform in Congress was particularly devastating to one group: undocumented students. It leaves those who have excelled academically in our high schools, but who are not legal residents, ineligible for financial aid. Such a barrier means our students, through no fault of their own, have no path to success or citizenship.

I say "our students" because that is just who they are. We have invested in these children, providing them access to public education in our K-12 schools. Our teachers have encouraged them to learn, to compete and to succeed. It is only after these eager and ambitious young people gain college admission and apply for state or federal financial aid that we turn them away. We must not penalize these young people because their parents brought them here illegally.

The futures of high school graduates are being shaped now. These young people cannot wait out yet another attempt at broad immigration reform. Every year that passes, we deny another class of talented, keen young people hopeful futures for themselves and their families and relegate another generation to an existence on the margins of society.

It's a terrible waste of young talent — talent that this country desperately needs. Each year across the nation, 50,000 to 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school after having spent at least five years in this country. Because California is home to an estimated 40% of the nation's undocumented students, that means 20,000 or so are in this state.

Statistics on how many go on to the state's public colleges and universities are more difficult to come by. Applications don't require proof of citizenship if a student graduated from a California high school. At UC Berkeley, we may have dozens of such students, but we hear about their struggles only anecdotally or when they apply for financial aid, only to learn that they do not qualify.

Undergraduates who are California residents will pay as much as $25,000 for fees, room and board and books and supplies for the coming school year at Berkeley. It is no surprise that 70% of them rely on state and federal financial aid. But federal law prohibits making these same grants and loans available to undocumented students. They cannot even be hired for campus jobs.

How do they manage? Many are forced out of school for a semester or longer. They work multiple low-paying jobs hoping to save enough to re-enroll. It can take them many more years to graduate, yet they are determined. But other high-achieving California students never even consider attending the University of California or other universities. Even if they could pay for it, a college degree doesn't get them any closer to legal residency status, which they need to put their degrees to work.

To address the plight of undocumented students, Congress must ensure that the well-conceived and broadly supported federal DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act goes forward. The act, which provides access to financial aid and a thoughtfully mapped-out path to citizenship for qualified students, became entangled in the latest failed immigration bill. It is time to pass the act on its own merits.

Legislation that would create a California DREAM Act, offered by state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), is moving forward in the Legislature. It allows all qualified students to apply for institutional aid at the University of California, California State University and the California Community Colleges.

Financial aid and a path to citizenship is a sound and humane investment. If we provide up-front loans and grants to talented students seeking to escape generations of poverty, society will be paid back many times over. With higher education, they will be able to raise their standard of living as they become taxpaying citizens. We must seize the opportunity to adopt these well-designed state and national policies that will be good for everyone — our students, their families, our state and nation.

Back Where They Belong

NYT

Gov. M. Jodi Rell vaulted Connecticut to the forefront of the juvenile justice reform movement when she signed a bill that removes 16- and 17-year-old offenders from the adult courts and puts them back into the juvenile justice system where they clearly belong. This new law comes in response to studies showing that children who do time in adult jails are more likely to become hardened criminals — and to commit more violent crime — than youthful offenders who are handled by the juvenile system.

The rush to try children as adults began in the early 1990s, after high-profile crimes like the Central Park jogger case, in which a young woman was badly beaten and raped in New York’s Central Park. Extreme violence and sexual assault clearly merit severe punishment. But today, in too many states, young people are routinely tried as adults, even those who commit nonviolent offenses.

In adult jails, these youthful offenders have little protection from being battered or sexually assaulted. Even those who leave jail determined not to go back, find that a conviction in adult courts closes off their chances for finding decent jobs.

After Connecticut’s law takes effect, New York and North Carolina will be the only two remaining states that automatically transfer 16-year-olds who commit crimes to adult courts. Unfortunately, nearly every state has laws that encourage prosecutors to try children as adults. The country needs to abandon these failed, destructive policies.

Is China's Air Clean or What? - Mixed Messages in researches

There is Richard MacGregor's article titled 750,000 a year killed by Chinese pollution accompanied by a Financial Times editorial titled China must come clean about its poisonous environment. Here is Richard MacGregor's report:

Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social unrest”. The report, produced in co-operation with Chinese government ministries over several years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities.

China’s State Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and health ministry asked the World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths from the report when a draft was finished last year, according to Bank advisers and Chinese officials. Advisers to the research team said ministries told them this information, including a detailed map showing which parts of the country suffered the most deaths, was too sensitive.

“The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest,” one adviser to the study told the Financial Times. Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, according to previous World Bank research.

Guo Xiaomin, a retired Sepa official who co-ordinated the Chinese research team, said some material was omitted from the pollution report because of concerns that the methodology was unreliable. But he also said such information on premature deaths “could cause misunderstanding”. “We did not announce these figures. We did not want to make this report too thick,” he said in an interview.

The pared-down report, “Cost of Pollution in China”, has yet to be officially launched but a version, which can be downloaded from the internet was released at a conference in Beijing in March.

Missing from this report are the research project’s findings that high air-pollution levels in Chinese cities is leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research. Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely in the countryside, from severe diarrhoea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers.

The mortality information was “reluctantly” excised by the World Bank from the published report, according to advisers to the research project.

Sepa and the health ministry declined to comment. The World Bank said that the findings of the report were still being discussed with the government. A spokesperson said: “The conference version of the report did not include some of the issues still under discussion.” She said the findings of the report were due to be released as a series of papers soon.

I look at this sentence: "Sepa and the health ministry declined to comment" and I think these people must be brain dead. Silence is likely to be taken to be admission of guilt that will generate a wave of criticisms. Why not deal with the issue head on?

First, consider the World Bank study. Actually, I have no information about this study itself, but I take it to be a top-quality study like similar studies on the same subject. The problem here is that it is hard to estimate the number of pre-mature deaths due to pollution. If you want to estimate the number of excess deaths due to the war in Iraq, you compare the mortality rates before and after the invasion and you get the number of excess deaths (e.g. the Lancet study). If you want to estimate the number of pre-mature deaths due to tobacco, you can compare the age-specific-adjusted mortality rates among smokers and non-smokers (e.g. American Medical Association study). In these cases, you always qualify your results by stating that there can be unaccounted for causes (and that was how the tobacco lobby managed to stall anti-tobacco legislation in the United States for several decades).

But if you want to estimate the number of pre-mature deaths due to pollution, you do what? You cannot compare the mortality rates of the present China against a China without pollution. The latter does not exist objectively. Therefore, you have to make some assumptions (e.g. compare mortality rates in high pollution cities versus low pollution ones), but these assumptions are tenuous. For example, the high pollution cities are the economically developed urban agglomerations while the lower pollution cities are economically undeveloped cities in the backlands. Are you sure that they would have the same mortality rates if pollution does not exist? Have you thought about the impact due to differences in income, diet, nutrition, health care services, etc? The technical explanations may elude most readers, and that may be the reason why Sepa and health ministry do not want to comment as it may only make matters worse. But their silence is making things worse now.

For illustration about why the technical description is hard, here is a statement made at a US Congressional hearing:

There are two ways of studying the health effects of particulate matter: time-series studies and cohort studies. Time series studies track people over short pollution episodes, correlating morbidity (illness) and mortality with daily pollution levels. As of 1997, numerous time-series studies had reported associations between PM and daily mortality and morbidity. Landmark studies include Dockery and Pope (1994), Schwartz (1994), Katsouyanni, et al. (1997). These studies were criticized because they were largely conducted in single locations chosen for unspecified reasons and were analyzed with different statistical approaches.

In 2000, a Health Effects Institute study used explicit criteria to select cities from a well-defined sampling frame and analyzed them in a consistent fashion. The results from this 90-city study corroborated previous results, including the Katsouyanni 15-city study and a recent meta-analysis of 29 studies in 23 locations in Europe and North and South America (Levy, et al. 2000).

Cohort studies follow initially healthy people over longer periods to see how they develop disease or die. Landmark cohort studies include the Harvard Six Cities Study (Dockery, et al. 1993) and the American Cancer Society Study (Pope, et al. 1995). These studies followed large numbers of individuals over many years and observed their rates of mortality. They found that long-term average mortality rates were 17 percent to 26 percent higher in those living in communities with higher levels of PM2E even after accounting for the effects of other risk factors. The results have been used to demonstrate lifespan reduction attributable to exposure to PM2E pollution. Other researchers have independently confirmed the findings of both of these studies.

A recent study reanalyzed the American Cancer Society (ACS) data (Pope, Thurston and Krewski 2002). This study tracked people over a longer time and controlled more extensively for individual risk factors. They compared data on particulate and gaseous air pollution with data on the cause of death among 500,000 people followed for 16 years by the ACS. After compensating for risk factors, as well as possible regional differences, the researchers found that every 10-microgram increase in fine particles per cubic meter of air produces a 6 percent increase in the risk of death by cardiopulmonary disease, and 8 percent for lung cancer. This is similar to the risk faced by those with long-term exposure to second-hand smoke.

What is the general public going to think about this type of description? They don't know and they only want a count of the number of dead people due to air pollution

Secondly, how would you interpret the figure 750,000? If you line the corpses in a row down the road, then it is a horrible sight. You would like it to be zero, but that is not happening anywhere in the world. So what is a realistic goal for China to aim for? Or to be even simpler, what is the number if China were just to meet the global average? Here is a global estimate from BBC:

The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel. Most are in poor countries.

So 3.0 + 1.6 million = 4.6 million people were killed worldwide by air pollution. China has about 20% of the population of the world. 20% of 4.6 million people is 920,000. This is for indoor/outdoor air pollution only. The World Bank estimate of 750,000 is for all pre-mature deaths in China, most of which are due to air pollution. Now what? It would seem that China has even fewer pollution-related deaths compared to the rest of the world!

Microsoft Finds Legal Defender in Justice Dept.

Nearly a decade after the government began its landmark effort to break up Microsoft, the Bush administration has sharply changed course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct, including the recent rejection of a complaint by Google.

The retrenchment reflects a substantially different view of antitrust policy, as well as a recognition of major changes in the marketplace. The battlefront among technology companies has shifted from computer desktop software, a category that Microsoft dominates, to Internet search and Web-based software programs that allow users to bypass products made by Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker.

In the most striking recent example of the policy shift, the top antitrust official at the Justice Department last month urged state prosecutors to reject a confidential antitrust complaint filed by Google that is tied to a consent decree that monitors Microsoft’s behavior. Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google’s desktop search program, lawyers involved in the case said.

The official, Thomas O. Barnett, an assistant attorney general, had until 2004 been a top antitrust partner at the law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust disputes. At the firm, Justice Department officials said, he never worked on Microsoft matters. Still, for more than a year after arriving at the department, he removed himself from the case because of conflict of interest issues. Ethics lawyers ultimately cleared his involvement.

Mr. Barnett’s memo dismissing Google’s claims, sent to state attorneys general around the nation, alarmed many of them, they and other lawyers from five states said. Some state officials said they believed that Google’s complaint had merit. They also said that they could not recall receiving a request by any head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division to drop any inquiry.

Mr. Barnett’s memo appears to have backfired, state officials said. Prosecutors from several states said they intended to pursue the Google accusations with or without the federal government. In response, federal prosecutors are now discussing with the states whether the Justice Department will join them in pursuing the Google complaint.

The complaint, which contends that Google’s desktop search tool is slowed down by Microsoft’s competing program, has not been made public by Google or the judge overseeing the Microsoft consent decree, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court in Washington. It is expected to be discussed at a hearing on the decree in front of Judge Kollar-Kotelly this month.

The memo illustrates the political transformation of Microsoft, as well as the shift in antitrust policy between officials appointed by President Bill Clinton and by President Bush.

“With the change in administrations there has been a sharp falling away from the concerns about how Microsoft and other large companies use their market power,” said Harry First, a professor at the New York University School of Law and the former top antitrust lawyer for New York State who is writing a book about the Microsoft case. “The administration has been very conservative and far less concerned about single-firm dominant behavior than previous administrations.”

Ricardo Reyes, a spokesman for Google, declined to comment about the complaint.

Bradford L. Smith, the general counsel at Microsoft, said that the company was unaware of Mr. Barnett’s memo. He said that Microsoft had not violated the consent decree and that it had already made modifications to Vista in response to concerns raised by Google and other companies.

He said that the new operating system was carefully designed to work well with rival software products and that an independent technical committee that works for the Justice Department and the states had spent years examining Vista for possible anticompetitive problems before it went on sale.

He said that even though the consent decree did not oblige Microsoft to make changes to Vista in response to Google’s complaint, Microsoft lawyers and engineers had been working closely with both state and federal officials in recent days in search of an accommodation.

“We’ve made a decision to go the extra mile to be reasonable,” Mr. Smith said. “The discussions between the company and the various government agencies have been quite fruitful.”

Microsoft was saved from being split in half by a federal appeals court decision handed down early in the Bush administration. The ruling, in 2001, found that the company had repeatedly abused its monopoly power in the software business, but it reversed a lower court order sought by the Clinton administration to split up the company.

Google complained to federal and state prosecutors that consumers who try to use its search tool for computer hard drives on Vista were frustrated because Vista has a competing desktop search program that cannot be turned off. When the Google and Vista search programs are run simultaneously on a computer, their indexing programs slow the operating system considerably, Google contended. As a result, Google said that Vista violated Microsoft’s 2002 antitrust settlement, which prohibits Microsoft from designing operating systems that limit the choices of consumers.

Google has asked the court overseeing the antitrust decree to order Microsoft to redesign Vista to enable users to turn off its built-in desktop search program so that competing programs could function better, officials said.

State officials said that Mr. Barnett’s memo rejected the Google complaint, repeating legal arguments made by Microsoft.

Before he joined the Justice Department in 2004, Mr. Barnett had been vice chairman of the antitrust department at Covington & Burling. It represented Microsoft in the antitrust case and continues to represent the company.

In a recent interview, Mr. Barnett declined to discuss the Google complaint, noting that the decree requires complaints by companies to be kept confidential. He defended the federal government’s overall handling of the Microsoft case.

“The purpose of the consent decree was to prevent and prohibit Microsoft from certain exclusionary behavior that was anticompetitive in nature,” Mr. Barnett said. “It was not designed to pick who would win or determine who would have what market share.”

“We want to prevent Microsoft from doing those things that exclude competitors,” he added. “We also don’t want to disrupt the market in a way that will be harmful to consumers. What does that mean? We’ve never tried to prevent any company, including Microsoft, from innovating and improving its products in a way that will be a benefit to consumers.”

Prosecutors from several states said that they believed that Google’s complaint about anticompetitive conduct resembled the complaint raised by Netscape, a company that popularized the Web browser, that was the basis of the 1998 lawsuit.

Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, declined to talk about the substance of the complaint, or which company made it. But he said the memo from Mr. Barnett surprised him.

“Eyebrows were raised by this letter in our group, as much by the substance and tone as by the past relationship the author had had with Microsoft,” said Mr. Blumenthal, one of the few state prosecutors who has been involved in the case since its outset.

“In concept, if not directly word for word, it is the Microsoft-Netscape situation,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “The question is whether we’re seeing déjà vu all over again.”

The administration has supported Microsoft in other antitrust skirmishes as well.

Last year, for instance, the United States delegation to the European Union complained to European regulators that Microsoft had been denied access to evidence it needed to defend itself in an investigation there into possible anticompetitive conduct. The United States delegation is led by Ambassador C. Boyden Gray, who had worked for Microsoft as a lawyer and lobbyist.

Robert Gianfrancesco, a spokesman for the delegation, said that Ambassador Gray had not formally removed himself from involvement in Microsoft issues but was not involved in the complaint to European regulators, which was handled by other American diplomats in the delegation.

In December 2005, the Justice Department sharply criticized the Korean Fair Trade Commission after that agency ordered major changes in Microsoft’s marketing practices in Korea.

And in 2004, the Justice Department criticized the European Commission for punishing Microsoft for including its video and audio player with its operating system.

Antitrust experts attribute the Bush administration’s different approach to Microsoft to a confluence of political forces as well as significant changes in the marketplace.

A big factor has been the Bush administration’s hands-off approach to business regulation. For its part, Microsoft, which spent more than $55 million on lobbying activities in Washington from 2000 to 2006 and substantially more on lawyers, has become a more effective lobbying organization.

“The generous and noncynical view is that there has been a fundamental change in philosophy about the degree to which antitrust should be used to regulate business activity,” said Andrew I. Gavil, an antitrust law professor at Howard University who is a co-author of the Microsoft book with Professor First, the New York University law professor. “In the Microsoft case, you can see how that change has manifested itself.”

我国烟民数量达3.5亿 卫生部呼吁立法控烟

5月31日是第20个世界无烟日，可是无烟的日子仍然遥不可及。卫生部履行《烟草控制框架公约》领导小组办公室今天公布的数据显示，我国是世界上烟民最多的国家，有3.5亿人喜好享受吞云吐雾的感觉，并因此制造了5.4亿被动吸烟者，其中15岁以下儿童有1.8亿。

据世界卫生组织估计，全球大约有7亿儿童呼吸的空气遭受二手烟雾污染，这种情况在家庭环境中尤甚。我国参与的“全球青少年烟草调查”结果显示：青少年在家中和公共场所受二手烟危害的比例分别为43.9%和55.8%。

我国吸烟人数为3.5亿。根据研究推算，目前我国人群中遭受被动吸烟危害的人数可高达5.4亿，其中15岁以下儿童有 1.8亿。比较1984年、1996年，2002年全国吸烟行为流行病学调查数据显示，虽然人们的吸烟率已经出现了下降趋势，但被动吸烟状况没有任何改善。

城市和农村人群接触二手烟的比例分别为49.7%和54.0%，农村高于城市。有20个省份50%以上的人接触二手烟，其中青海、甘肃、山西、陕西、吉林、内蒙古等北方地区比例高于60%。

家庭、公共场所和工作场所都是接触二手烟的地方。根据2002年调查，被动吸烟人群中，82%在家庭中、67%在公共场所、35%在工作场所接触二手烟。

在被动吸烟人群中，因年龄、性别和职业的不同，在各类场所接触二手烟的比例也不同。被动吸烟的女性90%是在家庭中接触二手烟。20~59岁男性在公共场所和工作场所接触二手烟的比例最高。和1996年的调查结果相比，人们在公共场所接触二手烟的比例上升。

我国每年死于被动吸烟的人数超过10万

人们对吸烟的危害已经有所认识，但是对于二手烟的危害却并不十分清楚。履约办提供的“2007年中国控制吸烟报告”说，我国每年死于被动吸烟的人数超过10万，每一个凋零的生命就是一条拒绝被动吸烟的重要理由。

有关专家介绍说，卷烟点燃时会产生极高温度(900℃)，这时产生的烟草烟雾中含有4000多种化学物质，包含许多有毒有害物质，其中有40多种物质具有致癌性。美国的研究也表明，二手烟雾中含有几百种已知的有毒或者致癌物质，包括甲醛、苯、氯乙烯、砷、氨和氢氰酸等。二手烟雾已被美国环保署和国际癌症研究署确定为A类致癌物质。

很多人认为，只要吸烟人数少，房间面积足够大，危害就可以减至最低，甚至没有危害，也就是说，存在“安全暴露”水平。然而，事实并非如此。每燃烧一支卷烟所形成的烟草烟雾中含有的苯并芘高达180纳克(1纳克＝10-6克)。这在一个30立方米容积的居室内就会形成6纳克／立方米浓度，超过卫生标准(1纳克／立方米)5倍。为了将它稀释至容许浓度，就得把居室内30立方米的空气每小时更换5~6次，而目前在宾馆和家庭中常用的中央空调和普通空调均无过滤清除苯并芘等类超微颗粒的功能，一旦卷烟烟雾在室内形成就很难加以清除。

美国通风问题权威机构——美国采暖通风空调工程师学会——已经作出结论，不能依靠通风技术来控制接触二手烟雾的健康风险。因此将吸烟者和非吸烟者分开、净化空气或装置通风设备等，都不能够消除二手烟雾对非吸烟者的危害。如吸烟区设立在同一建筑物内，暖气、通风、空调系统的正常运行，会把二手烟雾传送到整个建筑物中的每个角落。

应当立法禁止公共场所吸烟
卫生部履行《烟草控制框架公约》领导小组办公室相信，立法是禁止在公共场所吸烟的关键措施。现在，很多国家禁止吸烟的公共场所已从公共交通工具、电影院、展览馆、购物中心、银行、学校、医院等，逐步扩展到办公场所(包括政府办公楼、公司的写字楼等)，又进而扩展到大众餐饮娱乐场所(包括餐厅、酒吧、夜总会、按摩院等)。

2004年3月，爱尔兰成为世界上第一个立法建立无烟工作场所的国家，无烟化的范围包括所有的办公室、餐厅、酒吧和旅店等公共场所。不到3个月，挪威的无烟立法也开始生效。此后，在这两个国家的引领下，新西兰、意大利、西班牙、几内亚、毛里求斯和乌拉圭等12个国家相继开展了创建无烟工作场所和无烟公共场所的工作。

然而，我国至今还没有一部专门规定公共场所禁止吸烟的法律法规，有关规定多半出现在相关法律法规的某些条款或细则中，而且内容模糊，执法主体不明，可操作性不强。比如1991年第七届全国人大常委会第二十次会议通过的《中华人民共和国烟草专卖法》总则中规定：“国家和社会加强吸烟危害健康的宣传教育，禁止或限制在公共交通工具和公共场所吸烟。”

2006年10月，卫生部成立了履行《公约》领导小组，并设立履行《公约》领导小组办公室。受国务院委托，卫生部正着手修订《公共场所卫生管理条例》。修定后的《条例》将强化有关公共场所禁止吸烟的规定。

如何在高利税和健康间取舍
不过，现实的挑战远不止这些。有关数据表明，从1987年起，烟草一直是我国第一大税源。2002年，我国烟草行业上缴利税1456亿元，占我国财政收入的8%。2004年我国烟草行业累计实现利税超过2100亿元，与2000年相比翻了一番，烟草业税收占全国总税收的10%。2005年增长到2400亿元。

“如何在高利税和卫生健康之间取舍，将是一项异常严峻的考验。”有专家说，对于政府财政而言，禁烟无疑于自剜其肉。

事实上，从上世纪80年代后期起，中国就开始控烟，一些限制规章也相继出台。2003年，中国政府正式签署了《烟草控制框架公约》。两年后《公约》生效，政府是否禁止或限制有关的广告、促销和赞助，是否直接或间接鼓励他人吸烟将成为主要判断标准，国内烟草企业宣传渠道受到进一步的制约。

尽管如此，中国的控烟行动仍被认为处于初级阶段，其重要原因是经济的需要。一个佐证是，今年第一季度，我国烟草行业仍呈现良好发展之势，不管是产销量还是利润都有很好的数字。比如南部某省省内卷烟企业前4个月共实现利税203.11亿元，同比增长26.9%,其中销量增长的贡献率约为24.0%，结构调整的贡献率约占72.0%。

一个好消息是，2008年我国将举办奥运会，而从1988年加拿大冬季奥运会开始，“无烟奥运”不仅是一个目标，而且变成了现实。各奥运会举办国在比赛期间对比赛场馆等公共场所实行全面禁烟，禁止吸烟及一切与烟草有关的广告。

有建议称中国一流大学应该开放课件服务大众

2003年9月，麻省理工学院做出了一个惊人之举：正式向全世界公布多达500门课程的全部内容，世界上无论哪个角落的任何一个人，都可以进入该校的专门网站下载和学习这些内容，并且在非营利的前提下免费使用这些内容。而他，正是麻省理工学院开放课件创意的首创者。

他就是数十年前由上海赴美，在麻省理工待了37年的工学院副院长俞久平教授。

“大家都能看到，里面就不会乱了”

“这没什么不好，透明度对于一所高校的品质而言非常重要”，在近日举行的中国开放式教育协会成立三周年庆典上，俞久平接受本报记者采访时说，这就好比一栋房子，如果要让别人知道里面干净整齐，最好是玻璃的房子，“大家都能看到，里面就不会乱了”。

他的创意来源于深刻的时代背景。20世纪末，随着互联网络的兴起，高等教育如何适应IT时代的新变化，成为了摆在美国众多高校面前的一道难题。

“那时候正是．com疯狂的时候，很多高校都在想着．com，而不是．edu”，俞久平说，很多学校都把自己看作商业组织，看到的是学校知识的商业价值，总想着怎么去卖，麻省理工学院在寻求应对策略时，摆在校长面前的也不乏MIT．com等计划书。

“策划做了这么久，结果答案很平凡，很没有创意”，俞久平说，往商业上发展不会使MIT到前面去，如果真办好了，几年以后可能也就10名，大不了第5名,领导力方面几乎起不到什么作用。

恰好在这个时候，他也领导着一个团队寻求策略，联想起小时候看电机工程时的情景，又联系到他在校园里经常看到有些实验室将大堆的旧书都扔掉了，心想这些书在别的地方都是非常宝贵的东西，为什么不给人家？

“想法真的很疯狂，跟．com绝对是背道而驰的，但我想，对MIT有没有好处，对世界教育有没有好处？后来想得很清楚了，是完全有好处的。”俞久平说，对麻省理工学院而言，最重要的是领导力，第二影响力，第三优秀度，而这一创意毋庸置疑会给三方面都带来加分。

稍有疏漏会得到及时指出和更正

但妙法也得要妙人才能接受，在一般人看来，课件是神秘而不可外露的东西，是教师们赖以生存的“两把刷子”，按常理推断，即使得到了学校领导层的首肯，教师们也肯定会群起反对。俞久平想，如果有50％的教授们反对，方案就肯定行不通了。

但他没有料到的是，麻省理工学院的教授们正是“妙人”，他们一个系一个系去开会，问愿不愿意参与，有什么问题，结果多数教授表示愿意参加。少数不愿意参加的教授，所担心正如一般人想得一样，如果课件内容全部公开，会不会影响我出书的销售量？美国大学就曾经发生过这样的情形：学生们上课首先要签保密协议，因为任课教师已经跟出版商谈好了，上课内容要出书，笔记外传可能影响销量。

但俞久平用类似于吃鸡蛋看母鸡的道理说服了这些教师，如果课件很好，慕名买书的人只可能更多而不是相反。而且，大多数教授赞同也形成了压力，如果系列课程，第一章有了，第二章有了，第四章也有了，就缺第三章，任教第三章的教授面子上会挂不住的。

好处是非常明显的，迄今为止，开放课件的网站已吸引了全球200多个国家数亿次的点击，全球数百所高校也参与到这一项目中来。对于教授们而言，课件全部公开了，一方面表明他们有信心要让全世界知道他们是最好的教授，另一方面，课件中有错误、疏漏的地方，也会得到及时指出和更正。

而且，由于项目出色，也得到了基金会的青睐，3500万美元的成本中，麻省理工学院只付出了大约500万美元，对于这样一所年开支数亿美元的大学而言，不算什么大数目。而那些走．com道路的高校，当时所立的项目要么已经破产了，要么就是亏了几千万美元。俞久平说，他没有听到有成功的案例。

中国一流大学应该开放课件

“开放课程就应该是中国做，应该是清华北大这些好学校做，中国需要的人数比美国大多了！”俞久平认为，中国的高等教育差距比较明显，学校层次和地域上的差距都很大，一流大学应该开放课件。

事实上，国内已经有高校展开了与麻省理工学院的开放课件项目合作，在美国IET教育基金会的支持下，中国开放教育协会正在组织力量将麻省理工学院的课件翻译成中文，以提高中国高等教育的质量。目前，协会已拥有上千名志愿者，并翻译出了数百门课程，协会网站的日访问量也上万次，成为开放式课程计划的美国以外第一大用户。

但俞久平表示，麻省理工学院的开放式课件在中国不一定合用，还是应当由中国自己的大学来推进。

All Asian 2007 Motions

Round Zero: Debate
THW eliminate the humor round from All Asians.
THW allow coaching during preparation time.
THS affirmative action for women in debate.

R1: Bioethics
THS the trade of human organs.
THW encourage for profit surrogate motherhood.
THW make genetic screening of fetuses illegal.

R2: Terrorism
THW try Guantanamo Bay detainess in their home
country.
THW bypass Pakistani authorities in the hunt for Osama
Bin Laden.
THW export suspected terrorists to countries that
allow torture.

R3: Elections
THBT the next American President should be elected by
a popular vote.
THW adopt fixed election dates in parliamentary
democracies.
THW ban campaign finance contributions from corporate
lobby groups.

R4: Pop Culture
THS the politicization of Hollywood.
THW exempt celebrities from national service.
THW legalize animated child pornography.

R5: Refugees
THS the repatriation of North Korean refugees.
THBT Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return
to their homeland.
THS the abolition of refugee detention centers in
Australia.

R6: Obesity
THW prohibit the sale of junk food in school.
THS the establishment of weight requirements for
models in the fashion industry.
THW place obese children under the care of the state.

R7: War and Technology
THBT America=92s allies should reject BMD.
THBT media facilities are legitimate targets in war.

R8: Sexual Politics
THBT male to female trans-sexuals should be allowed to
compete in sporting events as a woman.
THW abolish statutory rape laws for teenagers.
THW ban the use of social networking websites in
catching paedophiles.

Doubles: The Internet
THW ban websites that encourage suicide.
THW keep copyright law out of You Tube.
THW require pornographic websites to use =93.XXX=94 domain
names.

Octos: Environment
THBT airline passengers should be required to pay a
carbon emissions tax.
THW require compulsory environmental service for all
citizens.
THW end exploration for new sources of oil.

Quarters: NE Asia
THW comfort the comfort women.
THW assassinate Kim Jong IL.
THBT Taiwan should rejoin China.

Semis: Religion
THW not allow religious organizations to run
orphanages.
THBT shariah courts have no place in Islamic
democracy.
THBT parents should not have the right to deny medical
treatment to their children on religious grounds.

EFL Finals: Universities
TH rejects corporate sponsorship of academic research.
TH would prohibit military recruitment on university
campuses.
THBT affirmative action in universities should be
based on economic class rather than race.

Finals: Independence and Conflict
THW forcibly disarm the Tamil Tigers.
THW partition Iraq.
THBT the UN should recognize an independent Kosovo.