Transcripts For CSPAN Today In Washington 20091201

evolution. this is the majority of the people who want freedom, who want human-rights -- human rights. >>@@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that gives you a sense of how fast events were moving on the ground in those first few hours and days after the elections. he was impossible to do real journalism. barbara would call me up whenever she could get through on the notoriously bad lines. sometimes the entire network would be down for hours at a time. can you confirm mr. check on that? no, at this point we were 48 hours before the regime actually criminalize investigative journalism. at that point, it became an issue of waiting while the hours tick down on my the sec, which was particularly short and had been granted for seven days as opposed to a couple of weeks and other cases. . ally bad. i started wearing local shirts, which did not look like my for insurance -- foreign shirts, and trying to go around in the streets with friends and trying to understand what was going on. this country that i had lived in, and i had really, and which now was starting to slip away in a very dramatic way. all the old trends were still there. there was a paranoid, a sense that the foreigners are trying to create a revolution and that it is up to the hard core of the it is up to the hard core of the regime to stop it, to the loyalists. there was also a cultural struggle going on, which got very little play in the foreign coverage. you hear about the foreign struggle more in a kind of a reactive way. when the revolutionary guard come out with any plan to create, for example, a second cultural revolution or to islamize schools and universities, or to set of units fighting the spread of news or propaganda, as they call it, but the cultural struggle in my experience, certainly my experience and said the prison when i was being interrogated, is one of the most important aspects of what is going on in iran today if you want to understand. this is something that came out in a piece on "newsweek." he had interrogators who came from the revolutionary guard. i was fortunate enough to be arrested by the minister of intelligence, which, at least, because of the chain murders of the 1990's has gone through a certain process of reform, so i had interrogators who were relatively educated, respectful men. obviously, the fact that i was a forerunner -- forerunner -- foreighnener really helped. there were not about to start bidding up someone who was going to be released in the near future. the journalist from "is a" was kicked and punched and also exposed to some outlandish accusations, like he had participated in six parties in new jersey, which was one of the signs of american corruption -- participated in sex parties in new jersey, which was one of the sense of american content -- corruption in the eyes of his investigators. because identify primarily as being greek and because i live in the region and also because one of my interrogators spoke arabic, we kept off on a more serious discussions on the west. quite frankly, i explained to them, for me, america had been insane when i moved there in 2007. i really cannot fill in to much, and certainly had not been anywhere close to new jersey. the fascinating thing that came out again and again after we got to the nitty gritty of intelligence questions -- who did you know you have been here? where did you go? what jennie's did you take a broad? and so on. we got into a more philosophical plan. we started talking about neoliberalism and the great threat that it poses in their eyes. we started talking about the concept of westernization, which was coined in the 1960's, at least in its current form, and which had to do with the idea that the cultural influence of the west was so powerful that it basically shreds everything in its wake, said the judicial muslim societies -- so the traditional muslim societies have the protection when really tough measures are taken. we talked a little bit about the major proponent of this theory, and we talked about what the muslims might be more susceptible than other people, and i felt -- and this is something that was pointed out in interviews -- that there was a real divide, sort of, between the real world and between the ideas that some of my interrogators had. not to say that they inhabited lala land, but, for example, it was cut up into very neat slices, which were either black or white, and there was great difficulty. almost struggled with the concept that someone could inhabit both or have an unbiased view. for example, they asked me about the west against the east, and i said that dubai and was a little bubble of the west into the east, and you could even cut it down into further slices and look at it as being both western and eastern and all sorts of pictures in between. this is something that did not leak into a deeper conversation. but anyway, just to say that it seems that there is a new beat that is running iran these days, and they are quite divorced from the revolutionaries who over the shock -- overthrew the shah in 1979. their kids than grow up, and they went to university, and maybe some of them grew up in denmark or the u.s. or canada, so you have this whole new generation, many of whom were in the streets, and i called in the third generation, who are even more capable of seeing things in shades of gray. then you have this second generation, and many of the people in power today come from the revolutionary guard, and many of those people, while their colleagues were off in copenhagen and paris and washington, understanding and grappling with the west, they were fighting. they were defending their country in the trenches of the iran/iraq war for 20 years, and they did not have the opportunity to do this. many of them it seems today are running iran in one way or another, and cannot actually taking executive decisions, perhaps they are interrogating people in jail cells, or they are ambassadors to allies of her and abroad. i think it is very interesting to try to understand, try to engage with this generation. a few words about my imprisonment. as i said, i got off relatively lightly. i only got beaten up what i -- when i tried to get the message out at the airport on the night of my arrest. the islamic republic has a habit of arresting people and then denying it has them while it puts pressure on them to come up with some form of confession. thankfully, because i managed to start shutting of both in english and in farsi that i'm a greek journalist being arrested , the time was really cut down -- because admonished to start shouting out. they came and said they had proved that they were arresting a citizen in an airport, steps were taken, and within three or four days, a process of release had begun, or at least a process of negotiation. in terms of the interrogators themselves, i think i spoke enough about them. there was a very amount of just chilling moments. the lack of certainty as to what was about to happen was the worst thing because there would be three or four days at a stretch when i would just be left in myself, and i have obviously no cellmates, nor did i have the opportunity to go out and get exercise. i got my one and only meeting with the greek ambassador, which was a huge blast of oxygen to my system, and back in a solitary cell for another two weeks. i was moved from quite a rundown sell into a sort of glittering brand new freshly painted one with a really intense light. the lights were all throughout, but in my old home so, one of them had broken, and the other one was like a 40-watt lamp, and this new one was really intense in your face with reflective mirror is behind and so on. also, i seem to be in middle of an enormous processing center, and that is how i started to get a feel for what was happening in the streets because there were hundreds of people being brought in every day, so when i would be taken out for interrogation, i would normally avoid stumbling over rose applied to all the people sitting cross legged wading for processing for. when i was sitting in my interrogation cell, which was another outrageous luxury because most people were getting interrogated in the corridors, i would hear sounds of intense interrogation is coming from neighboring cells or from outside in the corridors. again, because we were talking about culture, because i try to understand culture, and i tried to speak languages, and i try to get across what the place is politics and political pronouncements are about, a cultural thing is very crucial. i have, for example, comments from them, "would you expect? we are going to tear off your fingernails? look at this jail. it is very nice." or jokes about how some people were saying there was raping going on, and did i really fear i was going to be raped in an islamic appropriate jail? the 10180 degrees around when i came out of jail and started hearing about these allegations that were being made and started seeing the evidence. i started doing a lot of journalism in the country in which i live, turkey, dealing with former political refugees or people that had escaped iran, some of whom had been extremely badly abused, and one day, i was watching an interview given by an iranian feminist activists, and she was saying that she was taken one day to a large room, which was like a classroom, and there were maybe dozens of desks. those kind of school class desks with the wooden chair and the desk that comes out in front which is all one piece? and there were prisoners sitting on those desks and getting very violently beaten up by jailers, and this whole scene was kind of unfolding in complete silence because those who started shouting would get beaten up more. so perhaps that explains what all in all i did not hear that much going on. but in any case, i think it is the understatement of the year to say that iran is in a state of tumult. perhaps it shows us to some extent the mentality of the regime right now. they are in a state of full cultural paranoia, of sitting back and just fighting this perceived western onslaught coming from the outside, and, of course, the opposition is continuing. they do not have the power to go out and take to the streets on a daily basis, even as they tried to do it recently with the anniversary, but you have the students coming out the easter day coming up, a date that is part of the islamic republic's calendar of mass demonstrations commemorating the students during the iranian revolution in 1979 against shah's regime, and it will again try to hijack that like they tried to hijack the commemoration of the u.s. embassy storming, and also the jerusalem day. so we have two different dynamics going on right now. the dynamic of continued opposition, a continued crackdown, and it now seems in the last few days that they have gone out to the next tier and are starting to round up people whose names came up during the initial interrogation. not people and particularly wanted -- bets that has already been taken with the really important ones, but now, they are really going for peripheral people. they are arresting friends of people and putting them under a lot of psychological pressure, and at the same time, you have, of course the nuclear developments and how this is again -- again, you are seeing sort of moves in the nuclear sphere, which is the most hallowed, the most prized part of the iranian foreign@@@@@@@ @r >> when you have the islamic republic coming out saying that we're going to develop processing centers and we are going to cost of a step away from the npt, that shows pressure is being felt all over. i will see very happy to hand this back to john. >> barbara, your perspective on coordinating the work of other journalists at the time of the elections and since then, and your own perspective on where we are today? we could all address the role that the social media played and the time of the elections had a lot of coverage about this and the impact that that had. >> of first, let me think the w. my book. thank you, john, -- thank you, jon, for the work you're doing, which is filling an enormous gap for us trying to provide insightful coverage with a very limited budget. i always identify with my reporter's as a former correspondent, but it is fair to say that identified more with iason than any of my other correspondents. i wanted to be there on the streets with him in iran. i was experiencing it, watching it on television, seeing images on facebook, a twitter, so on, and it felt almost like i was there within the whole time that this was going on. obviously not the part in prison, although that was a pretty dreadful experience, even on our side trying to get him out and try to figure out what the right words were that we needed to say to impress the iranian government that he was no threat to them and he was actually -- would be more of a threat if he was kept than if he were released. i think what we witnessed over the last six months has been truly extraordinary. we do not know how long it is going to take for the iranian government to change again in some profound way, but clearly, the ingredients are all there, and the behavior of the government shows that of a relatively weak government, i think, that is struggling to come to terms with unprecedented domestic opposition and domestic -- unprecedented international opposition. glenn has a been so isolated since the iran/iraq war. the people who are running the show, to the extent anybody is running the show now, are veterans of that war, and perhaps they identify with that time when iran was virtually alone with one allied, syria, against what seemed like the entire world -- one ally, syria, against what seemed like the entire world. perhaps in a way that people try to recreate bad marriages -- you know, if you have one bad marriage, you go and you repeat the pattern. maybe these individuals are trying somehow to go back to that time when iran was all alone. it was besieged, and yet, there was this revolutionary spirit. you see this on the campus is where they are trying to recreate this sort of cultural revolution that took place in the early 1980's, but at the same time, you know that this is an impossible task. as iason pointed out, this third generation is very plugged in. iran has -- what? 40% internet usage among the population. it is an extraordinary figure, the highest in the middle east and one of the highest in the world. 80% literacy. this is bound to fail. the question is how long will it take, and how disruptive would be, how bloody will it be? the statements that the iranians have made about starting up new uranium enrichment plants seem like a bomb dust. they have not been able to complete one facility. the facility so has something like 8000 centrifuges, of which only half are really operable right now. it may take years before the facility is completed. they have another one that they started that the west found out about in qom, which is not operational yet. so for ahmadinejad did talk about 10 more, 20 more, whatever, it is really bomb dust, but it is their way of showing the outside world iran will not be pushed around. they're not afraid. they can take sanctions, and they can continue to move on. they figure that obama will not agree to military action against them, that the u.s. administration is busy in iraq and afghanistan, and, of course, and can always turn up the heat in both those places if it wants. they seem to think that they can crack down on the opposition internally, defy the rest of the world, and move on. it at some point, the pressure gets too great, they can always compromise. iran has done it before, they ended the iran/iraq war when some hussein was still in power, and that is another reference point i think we have to keep in mind, but one thing that is worrisome to me, and it is worrisome when i listen to iason, and that is the mentality of this particular group. during the iran/iraq war, you had people who had visited the west. i remember interviewing one and about his visit and talking about his impressions of the state. one had lived in turkey, iran, -- turkey, iraq, france. many important figures in the revolution had been educated abroad, and you do not have that with this particular if cohort. there are people in the revolutionary guard, members of the force i have met who are relatively sophisticated, but their education comes from books. it does not come from on the ground experience in the west. and this is worrisome. it raises the possibility of this calculation, and one wonders how far iran will go before it will perhaps make a compromise -- it raises the m raises ofiscalculati -- it raises the possibility of m iscalculation. it is a difficult time for those of us trying to figure out what is going on. i had a reporter there for some months. actually, a young man i found on facebook. he was told after he wrote about five stories for me that he could no longer ride -- that he needed credentials to write for the "washington times." so we sent a series of letters and somehow and some have the credentials never came through, so that is what i was particularly delighted that iason was able to get his visa, although it can be before the election, i recall. so we had iason there. since his experience, i have had to cover iran through stories that come out, a video that comes out. the killing, which i saw on facebook like so many people. i clicked on it, and suddenly watched this horrific video of a young woman being killed. we have pictures still coming out of the protest demonstrations, people taking pictures with cell phone cameras, and they smuggle it out. i have a couple of iranian americans who write for me, who call their friends in iran and do interviews via sky and on the telephone through twitter and facebook -- interviews via skype. hopefully the iranian government will open up to foreign correspondents. certainly everything we have seen in the last few weeks does not fill me with optimism that they are going to open up to this sort of coverage in the near future. i think i will stop there, and we will open up to your questions. >> questions? over here. >> [inaudible] how much was the glory of the prison empire of the past part of the election process -- the persian empire of the past part of the election process? how often is this talked about directly, and how much is it referred to? >> iranians in general have a wonderful idea of their own history. the question was about what the iranians are referring to their glorious history of the great ancient empire during the elections. there is a fair amount of hubris, and again, in his calculations -- and needs open up at the last minute to hundreds of foreign correspondents. they let in people from "the daily show" not exactly knowing what they were getting themselves in for, and he got his visa. they opened up hugely, and in what they had hoped would happen did not happen. they had an election, and it appears to have been rigged. during its came out on the street and protested. this attempt to show that there are the most democratic regime in the region, which they insist is still the case, backfired on them because they overreached. the sense of a great civilization is there, and one hopes it will act as a check. this is in iran, and not sure we can count on memories of glory to necessarily produce restraint. do you think there are limits? there are limits in the sense that they're going to move people down in the streets with guns, even the -- >> the mogul down in the streets on saturday. but i just going back to the point about the persian empire, and islamic democracy, you will never have preferences to what they considered to be ignorant islamic past. but you do see these elements of splendor or the quest for person splendor -- persian splendo, so it will be interesting to see if ahmadinejad is more about a powerful and that will be more about a revival. >> question over here. if we could, if the speakers could identify themselves and where you are from. the microphone is coming to you. >> i am jennifer with "voice of america." i believe you said the iranian regime was bound to fail, and he made in direct reference to social media. do you think there's a potential for social media -- i mean, this new notion of social media can actually bring down a totalitarian regime? >> of all, it is not a totalitarian regime, at least not yet. i would call it an authoritarian regime with many unique features. if it were totalitarian, you would not be seeing these massive demonstrations, and you would not see people risking their lives every day to continue to protest in the way they are. i cannot tell how iran's government is going to change. i just know that i think it is inevitable because 70% of the population is under the age of 30, and they are wired, and that is a factor. is it the only factor? no, we have not talked about the economy, the lack of jobs, the fact that iran has the biggest brain drain of educated youths in the region. ultimately, you will have a young society that will have been connected at least through social media, to the outside world, and will be influenced by and in a way that perhaps this generation is not. to make predictions about iran and when and how is not something i think anybody can do. we can sense the trend. that is probably the most that we can do. >> social media is not a weapon. it is a tool. basically what they do, whether it is toward or facebook, is in maximizes voices -- whether it is 20 or facebook -- whether it is twitter or facebook. to get an answer to that question, we need look no further than what has been loaded with lebanon. and that a tent at a peaceful revolution that happened they did their own peaceful revolution, and a paralyzed beirut for more than a year. i think it is a matter of in previous decades, the 1980's, really, the 1990's, and the beginning of this decade, you really had the advantage, but increasingly, they are learning this tool book and using it for their own purposes. their own purposes. >> >> question here? >> with a microphone if you could. >> i am from voice of america. in your documentary, in your opinion, what is the message? i have another question. during your stay in iran, he must have had time to talk to the people. what you think their opinion is on the nuclear issue for them? what is your opinion on that? >> vet is a difficult question to answer. i will start with what should be the easy one even though i actually took a distance from the documentary before it was broadcast because it focused very heavily on the human interest story and i was interested in doing the big picture documentary. the ultimate message of the documentary is, but i think it is a pretty detailed look at the killing nadan. what i would argue is flawed -- we did not have access to iran. we did not have access to both sides of the debate, so we managed to speak with her boyfriend, with the doctor who happened to be on the scene when she was killed, and we basically spoke with a couple of people who were close or sympathetic to the islamic republic and could give the official view, but it was very difficult to get conservative voices within the power structure, let alone speaking to the plainclothes who were there on the day. with regard to the second question, i think it is very split throughout. it is not a fallacy that the more pressure you put on iran, the less popular the program might become. on the other hand, the iranians, like the greeks, are very famous for becoming more stubborn. i cannot speak for the government, and i know that one of the defining features of 20th century iranian history is that when people get pushed, they react, as we have seen these days, as we saw in 1979, as we saw in 1999. it is difficult to say to what extent the society is behind this project or not. it is great to have nuclear power. it is great to be out there, but once you get down to the nitty gritty, i think you start to see differentiation, and that has always been the story of iran. it might be a full-blown ideals, and once you get down to the nitty gritty, there are a lot of questions that come up that have not been thought of before. it is the action of the islamic republic and the people went to vote in 1979 and voted so overwhelmingly in what by most accounts was not a big election, for an islamic republic, they had no idea what they were voting for. they have not heard the word cultural revolution yet. >> question back here? and again, if you could wait for the microphone to come around. >> thank you. i am with the brookings institute of washington. i just want to get a sense of during the early days of protest, with the government essentially controlling communication, how much of the protest movement was planned? how did people get the word around as to where to meet, what to do, what to say, particularly after the second and third day? i am very much interested on how much of that was planned. >> great. that is one of the few things i can talk about because that is one of the things is that most of my time doing when i was there. basically running around the streets with friends and trying to figure out what is going on. that was also one of the main accusations against me, i was an agent and influence and i had engaged in espionage. but i was very confused. i had no idea what was going on. i did give the key to my facebook to a close friend of mine, who would then just sort of copy/paste -- she does not speak farsi much -- and less tweets and messages and e-mail them to this -- and list -- endless tweets and messages and e-mail them to me. and i shall tell them what was the latest on the pro-mousavi media and what they were saying. then, you had the wrong information or the sort of publicly wrong information, where it seemed that several demonstrations were arranged in a way by the government or by government agents and then funneled into the opposition mainstream, so that people would gather in places that have basically been staked out, so you have this confusing flurry of "don't trust these coordinates" or don't go there" or go there." the speed with which different information was coming through even when we were on the streets and the amount of rumors going about what's astonishing. mousavi is under house arrest. a committee is looking for the ministry of interior -- no, he is walking toward the ministry of interior. that was actually the rumor that i heard on monday, the day of the biggest demonstration, literally seconds before that demonstration just kind of coalesced into one very pact body. up until then, it had been dispersed fragments of people kind of looking around at each other, looking at the police and wondering if the demonstration was actually going to happen on not, but this rumor kind of swept through the body of the people, and suddenly, we saw a demonstration emerge, so it was very confusing, and i think to a large extent, it was organic, to the point where there was any kind of organization on saturday as we were going around to the ministry of interior, we saw people with photocopies of mousavi's statement. people would just pass around and -- walk around, pat on the soldieshoulder. often, it went back to 1979 techniques. people which is right on the walls -- people would just write on teh walls. >> the chaos and confusion and misinformation -- none of that is new in situations like this. what was new was the speed with which it was reported around the world. i am interested in both your take on that, having now come back, once you get back to the west, to europe and the states, seeing how it was portrayed. was the real story authoritatively portrayed and when and-? in your sense of being in the middle of that, adding a day-by- day, looking at this material coming in. >> i remember being on the phone to barbara, maybe 30 minutes after being down at the ministry of interior where we had seen motorcyclists sliding down with batons. i'm embarrassed to say this, but it is true, i remember thinking i was not sure i would report this first because i had five days left on my visa, and i really do not care to have this exclusive 20 minutes before ap reports it. i would rather just stay in the country. so there were all sorts of journalistic ethics questions being thrown out. >> but that is a different issue. that is where you actually know something. you saw it with your own eyes. that is the question of playing the shorter breaking story to the long-term being there for a few more days. but i am talking about the misinformation, the confusion, and seeing that be reported and out there. it is broadcast. how do you -- you cannot put it back in the bottle. how do you bring perspective to that sort of material? >> really, i can just sort of say people lose coverage are like -- scott petersen had great coverage. roger cohen for the "new york times." it was really difficult, actually, to have information when we were on the ground at the day and reading 700-would write ups. at most, i would have to look at my -- at the message is being funneled to me from my facebook or from people outside the country, but really, it was just a matter of calling around on- line networks and just figuring out what they're saying and then making a snap decision -- do we go? do we not go? then you have this item up on the roof -- the snipers. anybody who goes there would be dealt with extremely parsley. >> -- extremely harshly. >> who do you call? >> i called people that i knew when i lived there or people that i had met in the demonstrations who were clearly taking some kind of leadership role. we had come to a demonstration at university, which had become a focus of protests, and i met a student there, who was clearly one of the organizing elements. in other day i found myself in a room in one of the tehran university dormitories with one of the student protest leader is glued to his cell phone, directing people where to go, the idea of stretching the police so they would not all focus on one area, tiring the mouth, or these impromptu traffic jams that you saw, which were not so impromptu because they blocked the passage of those columns of riot police that would go and basically sort of engaged in firefighting. this is also something that came up when i was in my interrogation cell where the younger in teradata said to me that i'm a work for the intelligence ministry, but it was all hands on deck during the post-election on rest -- unrest, and i was on a motor bike riding behind the guy who was steering, and the only thing to protect myself was a tear gas canister into a radio -- and a two-wave radio, and it adjusted as the places where there were threatening to overwhelm the security forces. it was an interesting game cat and mouse, but you did not know at the time who was the cat and who was the mass. most of the time, it was the security forces, but it was interesting to be in jail and get the glove side of that. >> wish to point out -- it was interesting to be in jail and get the foot side -- the flipside of that. you have people who would really messages when it was difficult for them to put things on their web sites or get information out. . use your own sense whether something is legiti use your own sense whether the footage is so well that it is impossible to fake. you see people screaming death to the dictator and you see people being hit and you see them dying on the street and in a that this is real. for all the efforts of the aria effort has made, they have not been able to shut off this kind of communication. it continues. monday is national student stay. 1953 when the iranian armed forces stormed tehran university where there was a protest and they killed three students. the islamic government has national student day every december 7. it's monday. and there will be demonstrations despite the fact that the government has rounded up scores of student activists. everybody knows this is the day you go out on campus and for sure they will protest. and we have two days after christmas is the most important shia muslim holy day and people are allowed to go out on the streets. the iranian calendar will set up opportunities for protests. and there's nothing the government can do about that. >> question back in the back. microphone will come around. >> i have a question i guess for you both. i was struck by the comment that you felt that you were in a new iran when you arrived there in 2009, a very different iran than two years earlier in 2007 and you gave some hints. could you contrast the two a little more. and explain what you think the changes were. and i suppose from that point of view, particularly as an outsider like i am, i read things and go to lectures like this, were their signs along the way that these pressures were building? >> i á@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself, which was contested and won by somebody who was relatively unknown ahmadinejad but was very much a known quantity within these circles. how did this affect ordinary life in iran? i arrived a few months before ahmadinejad was elected president and there was panic and breast beating at the time, but very few things changed on the surface of things at least if you lived in certain parts of tehran. traveling around the country, people are fed up. the reformist experiments had largely had been judged to have been a failure and they wanted something different. obama gets elected on the slogan of change and ahmadinejad got elected on the slogan of change, too. and he invested a lot of money. and in those years, there was bounty and there was a lot of infrastructure, which created a bubble and created inflation which made people dissatisfied with ahmadinejad again. but certainly when i was doing it this time on a friday and thursday before the elections, people would say to me, we're going to vote for ahmadinejad again because we want to give him the opportunity to finish what he started. and i would get this in parts of tehran and also in other parts because it seems from several people i have spoken to who are no fans of the islamic republic that will ahmadinejad was going to win it and they believed he was going to win it in the first round, which was shocking to me having come from a steady diet of goings on in the streets of tehran. but i went there to cover and i can't speak for tehran because that's where i lived. but by the time i went back there in january of 2008, things had changed and you could see how people dressed, for example or the way in which they had conversations or what was important. i don't know if that was just the effect of three years of ahmadinejad or sanctions beginning to bite or inflation or the steep rise in the price of goods was due to ahmadinejad's mishandling of the economy or both. >> my sense is that the protest of the elections was driven by a sense of rage in an election stolen. it's interesting to look back and ask the question, who won the election. you suggested that there was the view of some that ahmadinejad support and this gets to how the question was presented in the west, presented in the media and do you have a sense what were -- >> it is impossible to say after visiting south tehran for a day because after that, everything changed and we were kind of running up to keep up to speed with what was happening in the streets. going back to the cultural thing. there are so many problems with a foreigner in iran trying to say who won. the fact that are you going to gravitate towards people that think like you, because quite frankly, most of my friends and they remind me of the generation i grew up with in greece. there are a great many similarities. why would i gravitate towards someone who comes from a different background and look at me suspiciously for being who i am and being union married, i'm 28, which i was at the time, all of these things don't fit in. so i'm very wary of saying i say this happened because i saw this. because what i'm seeing is tempered by who i am. >> i don't think we know. i think the only thing we do know that the government behaved in such a suspicious manner that it is natural to suspect they did steal the election. they announced a landslide win for ahmadinejad about an hour after the polls closed which is ridiculous in a country that had paper ballots. there were a number of reports that ballot boxes were taken away from the polling stations instead of people having counted the ballots which had been the normal procedure. and when he talks about the changes in the society and the kind of creeping oppression, it caught us by surprise, because iran did have relatively free elections for a country of that kind. people would always say that the fraud took place before the vote because they would limit the number of candidates, but then the votes would be accurately counted. and you know, what we saw beginning in 2005 was, you know, some election fraud, some manipulation, even at that time, there were reports that ahmadinejad should not have made it into a second round. it's natural to be suspicious and given the numbers also, 63%, especially when you had two other very viable candidates. they were quite popular in some circles and they had results showing that these gentlemen did not do well in their native provinces, which is somewhat hard to believe. so i think some people suggest that it was really reversed, that musavi had 63%. when you look at the last time iran had a relatively free election, you had hatami win by 60% or 70% of the vote and maybe some of those people had moved over towards a more conservative position, but it's hard to believe that so many of them did to give ahmadinejad that total. perhaps the first time he had novel ti value but the second time, everyone knew he brought sanctions. i was last in iran in march of 2008 and people were -- and i went to south tehran and outside and even in poor neighborhoods, there didn't seem to be this kind of love for ahmadinejad. so i do find it hard to believe that he won. >> and there is a theory, which is a compelling theory but there is no evidence about it but i'm throwing it out there, if you follow the pronouncements of the officials before the elections, they were concerned about the possibility of a revolution that they kept talking about it. and also the driving energy behind the crackdown and the justification for the crackdown in tehran that this theory goes, it's not extraordinary to believe that there was no ballot stuffing or there was a lot of ballot stuffing, but that is not important because ultimately the votes were never counted. and a result was manufactured, which had a comfortably large margin between the first candidate and the second candidate and which would put the possibility of a revolution beyond any shadow of a doubt because it would give the victory directly to the incumbent so there would be no necessity of another seven days of potential violent campaigning and a second round but also it would put it in his favor that they wouldn't be able to take it to the streets and challenge the election as it was. this would dovetail that many officials have spent a lot of time studying revolutions and how to deflect them. perhaps there was an impression or idea that something was being cooked up and they totally came up with false figures. >> couple more questions. back in the back. >> i'm from the state department. can you comment on something that we are here this is more of a post-election protest that has generated into a civil rights movement and a larger movement. i would love to hear your comments, thank you. >> yeah. i think it's become very broad and very deep with a lot of different participants. you can tell that from the slogans that are chanted. nobody really chants for musavi. it's moved to death to the dictator. and that can be ahmadinejad. that can be the supreme leader. but it is a broad challenge to the system that that certainly is reminiscent what happened back in 1978 and 1979, with all the study of the velvet revolutions, the security forces should have remembered something about their own society is that iranian people don't like to have their intelligence insulted and they have a very strong sense of justice and injustice. and reveer their martyers and you have a movement that has created martyrs and narrative of injustice. you saw that ahmadinejad called people dust and dirt. iranians don't take well to being insulted. so how many people will have the courage to continue, one doesn't know the time frame. but there has been the fundamental breach here of the relationship between government and people, which was not terribly strong frankly before the election, but still existed to some extent or you wouldn't have seen that level of participation. 85% participation in an election is a dream in terms of legitimizing a system. and yet now it is boomerranning against them. >> i would tend to agree with you. the three years i lived there. these people could have been part of my own generation in aggetens, coming to age and having different expectations. this is an idea that has been put forth. and the interesting thing that is said of all the people that have come on to this new reality is the old timers thatville jumped into the band wagon and the younger ones from the second generation that are letting this go because they are fighting this cultural shift, but it does seem that perhaps time would be on the side of the civil rights movement people only that it has to be handled in a very delicate and sensitive way and absolutely clear there shouldn't be foreign intervention. this is the bread and butter of the islamic regime and this is just the natural organic process that should take its time. >> iran started this process back in 1905 with a constitutional revolution. so they have been struggling for more representative and fair system of government longer than any others in that part of the world. and you the question was about imperial history, but go back and talk about the sort of thwarted effort to achieve a representative government. >> other questions here? >> i'm a freelance journalist. my question is how do you see the recent developments in turkish-iranian relations? and i'm curious what do you think that means for the political dynamic for the greater -- for the broader middle eastern region, what this new trend means to you? >> basically, it's interesting living in istanbul, we had ahmadinejad visiting a couple of weeks ago and ahmadinejad visited before. he was in tehran last month. he got a special meeting with the supreme leader who doesn't give these meetings very easily. last time was with putin. ahmadinejad keeps on coming to istanbul because part of the standard diplomatic protocol is to visit and ahmadinejad might have an issue with a staunchly secular founder of a republic in which religion has no place. now the fact that they are doing this repeatedly is interesting in itself. and aside from that you have all the economic cooperation that has been vastly flowering in the they will need the goodwill that they can have. at the same time, turkey is increasing its place as a regional actor. it's got a nonprominent place in the u.n. security council and finally, domestically in turkey, this is playing out in a very interesting way. i saw a video before i came here of turkish protestors burning pofters of king ap duala reportedly over the recent saudi bottom barredment in yemen. now i have no idea why this is happening in majority sunni turkey, majority sunni secular turkey, but shows there are many changes happening throughout the region that perhaps are more under the radar than they should be. >> one last question. >> do you see hard line islamization in turkey in the face of u.s.? >> when you force people to be one thing, they'll react against it. iranians over the past 30 years are getting more secular whereas the trend was more religion. >> i mean in turkey. >> i understand. i'm giving an example of its neighbor. if you take that template and apply it to turkey, it does seem as if things are moving in a more religious direction. at the same time, turkey is a country that is feeling at ease with it self. it spent the last 80 years engaged in a project that could be described as cultural schizophrenia. we are more western than eastern. we had this in greece where part of the preparations for entering the e.u., everyone studied in england. or italy. west is good and east is bad, backwards. in our case, islamic, therefore, bad. this is an argument that can be used in turkey. but it seems that turkey is becoming increasingly comfortable with who it is. you have new debates about the minorities and you have armenia and turkey. you have the turks to criticize and the head of the o.i.c. and nato -- it's a very interesting and subtle game that is being played and the ultimate question is, is this looking after our own interests as well as cultural or is it fully a cultural agenda of, we're finally coming home and i don't think anyone can give an answer to right now. >> thank you all for coming and thanks for the questions and thank you for these excellent presentations. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] let us debate our differences ss medicare for the future, and that's what's going to be is co. they want us toight states that domestic abuse ise e problems in bitterly, bitterly know, one ofis united states the things that i'd say to my w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷ w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷ w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷w÷ the senate gavel-to-gavel. >> "washington journal" continues. host: captain john prater is president of airline pilots association international. you are testifying before congress. sellas your message. guest: get the faa reauthorization done. it includes language directing them to update the federal aviation regulations on pilot fatigue. it is the number-one issue before airline pilots today. host: talk to us about pilot fatigue. what would you like to see changed hands -- as far as regulations are things back and help pilots. guest: a set of regulations that recognize the difficulties of different types of flying. let us start with regional or commuter flying, where the pilot can do eight, nine, 10 legs a day. that needs to be put in restricted duty day so that you can do the landings but not have the 16-hour day. that means the pilot could be making his are heard last landing after being up 18, 19, 20 hours and then only get eight hours in a hotel. let us talk about the long-range flying to europe and asia, crossing eight, 10, even 12 time zones. that requires a different system. we have advocated for a matrix that looks at that and provides pilots with enough rest before, during, and after the trips so they don't have to ever go to work and be in a fatigued state. host: why should that come from the federal government as opposed to regulations the industry it imposes on itself? guest: the industry is not strong enough to impose regulations on itself. now, there is a responsibility both on pilots and operators, the airlines themselves, but there must be a strong underlying set of federal regulations that govern how we operate airplanes, how we operate our -- scheduling systems. host: talk about pilot pay. sometimes it is surprising how little they make even flying busy schedules. are they paid for the time they're in the air, and what would you like to see happen? guest: most of the pace systems are governed by the air. as if you paid a relief pitcher by the piece -- pitch. roughly our pay is somewhere between 55 or 85 hours a day a month. that is billable hours. it doesn't include the training time, we are not paid for what we are preparing for flights, doing what grounds. the pay has been a casualty of not only the economy but the war itself. following 9/11 this industry changed. unfortunately we went through bankruptcy's at almost all the major characters. those who did not go through bankruptcies were put under the cost concessions -- wages were cut by 30% to 40%. tensions were lost and then the airlines began to outsource of applying to what they call regional carriers. these regional carriers used to be commuter carriers, flying nine to 19 passengers. now these men and women are flying 50, 70, 90 seats jets and copilots earning as little as $17,000 to 18,000 a year -- gone and the families of the 20 days a month. we have a huge job to correct that. host: the plane crash in buffalo, the fatal crash, there was concern how much rest of the pilot and co-pilot got heading into that. a story and "usa today" look at could -- concerns on the cold and air flight, how much rest they got into it. one of the copilot's had to identify an overnight before the flight. theñ:z flight, the pilots oversight -- overshot the destination and now we are looking at what may have caused that. the recognition of perhaps they had fallen asleep but now it looks like they were on their laptops? guest: let me preface this, alpa is full member of the national transportation safety board investigation, so therefore i cannot comment directly because as full party status they must be the one to speak about it. but let me speak about it in general, the job of flying airplanes. unfortunately, we understand high-profile incidents make the news. but i think we overlook of the fact that there are 70,000 flights just over north america today being flown by air line pilots. 70 percent of those are alpa members. we strive every day to deliver safe product. every day on every flight pilots make hundreds of decisions. if those decisions are correct, you don't read about them. you get to your destination and you did not even know. airplanes are mechanical machines. guess what? they break. pilots handle those things. let us talk about when there is an incident or distraction or when pilots make mistakes. what we have developed over the last decade or so are programs called aviation safety action programs. as professionals, what do we do? we don't hide the fact that we made a mistake. we tell our company, which tell the faa -- would tell the authorities and each other so we can identify the mistake. that is the height of being a professional. one who can admit, i'm a human being, and made a mistake, how can i help iran someone else from making that same error. host: laptops, are the tools that could be used in airplanes? there were concerns about the regulations. guest: laptops are being integrated into the cockpit. basically what all the same type of communication devices that are on a cell phone. we get text messages in the cockpit from the company, the modernization of aircraft -- air-traffic control will come over as text messages. we are already using this over the atlantic. computers themselves, there is a role for them. they detected integrated in a safe manner. they just can't be seen to take away or distract from the job of flying the airplane. host: robert calling on the democrats' line from cincinnati. guest: is that a union that he is in there? -- caller: is that a union? guest: the largest pilots' union in the world. caller: how long have you been airline pilot? airlines guest: pilot for 32 years and pilot -- airline -- caller: when ronald reagan busted the unions -- guest: i was on strike for continental airlines. i live in those days of the strike, one that was determined to be illegal and we have also seen what happened since, that the profession has recovered. they are represented and have become a strong union in their own right. this country moves forward by recognizing its mistakes, just like my profession does. host: arlene of the democrats' line. good morning. caller: my statement is physicians have different agencies that report on them as far as safety. and the mistakes that they make, so that the public can be informed about what doctor they are seeing and what kind of medicine. because airline pilots are responsible for so many lives in 1 second, but there is no agency reporting any plan and flight, and the customer can look up that pilot and find out of the one to travel with them. if they had some problems, maybe we choose not to apply what that guy. we can do that with doctors. what makes these guys so different? guest: let me try to explain it in this way. we are the most tested professional world. we receive at least three check rides a year, two medical every year, we received constant monitoring and we fly with each other. there is always at least two of us in the cockpit. as a profession, if we recognize it efficiency, we address it. maybe my first officer recognizes something going on with me. maybe i'm fighting something. he will come to me. we have trained each other to rely on each other. but guess what? our family's flight in the back of these airplanes as well. so i can guarantee you we take very seriously. but we also go through so much training, so much observation by management pilots, check pilots, faa inspectors that you can get on the airplane with a great deal of confidence that each of the pilots has passed all the required faa check rides. host: mark on independent line from silver spring. go right ahead. caller: how are you doing? guest: excellent. caller: i'm live in the right now. you guys get paid more money, a tremendous response ability. is it your fault some of the airplane' have doppler systems that detect wind shear? guest: the radar will show areas of wind shear. the doppler has been used but doppler is mostly ground-based. denver comes to mind. they use a doppler system to detect wind shear across the airport. but that equipment is very heavy and we don't have that as standard machine equipment on the airplanes. host: on independent line, and neil from pontiac, michigan. caller: the qrs-11 chip implanted and some of the boeing aircraft. say that somebody had sabotaged the gyro chip, is impossible to hide graf -- hi jack and aircraft on the ground through a computer system, the meridian satellite? the you know anything about that? guest: i read what is out there on the internet. in fact it is an issue of art is a look at, but to debunk some of the concerns that are out there. fbi, cia, all of agencies have been made aware of allegations. at this point it is more than allegation that a reality. host: republican line. matt from jim thorpe, pa.. caller: i have a question and wanted to make a quick comments. you were saying that the pilots make $70,000 a year to start. well, you can blame -- $17,000 a year to start. you can blame president reagan busting the unions appeared the other question i have for you, sir, and please forgive me for my ignorance. did you guys and support the pilots carrying firearms? on the plane? guest: our federal flight deck officer program run by homeland security and csa has been an outstanding success. while i am not about to say any certainty how many airline pilots there are, i can guarantee you that many of the airlines in this country are being protected by airline pilots will have been certified and carrying a weapon to defend the cockpit. i can guarantee you there are over five figures worth of airline pilots in this country armed and ready to defend their cockpits and we fully support that program. host: richmond, virginia. calling on the democrat line. caller: hi, capt., how were you? my question is, do you feel that the increased flight security members after 9/11 had hindered fliers so much that it becomes overly cumbersome for them to actually go to the destination? guest: certainly the hassle factor of the first couple of years of tsa was very disturbing and i think it drove some be back into their cars and back into the trains are canceled their trips. but i have noticed over the last year or 18 months that it has become quite a bit better. the airport i have been flying out of, waiting has been anywhere from five minutes to 6 minutes, and i noticed the professionalism of the officers who are doing the searching. i think it is just a matter of experience. if you have not flown for a while, i think you will find it is much better. certainly it can always been disproved. we would like to knock down the hassle factor but in the end we guarantee the safety and security of the system, and that is part of the process. host: "the wall street journal" today, faa rejects boeing 777 ice warnings. what is your reaction? guest: it is a rare occurrence, but once in awhile, injuns fail. double engine failure like the triple 7 in london or the airbus that landed in the hudson, which is a very, very rare event. but pilots, again, are trained to do everything depended engines restarted, flying the airplane the whole time. this specific case -- machines are not perfect. pilots are taught procedures on how to deal with those type of events. in this case, the fix is we add power when we are at a high altitudes, cold altitudes, to try to prevent icing in the fuel line. that is a temporary condition. certainly we are advocating as quickly as possible that any of the suspect parts be replaced, but in the interim, we can do the procedure is not necessary to keep those flights save. host: let us go to philadelphia, pennsylvania, where john as calling on the independent line. caller: good morning. if pilots -- special commercial pilots are allowed to fly 1000 a year, correct? guest: correct. caller: i was curious, does the long provided up, you have a program and then some in the hours on and off? guest: glad to in some of that. the current rules are approximately 1000 hours per year, calendar year, about 30 hours to 32 hours depending on airplane or type per week and about 100 hours per month. we are required to keep a logbook showing our times from the time the airplane first move until the time the airplane stops. what we are looking for is much tighter control of how long the duty days a month -- may be pared earlier i said some of the duty days are 16 hours and that actually show up at the airport. that is how we keep track of the law books, computer programs and airlines required to monitor key to the flight times as well. host: the caller from louisiana. al is a retired air traffic controller. caller: good morning. captain, the morning to you. nice to see you and c-span. national -- i was in naca obviously, and we were interested in getting the faa bill through. it was delayed for quite some time. and i know what went on with the bankruptcy is an act -- and the way they paid with their pay a few years back. i wonder in what you think about that. we had a similar spirit but the impose work rules. guest: it is an unfortunate fact that on 9/11, 8 + years ago, war was declared on our country. at that time, o@@@@@@':n thrown away that easily. pension plans should not be thrown away that easily. they are actually taking a huge swipe at being a professional called an airline pilot. host: cameron on the republican line from seattle. caller: good morning, an good morning to your guest. i want to comment on the union thing. it sounds like a good thing at face value, but if you tear it down you think people expecting pensions -- for instance, gm, guys work for eight years and then they are entitled to $80,000 after eight years of working for a company. for instance, the state pensions nationally are 272 trillion dollars in debt. i think the unions, which i equate to the bolsheviks these days, are a problem. my question, do you comment on how the unions have bled the vampire host here in seattle -- some to -- have gone on strike 18 times in six years and bawling through in the towel, moving to south carolina and the union is so good, what now for all of your union thugs? any comment on that? guest: i would not comment on union of, sir, but i would tell you right now you would not be as safe on the back of an airplane if it were not for this union. we fight against people only want to make money and said, no, we want it safely. we were formed in 1931 and almost 60% of the founders lost their lives. our members pay a huge amount of do so we can make airline flying safer. that is what unions do for you. you may have a different take, but you know what, i think if you work for 30 years you ought to have a right to a decent pension plan, i think it ought to have a right to a decent collectively bargained health care. those are things the unions have brought to you, sir, whether you know it or not. host: talk about the differences between regional carriers and major airlines in terms of the hours pilots work and their lifestyles and also how they are compensated. guest: right now the regional industry is undergoing a large change. most are controlled by one of the large named airlines. either they owned them or control them. regional airlines are not airlines. they are airplanes, pilots, some flight attendants and mechanics and the operate as a subsidiary. a contractor to the major airline to put its name a side of it. caylee have with the contract calls for one of the name-brand airlines. the regional airlines grew tremendously after 9/11. the airline industry itself tried to protect its home turf but try to reduce the number of seats in the market, so it went to smaller airplanes. at the same time, they subcontracted, we call an outsourced, from the main line to the regional carriers. we are starting to see a little bit of reduction in that our reenah beard but the rate in -- in that arena. of the regional airlines, unfortunately too many carriers act like it is a training ground for the next job. airline pilot for 50-seater, 90- seater, is not a training ground that is why we are growing for h.r. 3371, airline safety bill, we are moebius senate will act on this. this will increase the amount of training airline pilots have been for the ever fly you or your family. host: walter on the independent line. gulf breeze, florida. caller: however you this morning? i am a retired crewmember. i have been out for about 15 years. i was wondering with this new bill they are talking about, but 24/7 role -- the 24/7 rule, that crewmembers have to have 24 at the home base. guest: sir, that is one of the things that is being looked at. the fda -- f a a will release an of this year or early next year a note of proposed rulemaking. at this point they completed aviation rule making committee and they are writing the rules but we have not seen it yet. we have advocated for certainly more time, more recuperative rest time at home than just 24 hours every seven days. but again, more of the complex matrix. but we believe those rest periods have to be protected and certainly expanded in this case. host: is the stronger regulations regarding the number of hours pilots work and fast turnaround? is there concern about reduction in pay? they are paid by air time. guest: it is something we will probably have to address. but we expect the pay hours will be roughly the same as they are today. i think certain operations may reduce some of their monthly flying. one of the things we're asking for is there are a lot of different types of flying. while we were talking mostly about airline passenger flying -- major's and regionals -- there is a huge section of the industry flying cargo, scheduled cargo, on schedule, flying through the department of defense. right now i guarantee you probably on approach to afghanistan, approach to iraq, flying our troops in and hopefully bringing them home. those are the things that we do. what we ask the government, what we are going to demand is that one size fits all. one set of regulations. it doesn't matter whether i have 300 passengers behind me or 30 tons of cargo, i am still a human being, still an airline pilot and they need to be treated in that same manner under let us debate our differences ss medicare for the future, and that's what's going to be is co. they want us toight states that domestic abuse ise e problems in bitterly, bitterly know, one ofis united states the things that i'd say to my and how this status affects u.s.-china relations. this is two hours 40 minutes. >> good morning and the mike is working. monday after thanksgiving so we're a little slow in getting started this morning. thank you for your patience. i'm ted a senior fellow and deputy director for foreign policy here at the brookings institution. welcome. on behalf of the foreign policy program here to brookings. this morning's event is part of a series of joint research and periodic updates on developments in china. sponsored by the australian national university, the chinese academy of social sciences and the john l. -- china center here at brookings it is particularly timely in light of the high-level presidential level diplomacy taking place these days involving all three countries the abc countries we call them. president obama's recently returned from his first state visit to china. prime minister of australia is in washington today. to discuss preparations for the copenhagen meeting on climate change and both president obama and i believe premiere went jiabao are to travel next week to personally express their commitment to reducing carbon emissions. very fitting today we take up two of the most important issues facing china. first the issue of clean energy and climate change. as you know the u.s. and china are the most important countries in the world in terms of carbon emissions. and during president obama's visit to china the leader signed no less than 7 agreements on u.s.-china cooperation in clean energy and made some notable statements about u.s. and chinese approaches to copenhagen. both countries this past week have made important pledges regarding cuts in carbon emissions. though how significant these are are really up to our panelists to help us interpret. the panel will help provide contacts on what has transpired recently in the u.s.-china relation shup and what we should expect looking ahead to copenhagen but also more generally. the second issue is how china is coping with the global economic crisis. how is china fairing what changes are occurring in its own economy and how will these affect and be affected by the country's international economic behavior. that will be the second panel this morning and i'm very pleased that we have panelists here from veil and china to -- australia and china to groin -- join our group and i thank you for traveling so far to participate in today's event. yourself again to amu and chinese academy of social sciences for their support of this series of meets and i'm delighted again that brookings can host this event and i'm going ask the first panel and charlie director of our energy security initiative to come up and get going. thank you. >> thank you ted. ladies and gentlemen, we're delighted to have you here today as ted was suggesting, these are indeed momentous days as we look towards the opening at copenhagen and a little more than a week away. and we hope that china and the united states will play dynamic roles obviously at that forum. because without us both stepping up to the table i think it is highly unlikely we'll see more than a process for further negotiations put forth. that may be what we have to live with, but we'll hope there's still time to have more. we have a very distinguished panel this morning and let me just briefly introduce them and then we'll get under way. our first panelist will be ross a distinguished n '@ @ v@ @ @ rs@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was the senior economic advisor to australian prime minister hock from 1983-1985 and subsequently served as the australian ambassador to china from 1985 to 1988. in september 2008 professor gar nel presented the climate change review to the australian prime minister which this review which has been highly noted commissioned by the australian government and examines the impact of climate change on the australian economy and provides potential medium to long-term poll stis emile rate these challenges. our second panel list will be elliot diringer. pew center on global chri hat change. oversees the sent's and jis -- isn't analysis of international challenges posed by climate change and strategies fors meeting them. also directs the senl's outreach to key governments and actors involved in international climate change negotiation. mr. diringer came to the pew center from the white house where he was deputy asis tament to the president and where he helped to develop major policy initiatives. before joining the white house mr. diringer was a veteran environmental journalist as a reporter and editor at "the san francisco chronicle" for nearly 14 years. he covered the 1992 earth summit in rio and authored several award winning environmental series mr. diringer holds a degree from college and in 1995-96 he served as neiman fellow at harvard university. our third panelist barbara finamore is with -- is the founder and director of the climate change program at the natural resources defense council. ms. finamore leads nrdc's 25 member staff in beijing to promote inknow i have -- innovative policy development capacity building and market transformation in china with a focus on climate change. critical components of initial efficiencies. green buildings. advanced energy technologies and environment law and a number of other activities. ms. finamore has had nearly 30 years of experience in environmental law and energy policy with a focus on china for nearly two decades. she has worked in nrdc's nuclear nonproliferation program at the departments of justice and interior and for the united nations development program and the center for environmental law. she has served as president and chair of the professional association for china's environment pace and is the cofounder and president of the china united states energy efficiency alliance. a nonprofit organization. she holds a jd with honors from the harvard law school. so without further adieu let's get ross garnaut up to the podium. >> it's good to be with you again. the abc meeting on china australian national brookings social sciences. we put out a book each year embodying results of latest research on the chinese economy and the brookings version of that will be out soon. not out for the occasion this year. we're meeting at an unusually interesting time in china's place in the world and china- u.s. relations. they're always interesting but number of things are coming together right now. most importantly the two issues we're discussing today the aftermath of the great crash of 2008 which has left a legacy of continued growth momentum and confidence in china. and concerns about the growth outlook in the united states economy. a very difficult budget situation as far into the future as we can see. so one of the things that the great crash has done is accelerated a shift that we've all been ware of for a long time. a shift in the increasing weight in world affairs of big asian developing countries. first of all china but also india and indonesia and the relative decline in world affairs the old industrial countries of the north atlantic. the acceleration of the shift could not have been more dramatic and the panel will be addressing that in the next session. the great crash and the great recession had important effects on the climate change discussion. globally it temporarily slowed down the growth of green house gas emissions but not by much and certainly not by enough to cig enough cagely -- significantly change the rapid movement of the world towards high risks of dangerous climate change. the slowing gives us just a couple of years of breathing space if we take as our measure the levels of global emissions but from sometime in the future 20, 30, if we're plotting e mission -- emissions growth over time the effect will only have been to shift back a couple of years the tan m -- attainment of various levels of emissions and the business as usual and even in the depths of the recession emissions where it was still so large that concentrations in the atmosphere were still growing. quite rapidly. second effect of the crash on climate change was that it increased public investment in all spears -- spheres and part of the stimulus programs most countries including china and the united states included investment in emissions reducing technologies. that was quite significant and in the case of china the period of huge fiscal monetary expansion has been associated with quite large investment in emissions reducing activitys and that's increased confidence in china that it can seriously changed the relationship between economic growth and emissions and help to give the confidence that led to the statement by the chinese government late last week. and the third change. the third effect of the crash on the climate change outlook is that it made the political economy of taking action more difficult. in all countries but especially in the countries the western countries most affected by the recession. and i think we'll be living with the overlay of that difficulty for some time. just looking at three countries in particular because it matters so much on what the world's seen. quite an interesting example of management of climate change issues in the aftermath of the crash with much in common with the united states. the united states itself and china i'd highlight a few points. in australia we're going through a rather dramatic period. like the u.s. we have a house of representatives and the senate and government's position is stronger in the house of representatives. than the senate. like the u.s. we had a government until quite recently that first contested the science of climate change and was seeking to slow down international movement on doing something about it. that all changed in australia a year before the united states in november 2007 with the election of the labor government which had campaigned strongly on the need to change climate change policy. probably the second main election issue in 2007 the biggest being industrial relations policies. and that proceeded by a year similarly large turn around and approach to climate change in the united states. the australian and the positions influence them, each other under the bush and howard administrations and probably are continuing to implement each other. prime minister 1 in washington today to discuss the approach to copenhagen with the president. today american time or eastern time and on tuesday australian time we're probably going to see a change in the leadership of the opposition in the australian parliament over the climate change issues. so we've not only had our first climate change election we're about to have our first climate change of high level political leadership. and all of this is rather dramatic in the politics of trail blazers. and -- of australia and the history of it is the difficulties of the opposition parties the conservative parties in coming to grips with the changes that have occurred under the government. rud came to power committed to introducing an emissions trading scheme and having australia play an active role in international discussions on mitigation. just wasn't all that easy politically in australia as it is in the united states and for much the same reason. we're both economies with an abundance of fossil fuels and we've developed patents of consumption and investment premiseed on the availability of probably cheap fossil fuels. australia, united states and canada stand out as the three developed countries with far higher emissions for -- per capita than any other developed countries twice as high as europe, japan, new zealand. so there are plenty of interests that are threatened by a change in policy. the government doesn't control the numbers in the senate and the green party which is quite strong in the senate. wants very strong action on climate change. thought the government wasn't doing enough and the conservative party wasn't giving enough assistance to higher emitting industries and so mr. rudd's legislation was held up in the senate. he finally made some concessions in the form of giving out more free permits to oversubsidize the heavy omitting industries and reached agreement on those lines with the leader of the opposition. and the opposition parties are probably in the process of getting rid of him for accommodating the government's legislation. in the eyes you're -- united states you're much closer to that than i am and i look forward to learning more about that today. the announcements last week were i think historic. the president committing himself to a version of the bills which have passed through the house but not the senate that must increase the chance of something like that becoming law also a few more words about that later. in china we also had announcements last week, not accidentally in the immediate wake of the american announcement. china was always going to show its hand more clearly than the united states had. it has committed itself to 40-45% reduction in the m r some of the processes of central planning had brought down initial use -- energy use, gdp. that process had come to an end by 2000 and energy use had continued to grow more or less in line with gdp early this century. te missions intensity of energy use remained very high because of the dependence on coal and it was actually a change in policy. that led over the last two years to substantial reductions in the emissions intensity of gdp. don't think the fact that china had already succeeded in getting itself onto a new path is -- did americans the cig enough -- diminishes the significance of it committing itself to continue on that path to 2020. for what it is worth in my climate change review it's published by cambridge university press last year and on the web review dot au. i did some careful calculations of what each country would have to contribute if the world was to achieve the 450 part per million concentrations goal that the europeans have sometime accepted as a aren'table objective -- a reasonable objective policy. australia and the u.s. are heading towards. and what china is doing is sub stan,ly -- substantially more than their part in the arithmetic that i presented in that review. the united states on the other hand with the 17% reduction from 2005 by 2020. it's not doing as much as develop countries will need to do. my own view is that the rest of the world has to accept that as a reality. most important thing is that the rest of the developed world our country included doesn't start to see the united states position as a norm because we won't get strong global mitigation if it becomes the norm we have to see it as an exception that the u.s. for its own political reasons at this moment in history. can't do much more than that. and we have to see it as an exception and not something we all have to weaken our own positions to move into line with. and i think that strong global mitigation is feasible within that context as long as we see clearly the position of the u.s. and the u.s. as in china confidence in starting to make a movement towards reduced emissions in china's case first those ratio to gdp and later on absolutely confidence the progress will make it politically possible to do more. the mitigation of climate change has a cost. i estimated in my review after the most elaborate set of long-term modeling of the strait yan -- australian global economies i think and has been done anywhere ha the cost -- that the cost to the middle of the century to australia participating play part in strong mitigation regime directed at 450 million would take some -- something approaching but something less than two percentage points of gdp growth per annum of the total. it would delay by a few years australia wrech -- reaching the average per capita level. the income level that would otherwise attain in 2050. that all became part of the australian debate and people were prepared to accept those costs but we're probably makeing the costs a good deal higher than that and higher than they need to be by the way we're going about supporting high emissions industries as a result of the political process that's gone on. this is happening in all countries. all of them are subshy dees -- subsidizing because each country fears that its trade exposed industries will become less competitive because others aren't doing as much on climate change as it is. and the net effect of this everywhere is to increase greatly the costs of mitigation in all countries. we need to use reality of an emerging global agreement for all of us to get rid of this highly distorting stuff. it's important in budget matters the u.s., australia, every country in the west faces a dreadful budget outlook. the u.s. much worse than australia's. being able to auction permits rather than giving them out free to high emissions industries would have a material effect on budget prospects. so it's how we handle this issue is not only important for managing the big effort that's required on climate change but going to have a significant effect on our ka passionty to bring bud -- capacity to bring budgets back into shape in the aftermath of the great crash. the u.s. and china announcements last week, i talk as being very helpful in the approach to copenhagen. we would like both to have been stronger but both do represent big shifts in position from a couple of years ago. the whole world needs china and the u.s. to be taking strong positions if we're going to get a strong global agreement and i don't think that we should use disappointment that the u.s. or for that matter china is doing enough as an excuse for the rest of us becoming less ambitious because there's too much at stake. thank you. [applause] >>. >> good morning. my thanks to brookings and anu for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you this morning. as the theme for my remarks i want to pick up up on a word professor used in his remarks a few times and that word is confidence because i've come to believe the ultimate objective of climate diplomacy whether talking about bilateral summitry or multilateral negotiations is to build and maintain confidence between and among nations. that's because i believe countries will ultimately deliver their strongest possible efforts only if they are confident that others their counterparts. their competitors are also delivering their strongest possible efforts. we all need confidence that others have the ability to act and are intending to act and once they've committed to a set of actions we need confidence that they are fulfilling those commitments and this is something of a virtualous circle we need greater confidence to get us to agreements and hopefully good agreements deliver greater confidence in turn and i think it's reasonable to argue that one of the greatest obstacles to achieving global progress on the issue of climate change has been a lack of confidence in particular in between these two countries the united states and china. as we all know in washington there has been long-standing concern here in this town certainly going back to the days of the negotiations that china could not be counted on to do its part and many have argued on that basis that the u.s. should hold off on enacting mandatory greenhouse gascon trolls here. for its part the united states has probably provided plenty of reason for a lack of confidence in our efforts. first u.s. having walked away from the kyoto protocol. second still not to date having enacted any mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions and within the bilateral context there's a long history of the u.s. helping to launch but then abandoning joint initiatives. and i think this has periodically eroded whatever trust had begun to be built between the united states and china on these issues. at this point though i think we can point to a number of very promising signs. that in fact we are seeing confidence being built and i would start with the recent summit in beijing. climate change in the context of this summit was a point of agreement rather than disagreement. was one of the points of agreement highlighted by the leaders many of the concrete outcomes of the summit were energy and chri nat -- climate related the joint statement from the two leaders contain some very important language on the issue. both countries resolved to take strong mitigation actions and the two sides said that they resolved to stand behind these commitments. important words i think coming from the leaders of the world's two largest greenhouse gas emiters. together they launched a series of joint initiatives on clean energy, electric vehicles efficiency, coal, other areas of clean energy and i think we can look to those to be producing some concrete results over time that in fact will better enable both countries tackle these issues but parnl i -- importantly i think they do provide opportunities to continue to build and strengthen confidence. in areas such as technology sharing probably more practically approached than the context of specific initiatives rather than in a broad complicated negotiation. and i would point in particular to a memorandum of understanding achieved between the u.s. epa and ndrc with the goal of strengthening capacity for greenhouse gas emission inventories. that of all the initiatives launch at the summit i think that is the one that probably speaks most directly to the issues in the global negotiations. i think the bottom line on the summit that while it may not have achieved any fundamental breakthroughs from the perspective of confidence building it was certainly a success. but the summit of course has already been overshadowed by what came next the two countries putting numbers on the table. something the u.s. has not done since the kyoto negotiations and something china has never done. in the case of the u.s. president obama has proposed a provisional target in the range of 17% below 2005 by 2020. in the case of china what we've heard is voluntary goal to reduce carbon intensity 40-45% in the same timeframe. each is saying that the other's officer not enough -- offer is not enough. many others have expressed disappointment in both but i think the fact the two largest emiters now have numbers on the table is a sign of greater confidence on both sides and is a major step forward and i think it should give us all greater confidence because a global agreement frankly is only possible with these two participating numbers on the table is a critical step in that direction. but ultimately i think the real test is what we can achieve multilaterally. ultimately what we need are binding commitments from all the major economies and i think the question for copenhagen is how far it can move us toward that objective. i would foresee the outcome in copenhagen in two body mentions. broad dimensions the first being a set of political commitments. these are individual commitments from the major countries on the types of met gags actions i -- mitigation actions they intend to undertake and these are also financial commitments from the developed countries to provide some prompt start supports some upfront support to developing countries both on climate mitigation and on climate adaptions. i want to be careful to characterize these as political commitments. the second major dimension of what i hope to see in copenhagen would be a start on the architecture of a future treaty because we are, what we are seeing now is basically a two step process. we are seeing a political agreement in copenhagen that hopefully sets the stage for a legal agreement to achieve, to be achieved next year and if we're going to get to that second step that legal agreement, it is important that parties in copenhagen make some real progress on beginning to lay down the architecture. how our commitment is going to be defined in this treaty. what is the longer term fien national architecture -- financial architecture to provide sustained reliable support to developing countries and importantly how are country's commitmentsing going to be verified that is the elm most critical to instilling and maintaining that we would expect to see would be taken on its own. not supported by the international community. the united states for its part doesn't use the word verification in its proposal on mvv. mrv being the lingo we've developed for measurable reportable and verifiable. the u.s. has tabled an mrv proposal that manages to avoid using the word verification. the proposal has a number of very important features. it would require annual greenhouse gas inventories from all the major and bidding countries. it would require that they submit regular reports on their implementation of the action that they've agreed to. it would require both the inventories and implementation reports be subject to expert review at the international level. all of these are important steps towards greater transparency. but the u.s. proposal only goes so far as requiring a peer review process. at the end of this review process in an open plen ri of all parties the party concerned makes a presentation on what it is doing. how it is implementing its actions and other parties have the kmunl to comment and ask -- to comment and ask questions on. that again, a step towards transparency but one could easily see this evolving into a very polite ritual in which countries agree not to be too harsh with one another and i think at best what you get is an inconclusive debate with the party claiming it is in full compliance and other parties disagreeing this effectively leaves the question of compliance entirely to comostic -- domestic compliance regimes and my sense is many in congress would be quite confidence -- confident of domestic compliance regimes here in the united states but perhaps not as confident of domestic compliance regimes in other countries including china. what you wind up is perceived asymmetry that i don't think goes far enough to provide the kind of confidence need. from our perspective an agreement would need to establish some means to independently determine if a country is complying with its commitments this could be done with implementation committee appointed by the parties to look at the reports from the expert review panels and any submission from parties and rend ear judgment if s a country complying with its commitments. we would not suggest this be a punitive approach. one involving personalities necessarily. i think that's something that many countries including china and quite possibly the united states would not accept. rather we suggest what is determined a -- termed a facilitative approach a compliance america nis up that is geared toward helping to identify and overcome obstacles to implementation so the countries not in compliance can be brought back into compliance. there's a well established school of thought in international law that naming and shaming may well be the most powerful incentive for come plinls. -- compliance. that the potential the potential threat of international sen chur and the reputational costs that that would entail is the most powerful force availability to the interational community to encourage parties to fulfill their commitments. put for effective shaming you need effective naming which is why we think that you do need some mechanism in an agreement to actually reach that clear determination of compliance or noncompliance. so in sum let me just say we are seeing some very, very . toward building an effective multilateral climate regime. i think we should be watching in copenhagen to see just how far we get toward building a solid architecture so that copenhagen isn't simply a plunging conference but that it in fact moves us closer to a full agreement that gives parties real confidence by providing clarity on commitments and on compliance. thank you. [applause] >>. >> good morning. thank you to the brookings institute for inviting me to speak today. we're coming off an exciting few weeks of u.s.-china negotiations and discussions on climate change. and i want to spend my time here today covering a little more detail of what's happened in the last couple of weeks. the significance of the partnerships and commitments that have been announced. and what we can look for from the u.s. and china in the copenhagen negotiations and afterwards. one of the key achievements of president obama's asia trip was that it advanced the discussions on climate and collaboration and clean energy with china and it laid the foundation for future concrete and meaningful cooperation that hopefully will build trust between the countries and accelerate the development of clean energy deployment. the key principal here is engagement and partnership. no country can address the challenge of climate change alone and it's especially necessary for the major emitting countries particularly the u.s. and china. the world's two largest e milters to find ways to cooperate. on the policy and technology developments that are required to shift to a lar car -- a low carbon economy. reducing emissions from fossil fuels will require the development and deployment of clean energy technologies on a very large scale and the u.s. and china both have strengths complementary strengths in innovation, design and manufacturing that will be vital to building the new energy economy. you heard that in china presidents obama and who announced a package of clean energy initiatives in the key areas that have vital to developing the techno look -- technological solutions for reducings emission zwhas're mutually beneficial for both countries and can speed the transmission to a clean energy economy. i'd just like to highlight in a little more detail some of these initiatives and comment on their substance the first is the energy efficiency action plan which we believe is key to achieving the levels of carbon intensity reduction and absolute carbon emissions the two countries have recently pledged and they have pledged to work together only on -- on some of the areas of greatest phone, reduction through energy efficiency. developing building efficiency codes and building energy rating and labeling systems. benchmarking industry industrial energy efficiency. harmonizeing the test procedures and the performance metrics for energy efficiency, energy efficient consumer products. exchanging best practices and demonstrating. these design and energy practices. there will also be an annual u.s.-china energy efficiency forum and mayor's sustainable city program where local officials can visit each other's cities to share experiences and best practices. believe in many, many analyses have shown that energy efficiency which means getting more work done from the same amount of energy is key. a vital part of mitigating emissions and it's the cheapest, cleanest, fastest way to reduce any country's emissions while saving money. from the u.s. side over the past several decades, california has become a leader in energy efficiency and has, its experience has shown every dollar invested in energy efficiency leads to $3 in energy savings. but still there's enormous untapped potential for energy efficiency in both countries. these energy efficiency measures alone in china are capable of reducing china's carbon emissions by 728 million tons by 2020. more than any of the other abaitment sources combined yet investment in energy efficiency in china is only 5% of the investment that it's making in supply side energy resources. so the high energy consuming sectors account for over 70% of china's industrial energy use but they only contribute 20% to the val added. -- value added so therefore these agreements this energy efficient action plan we feel is going to be a vital step in moving forward increasing investments in energy efficiencies and reductions in both countries. second the two countries agreed to renewable energy partnership. they're going to develop and implement policies to adopt, advance renewable energy deemployment in both countries through renewable energy road mapping. regional deployment solutions. advanced r&d. and public private engagement. the u.s. and china were the two countries in the world who invested the most in renewable energy last year and the world's leaders in the design, the manufacture and the installation in various technologies and renewable energy this cooperation is going to scale up that investment that r&d to the level necessary to take advantage of their competitive advantages in a way that benefits both countries. there will also be an advanced grid working group to bring together u.s. and china policy makers and regulators leaders in civil society to develop strategies for grid modernization. this is key to enrenewable energy to enter the grid in both countries. there's a u.s.-china electric vehicle initiative. this is a prar -- particular interest to the leaders in both the departments of energy and the ministry of science and technology. this is going to accelerate electric vehicle development through joint product and testing standards. development of a road map to identify the r&d needs. barriers to widespread use of electric vehicles which still exist in both countries. this is important because china and the u.s. of the world largest consumers and manufacturers of vehicles. electric vehicles are a key way for both countries reduce their alliance on oil. china's projected to increase the number of cars by 10 times from its current level by 2025. while the u.s. transports sector is responsible for a third of all co2 emigs. -- emissions so this could to the be more important. and finally the u.s. and china agreed to cooperate on 21st century coal initiative which includes several measures designed to further the rapid commercialization of car can chur and sequestration and to develop cooperation on the gas initiative. and finally it was mentioned earlier we believe it is key that both the u.s. and china. the epa and the n d rc. china's most powerful government agency agreed to cooperate on development of greenhouse gas inventories this is the first time that epa has partnered with the ndrc which is responsible for all climate change activities and it is going to help develop cooperation on the key issue of monitoring reporting and verification. so while china has not agreed to allow international verification of its emissions this kind of cooperation gets us a step closer to that goal. china has already developed an inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions back in 2004 four. it's developing its second one right now and it's made it clear that it is going to include its carbon intensity target as part of its climate policy. part of its medium to long-term social and economic development plans and they're going to probably allocate this carbon intensity target down to the pro vennial and local level. so again active engagement between the u.s. and china here on the details of its greenhouse gas inventory design. it is going key to enhanceing the confidence between both countries. so what are the expectations that we see for both china and the u.s. as they go to copenhagen? you've heard the announcements everyone's heard the targets that both countries have recently adopted but i think it is important to note that china's new carbon intensity announcement is significant not only because of the actual number of the target but because of the national monitoring framework that will acompany it at domestic level. china has already announced that it will establish a national a greenhouse gas database management system and >> we expect this to the follow in essence the framework over the last year plan. monitoring and reporting and verifying it's progressing and meeting the intensity target. these include in things like september 20028 accomplish meant of a national bureau of department the of energy statistics within the national bureau of statistics that creating nation wide system for monitoring and verifying energy assistance. and that is not just at the national level but the local governments have also improved they're institutional arrangements for monitoring and verifying energy compliance and their staffing to do so and on the carbon intense thety target, china has already required every province to develop it's own climate change action plan and to set up a climate change leading group led by the governor of each province or the mayor of province lt level cities such as beijing and shanghai. this is going obsta to be key t allow them to take place. you need leadership at both the national and local level for government. china, yesterday announced, issued a progress report on how well it has been meeting it's commitments and it's clay mate change action plan to date. it's a hundred papers and it's quite comprehensive and cheer to me from reading progress report that china's climate change efforts have been going on for some time. china's climate change efforts have been going on for some sometime and have been quite comprehensive in everything from forest station to energy efficiency and renewables. so neither country is going to be entirely satisfied with the commitments made by the other but both should realize and i think our earlier speakers agreed that they represent a significant commitment given the particular situation in each country. china would like to see the u.s. and other developed countries commit to a reduction of 40% from -- by 2020 from 1990 levels. the u.s. commitment of 17% in the range of 17% from 2005 levels is equivalent to only a 4% reduction from 1990 levels. but it does represent or plans in the waxman markie bill to accelerate as the years go by on u.s. side like to see ci that set a slightly higher target for reducing carbon intensity so china's emissions can bebin to slow and peak as preferably as possible by 2025. but we need to remember that china is both a developing country and a rapidly growing economy and so as it constructs the infrastructure and buildings to house its increasingly ur -- urban population by its very nature going to increase its carbon emissions but china should be given credit for the significant actions that it has already taken to in the current five year plan to improve its energy intensity as you may recall the commitment was to reduce its energy use per unit of gdp by 20% between 2005 and 2010. >> it's important to recognize the actions that china has already taken that are quite significant. with regard to the copenhagen summit as a whole. i believe it's possible to come to a meaningful framework agreement. sometimes called an operational cord that will include the commitments of each major country with respect to mitigating actions and how they'll contribute to addressing they're emissions and there will likely be all the other key elements we believe are necessary to make that framework meaningful including agreements on the funding needed to cyst the most under developed countries and strength then for station efforts around the world. the declaration by president barack obama at the apec meeting in singapore they did not believe it was possible to come to afully binding legal agreement in copenhagen but they would strive to achieve a meaningful operational agreement with all the major component was real situation. should that prevent us to coming to a meaningful international agreement in the first half of 2010 or by the next meeting in december 2010 in the latest. this additional time should allowed the u.s. senate to consider climate intercongratulations that will demonstrate the united states full commitment and leadership to implementing the policiesness to cap and reduce our emissions and form the basis for strengthening commitment bias other countries as part of a final agreement in which all countries are fairly contributing to the fwhoebl effort to address climate change. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have had three presentations and just to get us started, i'd like to throw out, since i didn't hear any panelist mention as part of the architecture we hope emerges from copenhagen what you think can be accomplished on the issue of intelligent property protection it's fine to talk about the government agreements we've made but in reality we know most of the technology that will help mitigate climate change is going to come from the private sector so if anyone would like to address what we can expect. chinese position or american position to be on that, you can start there and then open it to the floor. >> i'm happy to get us started. my expectations is that a copenhagen agreement may say little or nothing on the question of intellectual property rights. it's been an issue with the development of country blocks calling for come pull their licensing to provide easier access to intellectual property with resistance from such ideas coming from other developed countries. given how far apart the parties are on that issue my expectation is it's not something they can come to an agreement on in copenhagen nor do think it's necessarily something that needs to be directly addressed in a climate agreement at this stage if we look at the types of technology transfer that are needed and types of technology transfers taking place already. technology is transferring through conventional commercial channels. it's enabled both why demand india to become are you newble energy and this is through commercial arrangements. we do have established multi-lateral for addressing issues of intellectual property when that's necessary. it's more appropriate to leave the issue in the, w.t.o. for now unless there is a demonstrated need to take it up within the climate context. i think at this point a new funding mechanism to help transfer technology really is the critical need. something that will help transferring technology. in things that are not being deployed that can have impact and we can do that without having to renegotiate the terms of intellectual property. >> anyone want to add to that? >> i would agree. those are not issue and it's being handled elaborately within w.t.o. framework. there is a need as part of the set of agreements, that we need to reach on climate change to have a commitment for high income countries to invest public resources and research development and commercialization of new development. colombia professor has suggest odd the indian prime minister that can be away of handling the issue of historical responsibility that developing countries have had a lot of importance to. and we need a lot of innovation quickly to low tear cost of the transformation that had to be made. there are research development and commercialization of new technologies that need to be public resources in it and i think high income countries should be committing, h2 to make sure they're putting adequate resources into research development and commercialization. and there's a need at the research end where research in the nature of things having to be a public good into the commercialization end where you generate private property. the international commitment to expenditure on research development commercialization could include a component for paying for the utilization of privately developed technology in developing countries. >> okay. the floor is open. would you please - before asking your question identify yourself and your organization please? any questions from the floor? yes, sir? there are microphones comeing you will wait just a minute. >> i'm erick from foreign policy student analysis. i've been thinking big thoughts. you've made me feel encouraged. i was in china just before the president barack obama visit and i was disappointed to see so many critical press reports. seems to me maybe some good things did happen. i was thinking and scribbled down a few things i've been seeing cooperation on north korea. climate. gulf of aid and situation and there's a lot of unanswered questions with taiwan and human rights and i could go on, but seems the way we're handling things and one of the most important things you said is how china and united states are approaching some sort of partnership in this century. am i being too grand in thinking big thought? >> i would definitely agree with you. there were a lot of issues on the table for the summit, but it was clear to me and i was there for some high level meetings during president barack obama's visit that the partnerships i described on clean energies between the two countries were the bright spot. and do indicate the potential for enormous mutual benefit. both countries recognize that and they're moving forward on that. i was at a clean energy roundtable with two united states secretaries, commerce and energy and they're counter parts in the ministry of science and national energy administration and there were about 100 experts in the room. a lot from private industry from both countries vieing with each other to show how fast they were moving ahead on things like electric vehicle and renewable energy. the excitement in the room was palpable and i do believe we'll see through implementation of the partnership agreements enormous progress that may then move over hopefully, to other areas of united states and china engagement. >> questions? >> yes, sir? >> thank you. for your presentation. i'm from the chinese embassy, in washington dc. i'm the first secretary. i would like to ask a question. we appreciate the visit of president barack obama to china achieved good results, and as you pointed out that we have formed partnership and cooperation on energy and economy change. i think this is beneficial for the climate and also energy security. i would want to ask, whether do you have any specific suggestions or ideas to deep ten cooperation in this regard. as you know we have set out energy-efficient center and we have memorandum of understanding and also we have an a 10-year framework of corporation document. so how do you deepen the cooperation and the achievement of concrete results from this corporation? i think it's a very important. thank you. >> can i give three suggestions. thank you for asking. one would be funding of the china, united states research center. when secretary chew came to china the announcement was each country would put in 7.5 million dollars to fund. that's clearly unsufficient. during the summit it was announced that ten times increase in the funding to 150 million dollars total, but the money has to be found and i think both countries are looking to the private sector for a lot of help on that but really the more funding that can be put in the more productive they'll be. secondly. the e.p.a. anddrc agreement is very much of a framework. without too much detail, i believe it's very promising but again there's a lot of exchange that's gone on between, e.p.a. and the admin. industry of environment protection over the years in improving capacity to monitor and verify conventional pollutants so there's a lot of expertise demonstrated that could be applied further to co2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. just like the, m o 2 in july that was sign supply and demand much of a frame work and these agreements provide more detail. the next step would be to provide some sort of annex or partnership to put meat on the bone. third to really deepen and accelerate the cooperation, we believe that it's very important to make each of these agreement as public private partnership to utilize the expertise that exists in the private sector and business community but also at the state level in the u.s. that had let the way many years to also take into account research institutes. utilities and,ng o. the greater efforts to utilize the expertise and not to make just government to government. the more productive it will be. >> i think we'll see some very important progress in copenhagen. but if the objective is, as i think it should be a final legal agreement, there are some very difficult issues that need to be worked through and i think it's important to maintain on-going engagement at the leader level in order to deliver a successful conclusion to that second round of negotiation. >> yes, and as a high diplomatic level i think the discussions of what the u.s. and china are doing themselves on emissions needs to be brought more explicitly into the contributions that each make. within a global framework for growth of concentrations of greenhouse gases that heads up to a solution. that adds up to the avoiding of dangerous climate change. when you put thicks in that framework, you start to ask how to question about how much needs to be done. i'd like the bilateral discussion of these things be put more explicitly into a global framework with in being gritty. >> yes, sir? >> i'm better with the a lot the council. it's encouraging to listen to the progress and process. where or when i add up where it might go i don't yet see us getting past our potential tipping point in real serious changes in the global environmental situation and as a father of a young child i'm happy to have standards and verification but consequences are an important part of the process. i'm not particularly encouraged about the long-term prospects so i want to first part of the question am i overly pessimistic in saying hey we're not getting there? the second one is okay. if we're not what's plan b. there's been few mentions of adaptation and enormous cost meaning what happens if one of the grade three does slide into the ocean and many parts of world go under water. how do we organize the response to that. you think the united nations but is that the right place for it? one r we getting there? and the second question is, if it doesn't look like which is the picture i get, what's plan b? >> well, plan b is so far inferior to plan a. the focusing on it is not very encouraging. the main expectations from the mainstream science suggests that the absence of effective mitigation would have consequences that will probably be catastrophic involving disruption of human civilization on a scale beyond anything we've had before. there's uncertainty about the science but the uncertainty points to chances of it being worse than the main expectation as well as chances it'll be better so the uncertainty adds urgency for the plan a. we are already to o late to avoid significant consequences of climate change. the main scientific opinion says we're feeling some of that rather painfully in australia you. the concentrations in the atmosphere through the standard 30-year late are the results will continue to increase for some time. so, we need a big effort to deal with the need for adaptation even under plan a. even with brilliant success in global mitigation we'll do or be dealing with consequences. mostly, i think involve getting markets to work better in a very wide range of spheres. it's a failure of markets that parcel the problem of climate change but in adaptation i think it can take a long way example in food trade. going to be having to be a rid change in consents of food. a current constant global system for ag ri culture can't handle it. that's just one example. that needs to be a human increase in public investment. in agriculture. and planning and other matters related to adaptation. that's something markets can handle. rob cellik last year talked about doubling global expenditure on agriculture research. that was given some sort of lip service by the,g-8 but nothing much has happened. but the big question is, how good a job we can do on plan abusea because if there an a melting of the ice sheet and the himalayans and tibet plateau then the consequents are truly havoc. and - i think we should recognize that we're not yet on trajectories that lead to a satisfactory plan a but good outcomes are not out of the question. the changes in the last couple of years including china and united states are of historic importance. the changes in trajectory that still need to be made are large but the fact that we've made such changes in the last couple of years gives hope that we'll make the additional changes. we'll go back to the an arithmetic on the climate change review that talk about the type of global deal that might add up to holding con see drakeses of 4/5 parts of a million after a period of over shooting. that was strongly influenced by the state of play in the international discussions that suggested it would be difficult for developmenting countries to enter commitments before 2020. that would be agreed upon and real in bali and cairo kyoto. i said there was no avoiding high risk persons and staying there if we didn't shift on that so as suggested at ten percent reduction below business as usual in the developing countries is part of a global deal work. what china is doing adds up to about 25% on the 40% improvement in emissions intensity and 30 percent on the ba basis of the percent i emissions tendency so kind of announces it will do more than my an arithmetic assumed. the u.s. is doing less as barbara mentioned. 17 percent from 2005 is a very small reduction from 1990. other developed countries have committed much more. japan, europe, australia and new zealand. korea. about - but nevertheless, that announcement is a huge shift intra jek try for the united states and bedding that down and getting legislation through the senate network, i think is a first step and then, as confidence grows that you can do that without knocking the staffing out of the united states economy, then greater ambitions can come into focus. i wouldn't give up on a good plan apartly because there's no plan b that's any good at all. >> i'd like to just, follow up on that with a different take on what plan b might be in the united states the analogy would be the clean air act a meants of 1990. cap and trade from. my organization worked 10-years to get those in place. the reason it took so long is primarily because industry complained the cost of compliance would be far beyond what the industry could bear and what we saw happened was shortly after the amendments were passed and acid rain training program went into effect they noticed that the compliance was far less. we believe we may see the same, will see that same kind of transformation in the debates. once the climate change legislation is passed cost of compliance will not only be much less than many in the industry of some industries, not all anymore are claiming but all in this case. the development of new jobs. clean energy industries that are going to bring a benefit as well as a reduction in cost of oil imports and so forth. i think we shall see the same type of trance for fakes in china once the carbon intensity target is put in mace and governors and mayors are rated in how well they'll achieve it. i think china will see in help building capacity this is a benefit and can and will move towards more ambitious efforts. just a day after china announced the carbon intensity reduction target china will announce a new renewable energy target in the last few years it's had to revise it's renewable energy targets upwards as it achieved success. that would be my plan b. get the framework in place and incentives in place. it's going to develop scale up rapidly of the new clean energy economy and we'll see tighter targets on both sides. >> think we have one right here, gentlemen? >> my name is ben and i'm a graduate student. i have a question for you. seems the economy grow, they tend to shift often from very industry heavy g.d.p's to those that consist of much more. 40% seem like a huge number. how much of the 40% result of the chinese economy changing and changing to things more service or potential industries are less energy producing and how much are energies they have becoming more efficient? >> it's hard to tease out what carbon intensity target is through efficiency and what will be achieved by noble energy targets and how much through efforts. but i do agree that another area, in fact one of the biggest areas that's going to result in increased carbon intensity in china will be the transformation of industrial structure away from the high energy intensive, high a luting industries toward tesh rare economy and less service economy. this is in china's long-term overall planning and it has through these medium long-term plans the ability to carry out it's industrial structure planning it's doing so in many respects. things like tariffs and reducing and increasing them to slow the development officer time industries and promote the development of others. this is going to be a key aspect. it's happening and the extent to which china can accelerate something it wants to do for other reasons is also going to hell top reduce it's co2 emissions. >> yes, sir? >> thank you for your presentation. is it realistic to expect the u.s. to in fact, meet these improvement goals without a serious return and swift return to building nuclear power plant? >> i think that one can certainly expect nuclear will remain an important component of the energy mix and that we may well see us moving forward for the first time in many decades with the construction of new power plants. one of the keys to getting a bill through the senate will be something on nuclear provisions. all manner of support and subsidies to help get the industry kick started once again, what more can be done, i'm not sure. it's not a particular area of expertise for me but i know it's an area that will be closely focused on in the senate. i expect some additional nuclear provisions in the senate bill and probably in the final bill and i think we can expect to see some growth of the nuclear sector in the decades ahead. there are many other options available to us including many we've discussed in the chinese context just now in terms of efficiency and alternative resources. >> yes, ma'am? >> i'm margaret pearson from the university of maryland and the multi-lateral treaty for a moment. we've heard a lot today about the importance of the u.s. and china in spearheading the move toward copenhagen and some mention about prime minister red is here but i wonder if the panelist could give some lay of the land of what the coalition will be as behaviors move toward copenhagen. who is bringing whom along? and how - whether there's any surprises waiting for us as to other actors besides the u.s. and china and what they may be likely to do helpful or perhaps unhelpful? >> i think we notice too little how much is helping and being contributed by some large developing countries other than china. i think the developments in china are very important and very positive. but at the independence do sneeze yen presidents since hosting the bali summit has taken the issue very seriously. it's a difficult being political issue in a young democracy, but the government's kept a strong focus on the issue. including funding for new technology in the energy sector of geo-thermal path. the big issue is deforestation and that issue is - a has added least become the center of national policy focus in indonesia and brazil and south africa too they're important developments. south africa introducing a carbon text a couple of years ago. one could say the big developing countries have gone further than the u.s. has as a national level and that wasn't anticipated in the kyoto and bali agreement. so, india is a very important player and india carries a good bit of - not very helpful ideological baggage in international discussions tend together emphasize the more responsibility of developing countries but even there in response to movements elsewhere in the world, there's been some change of focus recently so i'm hopeful that in india too will play a positive role. among the developed countries we'll have been waiting for the u.s.. well not waiting for the u.s. commitments have been made but everybody has been recognizing the u.s. is the big, big piece of the jigsaw sitting in the middle without which things can't coming to. and if it looks as if the president's position is going to be supported by the congress, although that u.s. position is much weaker than any other developed country, the u.s. at least legislating what will amount to an important change intra jek try will have a very positive outcome. >> well i think we're out of time. i want to thank all the panelists and the questions on the floor. one final remark because it's a subject near and dear to my heart and that is, as we move towards copenhagen and look at those that are looking at the energy use urge us to cut our emissions of fossil fuels and as we look to helping the emerging market funds with helping their problem west should also remember there's 2 billion people in the world that have no access to commercial fuels as we know them that use dung and agricultural residues and we shouldn't use or lose site in copenhagen if those people have hope for a brighter future we have to find a way to wring them energy that will help they're societies commence with the rest of the world. thank you all very much for coming. [applause] >> the senated has started debate to be healthcare bill and majority leader harry reid has warned council to expect weekend sessions. follow the entire debate on government govl to govl coverage on c-span two and see video on demand. go to c-span's healthcare hub. >> the senate govls back in at 10:00 achl and will continue debate on healthcare legislation including senator's on healthcare service for women and keen's motion to send the bill back to committee. watch live senate coverage on c-span two. >> in a few moments british prime fin minister jordan brown is sending more troops to afghanistan. next with segments on the healthcare be bait and president's speech to the nation about afghanistan. couple of live events to tell you about today. the senate commerce subcommittee on aviation looks at airline pilot fatigue on c-span at 10:15 am eastern and senate intelligence committee considered pending nominations at department of homeland security. c-span 3 at 2:30 eastern. president barack obama will outline his after dpan stan war strategy tonight at the u.s. military academy at west point, new york. you can see that on the c-span networks. on-line at c-span.org and on c-span radio live at 8:00 eastern. british prime minister jordan brown says he'll send five hundred more troops to afghanistan bringing the total number of worry tish troops to nearly 10,000. after his announcement you'll hear from opposition party leaders and questions from members of parliament. this is about an hour and a half. >> statement the prime minister. >> with permission mr. speaker let me begin the statement on afghanistan by once more paying tribute to our armed forces. since 2001 our forces have been fighting in afghanistan one of the long longest military campaigns of recent times. longer than the world wars of the last century as part of our centuries fight against global terrorism and all-times they have shown the highest professionalism and courage making them the best admired and best in the world. they've endured heavy and tragic casualties and deserve our utmost gratitude and let me acknowledge visitors of this the members of the 19th brigade that have served with distinction. the increasing of military action is there are two prior questions people ask of our american coalition a lies in afghanistan. one question about the present and one question about the future. rightly, both questions have to be answered. the first is why today our armed forces are in afghanistan and second is how and when afghanistan can take responsibility for it's own security so our troops can come home. mr. speak tear origins of our intervention in afghanistan and scale of the terrorist threats are known to us all. around the world thousands of men and women of all religions including thousands of the muslim faith have been murdered in al qaeda. the bomb's recently cost 52 lives injuring over 750 people. we have seen 2006 heath row liquid bombs blocked and the 2007 bombs and this year al qaeda conspiracy to target shopping centers. theres now 150 convicted prisoners. they report weekly on the hundreds of would be terrorists that seek to operate within and target our country. now to counter this terrorist threat we have since 2001 traveled the resources available to intelligence sources and doubled operatives and today twice as many police officerses are there to counter the terrorist work and subject tourists are check at the border and increasing number of people are excluded on national security grounds from britain. and because this is a fight for our hearts and minds against violent extremism and those ideologies that pervert the true islamic faith weaved stepped up our work to expose the damage murderous and extreme ideologies do and support those working across all faiths to uphold the common ground of respect for all. so mr. speaker our security in the united states kingdom and effort to counteract terrorism has continues to be strong at all levels. faced with the terrorist threat some argue the most effective strategy is simply to defend britain within our own borders and some ask why british troops are in afghanistan at all if afghanistan can form in yeah men and even in internet chat rooms all over the world. as long as pakistan afghanistan borders are the location of choice for al qaeda and e i center for terrorist imit's the government's choice to address the threat at it's source. indeed as long as three quarters of the most serious terrorist plots against british have links to those areas and we sha should be failing we did not work with a lies to deal with the problem where it start as more stable and more secure afghanistan will help ensure a safer britain. since 2001 progress has been made in driving al qaeda into the mountains. today for the first time since 2001, tens of thousands of pakistan troops are in now this area and with president barack obama i've been urging the leadership most recently in conversation with president asary not just with the pakistan but also against alqueida. as an international community we must intensify our support for the action of the pakistan authorities and improve cooperation in the month as head and press ahead with development program to two third office a billion over four years which is focused increasingly on the border areas and on encourageing the development schools to counteract propaganda. it is essential progress in driving al qaeda from afghanistan must be met by actions not simply to isolate but defeat them within pakistan. success in driving al qaeda have led some to propose it's now e fish don't target al qaeda there. to explain why this is an inadequate response we must understand the al qaeda process and extent to which they continue to seek as in the past, a taliban permissive afghanistan that allows them unfettered opportunities to launch and plan attacks on britain and other countries. so our task is to prevent the taliban from giving them that safe haven and while our singing boy challenges will be not be solved elsewhere instability can only increase the risk where the rest of the world can least afford it. that's why mr. speaker the safety of the people on the streets requires us to deny them the space to operate across pakistan and deny the option of return together operate in afghanistan and this is the considered view of the 43 nation coalition which is a unique force of nato and nonnato members led by the united states of america and supports by clear united states resolutions and today our shared purpose is the same as 2001 to deny al qaeda space to operate and our approach is now to be different in achieving this. in december of 2007 our government became one of the first to suggest afghanistan must be prepared to take far greater control of their security. we argue to weaken the taliban we have to strengthen the afghan government. this approach is built on our knowledge that the taliban only have minority you support among the afghan people and our judgement that the long-term security is best served by training the afghan army and police and building up security police at a low all right. and international level and giving afghan as stake in their future and this has to be supported as we propose by stronger international civilian leadership to work along side general mcchrystal to deliver civilian aspects of this program. it's transfer of lead security responsibilities to the afghans district by district. province by province. with the first potentially being handed over during next year. let us be clear that this process will depend on the afghans being ready to take responsibility and control, first through more trained afghan troops and second, through better policing and third through effective local and national government and fourth by giving afghan as stronger stake in their economic future. can i say overtime our objective is to work for and encourage a new set of relationships between afghanistan and it's neighbors based on their guarantee of noninterference in their future a fairs and on a commitment to fostering not only long-term links with other powers in the region but immediate confidence building security measures from which all can benefit. i want the london conference on afghanistan to be held on january 28th which the secretary general of the united nations affirmed they're attend to unite the up international community for a program now and in the longer term to help the afghans secure and enforce their own country. our coalition military strategy is to create the space for effective political strategy to work. weakening taliban by strengthening all rig afghanist. today i want to set out the benchmarks for this approach and then in that context, to give details of the numbers and deployment office our armed forces. first, over the coming year the coalition seek as major expansion from 90,000 to 134 thousand afghan troops. we allow the surge to allow extra 10,000 troops to be deployed helle m and 5,000 will be trained by british forces and we can start now. 600 afghan soldiers are arrive this month. and further ten afghan companies. thousand more troops will soon reenforce the afghan army's 205 core across south afghanistan. increasingly therefore afghan forces will clear and hold ground as they prepare for the time to assume responges built for their own security. the international will agree with president caresy's government a police reform plan. in afghan police number lisp creed immediately to 4100 with u few there to follow. the capacity of the training center that we have established will be doubled and we will double the number of police trainers provided by the royal military police from 100 to 200 next year. thirdly, an ebbin effective mil. with our support and that of our international partners far reaching to ensure now all 400 provinces and districts have a governor promoted on merit with clearly defined roles and sources. and they have been formed in many of the main areas concerned. nation wide the number of community development councils will increase in two years from 22 thousand to over 30,000. the fourth is a clean effective and inclusive national government in kabul. one that reaches out to split a political leaders. while president caresi agrees on a task force and arrest of 12 leading officials took place last week we realize it's deliberating on the ground and we'll monitor carefully what his administration is doing. we support president caresi's call for reconciliation and it's the task of military forces and international and afghan to weaken and pressurize the insurgency but right and essential this work is combined the upper way forward for those prepared to reduce to join the political process but reintegration must be led by afghans themselves at national and local levels for. afghanistan to enjoy stability in the future. farmers and working people in towns and villages must have a greater stake in that economic future. major afghan led program backed by significant funding to identify the growth areas and to provide afghans with credible afghan to poppy and insurgency. with 30 percent land growing wheat it's expected this year to be the high nest 30-years. funding by our development department will create 30,000 jobs in this year and will be able to raise the incomes of 2000 people. i turn now to the details of our levels of employment levels. on my statement to the house i said to support the strategy to train more afghan soldiers and police, but at the same time maintain the security of the forces the government agreed in principal a new force level of 9 and a half thousand to be imply amended when three conditions were met. first, i made clear we would increase the number of british personnel only ensured it would be continue to be the case that every unit deployed werefully equipped. at this morning's meeting of the afghanistan and pakistan national cure city meeting the chief gave that assurance that this condition has been met for the existing force and additional 500 troops in deed the chief's report to me. continuing delivery of new equipment. helicopters have been given the green light for operations a month ahead of schedule. compared with three years ago, we have doubled helicopter flying hours. these will increase by further 20% and by the end of the year the mind resistance massive vehicles will double almost income paired to august. the massive will increase by over 75 percent and by string next year they will increase even more. new war hog tact vehicles over the last three year will increase of more than a billion pounds from treasury reserve in vehicles for afghanistan. by the end of this year also, a build of a 200 counter strong, i.e.d task force along with equipment will be complete. and increasing of over 45 percent and further 200 specialist troops will be deployed against, i.e.d's by spring 2010. three years ago equipment and enforces funded from the treasury firm was estimated at about $190 pounds. this year it's more than double that around $400,000 and still rising and best possible support and equipment is what we owe those fighting for our country in afghanistan. i said secondly, mr. speaker our contribution of 9 and a half thousand must be part of an agreed coalition internationally with all countries bearing they're share. a coalition largest cob try but or the is the united states of america and we continue regular discussions with the president and his team about the coalitions regarding strategy. america will make an announcement tomorrow and the secretary of nato reports that in addition to the uk and u.s.a.le 8 countries offer additional troops and other countries are likely to follow. it's often said america and britain are fighting a loan. but this is wrong. the numbers of coalition troops will have risen from 16,000 to around 30,000 soon. and i believe that over the coming months, even more countrys will respond. our effort in hell monday will benefit. last year total international force levels were around 7,000 and now they will be above 20,000. three times what they were. now our third condition was that the military effort of the international coalition must be matched by afghan effort. president caresi ensured not only 5,000 members of the new afghan military will be deployed by 2010 but additional kre kruts will arrive in the next few weeks with. the three conditions met i will confirm we'll move to 9 and a half thousand. extra troops will deploy in early december to thicken the u.k. presence and from late january they'll make the transition to the partnering role we have for them. mr. speaker, for understandable reasons of operational security we'll hold information of the nature of activities of our special force bus at this time of increasing international effort, it's right to get a more comprehensive account of our total military commitment to the afghanistan campaign. i believe the british people deserve the assurance our highly professional widely respects and extraordinarily brave special forces are plague they're full role not only enforce direction but in taking fight directly to the taliban working in three there along side regular forces and i want the whole country to pay tribute to their work. taking into account the special forces the supporting troops and increase announced today. our totally military effort is in excess often thousand troops. this will able us to bring security to the population and support our political strategy of increasing afghan government at national and local effort as they take steps to form a more inclusive way, it will accelerate the development of afghan army and police so in time they can take over responsibility for security and ensure our troops can come home. we're ensuring the safety of our forces and setting benchmarks for afghanistan to meet in the last few months we worked hard to achieve a strong military force across the coalition and in all we do we'll never forget this fundamental truth of the military campaign, that keeping the streets of our country free from terrorism is our utmost responsibility and that for a safe britain, we need a stable afghanistan and i commend the statement to the house. >> david camryn? >> thank you, mr. speaker. before turn together afghanistan can i put something i put wrong last week. while the two islamic schools got money from running with the group and did receive that under a path finder scream it was not the one related to extremism. i'm sorry for the

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