Computers and the environment

Buy our stuff, save the planet

May 22nd 2008
From The Economist print edition

The internet could become as ungreen as aviation. A self-serving solution beckons

IN COMPUTING, buzzwords are in most cases just that. But the latest, “cloud computing”, stands for a real trend: computing is increasingly being supplied as a service over the internet (depicted as a “cloud” in many charts). Still, there is something wrong with the term.

It implies that by moving into the ether, computing is becoming weightless, with no connection to the resource-constrained real world. In fact the opposite is true. The corollary of more computing in the sky is more and bigger data centres on earth. These are warehouses packed with humming electronic gear, and in particular thousands of servers, the powerful computers that crunch and dish up data. The biggest facilities are the size of half a dozen football pitches and house as many as 80,000 servers (see article). They are huge energy hogs: in America alone, according to the country's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), data centres already account for 1.5% of electricity consumption.

And this figure is growing. Data centres consumed 0.6% of the world's electricity in 2000, and 1% in 2005. Globally, they are already responsible for more carbon-dioxide emissions per year than Argentina or the Netherlands, according to a recent study by McKinsey, a consultancy, and the Uptime Institute, a think-tank. If today's trends hold, these emissions will have grown four-fold by 2020, reaching 670m tonnes. By some estimates, the carbon footprint of cloud computing will then be larger than that of aviation.

Yet the industry's attitude towards its growing environmental impact is rather unusual: computer-makers actually seem to enjoy drawing attention to it. Not for them the defensive approach favoured by the airlines, which is to emphasise the economic benefits of flying, note what a small share of overall emissions it releases and promise that some wondrous technology will lead to reductions in the distant future. Instead, computer-makers prefer to emphasise the scale of the problem—since that leads naturally to a sales pitch for the various technologies they have devised to mitigate it.

The firms that run data centres are less forthcoming. A research programme set up by the EPA to establish best practice for data centres has signed up only 54 volunteers, the EPA said this week, which suggests that many companies would rather not reveal how inefficient they are. On average, McKinsey and the Uptime Institute found, a third of servers run idle. In most data centres, administrators do not even know which programs run on which servers. “Let's pull the plug and see who calls” is not just a joke. This has prompted industry chatter that data centres risk having regulations imposed upon them if they do not pull their socks up. That would be just fine for vendors, since it would spur sales.

Technologies including multi-core processor chips, more efficient power supplies and smart cooling systems are already available. So too is software that allocates computing resources more efficiently. Where they once boasted about performance, computer-makers now talk about performance-per-watt, and emphasise their energy-saving credentials. “Slash energy consumption up to 45%,” screams an advertisement for Dell, in green type. “Virtualise servers to help maximise performance and reduce energy usage. Implement best practices to enhance efficiency and lower cooling costs.” (It makes a change from talk of gigahertz and terabytes.) Deploying the latest kit could cut the power consumption of data centres in half, according to the EPA.

Doing well by doing good

It is easy to be cynical about all this. However energy-efficient computers become, the bigger task will be to generate electricity using technologies that do not emit carbon dioxide. Yet this is one case when market forces and environmentalism align. A cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, of course, would make such alignments more commonplace. But even without putting a price on carbon, there are already plenty of examples, as in computing, where adopting more efficient technology would both save money and help the environment.

Greenery does not have to be motivated by altruism; and it is far more likely to be effective when it is not. If it helps to reduce carbon-emissions, self-serving greenery is as good as any other kind. The planet cannot tell the difference.

May 18, 2008

Diesel Automobiles Clean Up for an Encore

By LAWRENCE ULRICH

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Pros

• Mileage is 25 percent to 40 percent higher than gasoline.
• Carbon dioxide emissions are lower.
• Highway mileage and performance are better than hybrids'.
• High torque is well suited to large pickups and S.U.V.'s.
• Extended driving range means less frequent fill-ups.
• Engines are robust, often lasting 300,000 miles or more.

Cons

• Engines and emissions systems can be costly.
• Diesel fuel currently costs far more than gasoline.
• Like gasoline, diesel is a petroleum product from foreign suppliers.
• Though outdated, image as a dirty technology lingers.
• Only 42 percent of American filling stations have diesel pumps.
• Some companies’ latest emissions controls require refills of urea.

AFTER years in the automotive wilderness, largely exiled to the smoky borders of truck stops, diesel is coming home. Americans may not recognize its freshly scrubbed face.

A 19th-century invention by Rudolf Diesel, the diesel engine has always been known for outstanding fuel efficiency, with better mileage (by 25 percent to 40 percent) than gasoline. But the kerosenelike fuel and the engines that burn it were dirty, noisy, dawdling and even deadly, linked to increased risk of cancer and respiratory disease.

That has all changed, in part because of cleaner-burning fuel — its 2006 rollout had been mandated in 2000 by the Clinton administration — that has 97 percent less of the sulfur responsible for diesel engines’ sooty particulates.

The low-sulfur fuel, hailed by the Environmental Protection Agency as a historic advance, has opened the door to sophisticated emissions controls that let diesel engines meet the strict pollution standards of California. Those rules, the world’s most stringent by far, require 2009-model diesels to be as green as gasoline or even hybrid models.

In the meantime, advances like turbocharging and high-pressure fuel injection have transformed diesel cars from soot-belching slowpokes with a telltale clickety-clack sound to smooth, tidy and powerful machines that many Americans would have a hard time distinguishing from gasoline models.

With technical and environmental hurdles overcome — and facing tougher mileage standards that call for a 35 m.p.g. average by 2020 — automakers are rushing in with clean-diesel cars.

Two sets of emissions rules — a very strict set for California and four other states, another for the remaining 45 states — had kept most diesel cars out of the United States until now. In contrast, fuel-sipping diesels were embraced in Europe, where they account for half of passenger car sales.

But starting with the 2009 model year, several automakers have developed diesels clean enough to pass muster in all states, including — at last — the big California and New York markets.

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Volkswagen says it will be the first to market, with Jetta sedans and wagons arriving in August. Mercedes will follow in October with diesel versions of its GL-, ML- and R-Class sport crossover utilities. BMW is preparing a mighty twin-turbo 6-cylinder diesel for sale this fall in the 335d sedan and X5 35d sport wagon.

Audi’s Q7 3.0 TDI utility wagon goes on sale early next year. That automaker has been vividly demonstrating modern diesel’s one-two punch by dominating recent runnings of the 24 Hours of Le Mans with its R10 racers, which are not only fast, but are the quietest, cleanest and most fuel-efficient cars in the field.

The new diesel disciples are not just the usual German suspects. Three Japanese companies — Honda, Nissan and Subaru — are ramping up the technology. Long known for efficient gasoline engines, Honda will offer its first American diesel next year, as an option on the Acura TSX sedan. A similar diesel Honda from Europe that I recently tested achieved a wallet-friendly 53 m.p.g. on the highway.

Honda also plans to offer a diesel V-6 around 2010 that may find its way into the Acura TL sedan, the Acura MDX utility or the Honda Odyssey minivan.

Nissan will install a Renault-designed diesel in its Maxima sedan for 2010; Subaru will counter with a diesel the same year, probably in a Legacy sedan or Outback wagon. A Jeep Grand Cherokee diesel arrives in 2009, and General Motors, Ford and Dodge all plan 50-state diesel versions of their light-duty pickup trucks in 2009 or 2010.

The situation seems to defy the conventional wisdom that saw diesel cars heading to history’s scrapyard. As late as 1982, Mercedes relied on diesels for 80 percent of its American sales. But aside from their strong presence in heavy-duty trucks, diesels have been relegated to a small but loyal fringe.

The diesel revival takes its cues from Europe, where the engines power everything from tiny microcars to luxurious autobahn cruisers. Strikingly, hybrids have grabbed less than 1 percent of the European market. Yet automakers acknowledge that mending diesel’s foul reputation in the United States remains an enormous challenge.

Johan de Nysschen, executive vice president at Audi of America, estimates that diesels might eventually account for 15 percent of Audis sold here. But first, he said, Americans must learn that modern diesels are not only clean and fun to drive, but more efficient than hybrids for many consumers.

“In stop-and-go city driving like Manhattan, the hybrid is a good solution,” Mr. de Nysschen said at the New York auto show this spring. “But we need to convey the message that hybrids are not the definitive solution.”

Under the hood, there is little to distinguish diesel engines from those that burn gasoline. Both use pistons, valves and electronic fuel injection, but the differences go beyond the form of petroleum that goes in the tank. Today’s gasoline engines ignite their fuel with a high-voltage spark; diesels, also known as compression-ignition engines, light the fire with the heat generated by squeezing the air in the cylinders to a far greater degree. This is one of their main advantages: a compression ratio of nearly 20:1, compared with a maximum of about 12:1 for gasoline. This means that diesel engines extract more power from their fuel.

The compression of a gasoline engine can’t simply be cranked up higher — the gasoline would burn erratically. Diesel fuel, a petroleum distillate, will tolerate those high cylinder pressures.

Another reason diesels get better mileage: the fuel contains 12 percent more energy a gallon.

Largely because they burn less fuel, the engines produce up to a third less carbon dioxide than gasoline models — compelling some environmentalists to reverse their longstanding opposition. Diesel’s drawback had been high levels of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and carcinogenic soot.

The greening of diesel involves the new ultra-low-sulfur fuel, cleaner-burning engines and a suite of emissions equipment.

Filters trap sooty particulates while catalysts use ammonia to convert nitrogen oxides into harmless nitrogen and water in the exhaust.

“There’s a little chemical processing plant in there, and some pretty amazing chemistry,” said Thomas Hinman, vice president for diesel technologies at Corning, a leading supplier of cellular ceramic filters for diesel engines.

For many models, including those from BMW, Mercedes and Audi, there is a catch: their S.U.V.’s will carry six- to eight-gallon tanks of urea, an ammonia-rich solution injected into the exhaust to neutralize smog-forming pollution.

And to ensure that consumers don’t let the urea run dry, Mercedes is installing a dashboard alert that warns consumers when the urea level drops below one gallon. From there, owners will be on a countdown until the tank is topped off: the cars will start just 20 more times before they cannot be operated. That countdown is a concession to federal regulators, who demanded technical assurances that these groundbreaking systems would work continuously to keep emissions below legal levels.

The smaller 4-cylinder VW and Honda diesels, in contrast, meet 50-state standards without requiring urea tanks that would have to be replenished every 12,000 miles or so.

Yet as automakers dress up diesel for its coming-out party, one unexpected development is threatening to spoil it. For decades, diesel fuel cost less than gasoline, amplifying the advantage of its higher mileage. But over the last year, diesel has soared to a record average of $4.33 a gallon nationwide, compared with $3.72 for regular gasoline.

George Peterson, vice president of the AutoPacific consulting firm, said that diesel cars traditionally offset their higher prices through both fuel savings and higher resale value. But higher-price diesel fuel puts both those financial incentives at risk.

“Given the price of diesel, you can’t get the cars to pay you back, so it doesn’t make as much sense,” he said.

While diesel currently costs 16 percent more than gasoline, that premium is more than offset by mileage gains of 25 to 40 percent. Consumers would still save money with a diesel car, and they would fill it less frequently.

The Mercedes E320 diesel sedan, for example, can cover roughly 700 highway miles on a tank. Clean-diesel models may also become eligible for federal tax credits of up to $3,400.

Consumers will also pay more for diesel technology, with manufacturers estimating that diesel engines and emissions gear add from $1,500 to $3,500 to their costs for each car. Mercedes is charging only $1,000 extra for its diesel models, compared with the equivalent gasoline versions, though some analysts suggest that Mercedes is partly subsidizing diesels to win converts. Steve Keyes, a spokesman for Volkswagen, said the Jetta diesel sedan and sport wagon would cost less than $2,000 over the gas versions, a price that he said would cover the additional costs.

Automakers also note major differences between European and American markets. European nations have long subsidized diesel by taxing gasoline at higher rates. Additional taxes on large engines also drove consumers into small but relatively powerful diesels.

Finally, diesel isn’t as widely available as gasoline, though 42 percent of service stations nationwide offer the fuel, according to the Diesel Technology Forum, a trade group.

Many analysts expect diesels to blow past hybrids in popularity. J. D. Power & Associates estimates that diesel will explode from its 3 percent market share to 11.5 percent by 2015, exceeding hybrids at 7 percent. Continued high diesel prices could force an adjustment in that projection.

“People will definitely get sticker shock at over $4 a gallon,” said Mike Omotoso, the powertrain analyst at J. D. Power. “But we see the huge price gap between gasoline and diesel as a relatively short-term spike.”

And as the industry hedges its bets on which fuels and technologies — including gas-electric hybrids, diesels, plug-in hybrids and ethanol — will catch on, some automakers are publicly at odds over diesel’s chances.

General Motors’ advanced propulsion strategy is to develop a full range of alternatives to gasoline, including hybrids, ethanol, hydrogen and its Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric car. As part of that strategy, G.M. is developing new diesels, including a 4.5-liter V-8 that it will offer on 2010 models of the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups.

Yet while GM is already selling 1.3 million diesel models a year worldwide — and is readying a diesel-powered Cadillac CTS for Europe — it sees diesel’s American future in pickups and S.U.V.s, not in affordable cars.

G.M. engineers say diesel can raise the mileage of a trailer-towing truck by 70 percent, making it a smart buy. But, they say, for a gasoline car that already gets 35 m.p.g., diesel’s gains don’t justify the added costs.

Some automakers prefer to squeeze higher mileage from gasoline-burning engines without the expense of diesel engines and emissions gear. “There’s no question that we can get to the 35 m.p.g. standard with gasoline,” said John Krafcik, Hyundai’s vice president for product development.

As technologies vie for supremacy, the diesel-versus-hybrid debate has been especially fierce. But diesel devotees don’t have to be hybrid haters, or vice versa. With petroleum expected to dominate the automotive landscape for several more decades, the hybrids and diesels that burn it are central technologies in the transition to alternative fuels and the drive against global warming.

As if to prove the point, some automakers are marrying diesel and hybrid for the best of both worlds. Mercedes has shown a diesel-hybrid prototype of its big S-Class sedan that the company estimates would achieve 44 m.p.g. VW has shown a 69 m.p.g. diesel-hybrid Golf, though Mr. Keyes said the technology was years away from production.

Johannes-Joerg Rueger, vice president for diesel engineering at Robert Bosch, a major manufacturer of diesel systems, said: “If you’re looking at the carbon dioxide and mileage goals that have to be met, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s diesel or hybrid. Let the consumer choose.”

The UN and humanitarian intervention

To protect sovereignty, or to protect lives?

May 15th 2008
From The Economist print edition

The new notion of global responsibility to alleviate suffering has struggled to win acceptance—and Myanmar will not be the place where it comes of age

Illustration by David Simonds

“IT WOULD only take half an hour for the French boats and French helicopters to reach the disaster area.” Those were the wistful words uttered by Bernard Kouchner, France's foreign minister, as his country's diplomats at the United Nations vainly argued that aid might have to be “imposed” on Myanmar if the military regime refused to co-operate.

Even as he spoke, diplomats from China, Vietnam, South Africa and Russia were mocking his idea that the “responsibility to protect” (a new concept in global affairs, implying that saving human lives might in some extreme circumstances override sovereignty) could be invoked in the case of Myanmar's cyclone. China noted acidly that the idea had not been cited in 2003 when France suffered a deadly heatwave.

David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, reignited the debate on May 13th. Challenged by a radio interviewer to say whether the new concept (designed to deal with crimes like genocide or ethnic cleansing) could also apply to natural disasters, he replied: “It certainly could, and we have been absolutely clear...that all instruments of the UN should be available.” But nobody expects Britain, France or any other country to fight its way into Myanmar. As Mr Miliband observed, “the regime has 400,000 troops in uniform.” For ordinary people, unfamiliar with the UN's arcane workings, it looks rather depressing. Will there ever be a good moment to cite the notion of a responsibility to protect—unanimously adopted by more than 150 states at the UN World Summit in 2005—as Mr Kouchner is now suggesting?

The tortuous development of that concept is a tale close to the French minister's heart. As a young doctor, he saw the horrors of the Biafran famine triggered by Nigeria's civil war. Soon afterwards he co-founded Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and became a leading supporter of the “right of humanitarian intervention” in cases where governments fail their own people.

What Mr Kouchner was proposing sounded, in its stronger versions, like a revolution in global affairs—overturning the 1648 treaty of Westphalia, which upheld the right of sovereign states to act freely within their own borders. The UN Charter of 1945 also upholds the Westphalia principles, by stating in article 2(7), that “nothing should authorise intervention in matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” But Chapter VII does entitle the Security Council to take action in cases of a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression”.

Tension between those two principles—sovereignty versus intervention—has been palpable for decades. Some countries stress the enforcement powers laid down by Chapter VII. Others (mostly in the poor world) insist that state sovereignty always trumps, even in humanitarian emergencies.

In practice, since the end of the cold war the UN has been intervening more often in conflicts within (as opposed to between) states. Sometimes it has happened with, and sometimes without, the consent of the governments concerned.

In 1999 Tony Blair became the first world leader to assert a moral right to “get actively involved in other people's conflicts”—even without leave from the Security Council—if it was the only way to stop dire suffering. Speaking in Chicago after NATO's war over Kosovo, which the Security Council had declined to endorse, Britain's then prime minister made the case for “just war, based not on territorial ambitions, but on values”.

Four years later, an American-led coalition invaded Iraq, using somewhat similar rhetoric about the need to overthrow a dangerous tyrant for the good of everyone. Although it wasn't in any formal or legal sense a test case for responsibility to protect, many people felt that the disastrous outcome in Iraq discredited the entire idea of intervention for “altruistic” purposes.

Less of a right, more of a duty

Meanwhile, Canada had set up an International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, under the chairmanship of Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, and Mohamed Sahnoun, a former Algerian diplomat. In their report, published in 2001, it was they who first suggested changing the discretionary “right to intervene” into a more muscular “responsibility to protect”, or R2P as it is known in diplomatic jargon. Under it, the “international community” (in effect the UN) would be placed under an actual obligation to take, if necessary, coercive action to protect people at risk of grave harm, in accordance with clear criteria.

Taken up by a High-Level Panel on UN reform in 2004 and adopted by Kofi Annan, then UN secretary-general, the principle survived the haggling in the run-up to the 2005 World Summit to squeeze its way into the final “Outcome Document”, though shorn of criteria. But it was never intended to cope with the aftermath of natural disasters or even “ordinary” human-rights violations. It was to be invoked only for genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity.

From the start, the idea was viewed by the developing world as a trick by the West to impose its values. Cuba, Egypt, Russia, Algeria and Myanmar have been vocal opponents. They have been leading a determined effort to obstruct the formal appointment of Edward Luck, a professor at Columbia University, as a special UN adviser on the issue. He still has no salary, no real title and no UN office.

Others, this time in the West, are asking whether responsibility to protect will ever be more than an empty slogan. When it came to it, who would be willing to intervene? How could such action ever get past all five of the Security Council's veto-wielding powers? Besides, as a senior UN official laments, the Iraq fiasco has “poisoned this well”. It showed that an armed intervention, even if its declared aims are benign, can set off a whole chain of terrible consequences.

“It never takes much more than a few days around the corridors and meeting rooms of the UN in New York to have your latest dose of optimism beaten out of you,” Mr Evans moaned recently. But he and other proponents of responsibility to protect have started to fight back, seeking to correct “misconceptions” over the concept. It's not meant to be a grand new doctrine or policy, they insist, rather a modest “strategy” for protecting the defenceless.

It is not only about military intervention, they add, but also prevention: spotting situations that could result in mass atrocities. Political, diplomatic, legal and economic measures should be tried before any resort to arms. Not every conflict, potential conflict, or gross abuse of rights should prompt application of the rule—only the worst cases. And even when all non-military means have failed, armed intervention may still not be the right answer. The consequences must be weighed to ensure that it will not do more harm than good to the people it seeks to protect.

Responsibility to protect is not yet dead, but it is fragile. Supporters point to the power-sharing deal that stopped Kenya's civil war in February as the concept's first success. The fact that the UN, in principle, retains the right to impose its will by force may have made it easier for the world body to broker a settlement.

Perhaps. But the idea will need some clearer successes than that if it is going to survive. And Myanmar, apparently, is not going to be one of them.

Can the army out-gun the drug lords?

May 15th 2008 | MEXICO CITY
From The Economist print edition

Four top police officers, and more than a hundred people, are killed over the course of a single week in drug-related shootings

AP

“FEAR is our chief safeguard,” Pericles declared in his funeral oration, “for it teaches us to obey the magistrates and the laws.” In Mexico, however, fear has become the chief aid not of the state, but of those who are trying to subvert it. On May 8th, Edgar Millán Gómez, Mexico's acting chief of police, was shot nine times as he arrived home late at night. One of his bodyguards, who was also wounded, managed to wrestle the police chief's assailant to the ground and arrest him. Mr Millán was conscious for long enough to ask his killer who was behind the hit, but died before he could get a reply.

The answer to his question, provided later by investigators, helps cast some light on why it is so hard to end drug-related violence in Mexico. They say that his assassin was sent by José Antonio Montes Garfias, another federal police officer. Furthermore, the people who organised Mr Millán's killing were also behind the assassination on May 1st of Roberto Velasco Bravo, head of the federal police's organised crime division.

In addition to Mr Millán's assassination, the past few days have seen the murder of a top official in Mexico City's police force; of the police second-in-command in the border town of Juárez; and of the administrative head of the Estado Mayor, a military body charged with protecting the president. Such targeting of senior law-enforcement officials is unprecedented in Mexican history.

The gangs have not restricted themselves to killing senior policemen, though. According to Guillermo Zepeda of CIDAC, a think-tank in Mexico City, the week leading up to May 12th saw a total of 113 murders in Mexico, including 17 people on a single day. Estimates of the total number of deaths linked to drugs and organised crime so far this year range from 1,100 to 2,500 people. The war on drugs has never seemed less like a metaphor.

The involvement of the police in some of the killings helps to explain the lack of sympathy for dead policemen. “When police die in the line of duty, there is no condemnation of the violence in society,” says Ernesto López Portillo of Insyde, another think-tank. Part of the problem, he says, is that it is impossible to know which police officers lost their lives because they were doing their jobs, and which ones died because they were allied with a drug gang. The lack of public confidence in the police undermines their effectiveness and makes them more open to corruption.

Unable to rely on the police, President Felipe Calderón's habitual response to violence has been to send the army into trouble spots. This week the president dispatched 2,700 federal troops and police to the state of Sinaloa, where much of the violence has taken place. The army is now widely deployed around the country. Some Mexican legislators are even calling for troops to be deployed in Mexico City. Replacing the police by the army while the former were being reformed was meant to be only a temporary measure. But it is fast taking on an air of permanence.

As no figures are available for the volume of drugs being traded, the best way to measure it is to look at what is happening to drug prices north of the border. Mexico used to be one of the world's biggest producers of methamphetamines, and Mexican gangs still control meth distribution in the United States. They also dominate the wholesale distribution of cocaine there, as well as the transit of the drug through Mexico from South America. According to the United States' Drug Enforcement Administration, the average price of methamphetamine jumped 73% between January and September last year (the most recent figures available). The price of cocaine rose by 44% over the same period, despite a decline in purity.

The recent killings are a response to this success. Police officials said the murders of Messrs Millán and Velasco were probably both ordered by Arturo Beltrán Leyva, a capo in the Sinaloa drug cartel. Mr Beltrán Leyva's brother, another Sinaloa leader, was arrested in January. Joaquin Guzmán, the gang's head, escaped from prison in early 2001 under still unexplained circumstances. Government pressure has also prompted infighting among the gangs; Mr Guzmán's son was killed the same day as Mr Millán in a shoot-out thought to have been between his father's faction and a rival group from Juárez.

But setting the army on the drug-traffickers cannot be a permanent solution to the problem. The army was not trained for this job and has come under heavy criticism from human-rights groups. The government has shown little tolerance of this, forcing (according to some accounts) the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to leave the country for being too critical of the army.

In a speech after the latest killings, the president called for “a transformation in the administration of justice”. Under a controversial new law, due to come into effect soon, the police will be allowed to hold suspected drug-traffickers and other suspected participants in organised crime for up to 80 days without charge. But a real transformation means a greater upheaval of the police, something that Mr Calderón promised when he first deployed the army nearly a year and a half ago, though there is little sign of it yet.

America is partly to blame. Last October the American and Mexican governments announced a plan under which the United States would contribute $500m a year to Mexican law-enforcement, equipment and training. But neither government bothered to consult its legislature. The programme is now stalled in the United States Congress. As its research service dryly noted in March, “there is no legislative vehicle for the funding request”, and that is still true. If the programme does ever materialise, it will almost certainly be a lot smaller in scope.

Thickening the blue line

Furthermore, some say the plan is not particularly well thought through. Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think-tank, told the United States Congress that the approach to police training, a centrepiece of the initiative, was wrong to focus on creating specialised police units, which could easily be undermined or corrupted, rather than concentrating on institutional reform.

The status quo leaves both the army and the police vulnerable. In a brazen bit of nose-thumbing, the Zetas, a paramilitary wing of the Gulf cartel (the Sinaloa gang's main rivals), recently hung up banners in several border towns inviting current and former soldiers to join them. The Zetas themselves were originally formed by army deserters.

Following this week's murders, Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico's attorney-general, said that the violence was a sign of “weakness, desperation, and frustration” on the part of organised crime. That is partly true. But as Mr Millán's killing makes clear, the distinction between law-enforcement authorities and organised crime is sometimes blurred. So far Mr Calderón's administration has failed to come up with a solution to an abiding paradox: success in disrupting drug cartels only leads to more violence as gang members fight to fill power vacuums and continue to supply the ever-lucrative drug market.

Cyclone in Myanmar

Myanmar's misery

May 8th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Despite their appalling government, the Burmese people deserve all the help they can get

AP

THE decision by Myanmar's ruling generals to move their capital in 2005 from Yangon, the country's biggest city, to the remote mountain fastness of Naypyidaw was as baffling as many of their other policies. Local rumour ascribed it to the advice of fortune-tellers, who foretold revolt and disaster in Yangon.

Revolt came last September. It was suppressed easily enough, by an army willing to shoot unarmed protesters. Now natural disaster has come, and on an unimaginable scale: a cyclone that has killed tens of thousands, left hundreds of thousands without shelter and placed millions at risk of disease and hunger (see article). In recent years only the Asian tsunami of December 2004 and the Kashmir earthquake of October 2005 have wreaked devastation as great.

You do not have to believe in astrology to see the essential truth behind the fortune-teller rumour, for this is a regime more interested in looking after itself than its people. It failed to prepare them for the approaching danger, despite having been forewarned. Its soldiers, quick enough to respond to monk-led protests last September, were invisible for days as citizens struggled to cope with devastation, death and injury. And, as a horrified world offered help, the generals were obstructive. Aid workers waited for visas and the junta haggled about import duties on emergency supplies. This is criminal. The first few days after a disaster are, in terms of the lives eventually lost, by far the most important.

The politics of saving lives

For foreign donors, Myanmar raises a dilemma seen also in North Korea, which may be on the verge of another famine (see article): how to rescue desperate people whose own government spurns outside assistance, and how to do so without providing a lifeline to an illegitimate and unpopular regime. In the aftermath of a disaster, only the first of these questions matters: when so many are in such need, the humanitarian imperative overrides qualms about giving handouts to a repugnant regime. Nor, on the whole, is there any way of sidestepping the junta (or the North Korean regime) in the distribution of aid. Some foreign aid agencies have existing networks in the country. But none has a nationwide reach.

In theory it may be possible, as France's foreign minister has argued, to obtain a United Nations' resolution obliging the junta to accept aid. In practice, Myanmar's friends on the Security Council would probably block such a move and it will remain a question of coaxing the generals into accepting help. That means avoiding the risk of feeding the junta's paranoia. It sees the offer of help as the thin end of a wedge of political interference aimed at prising it from power. In this sense it was unfortunate that George Bush's magnanimous offer this week (“Let the United States come and help you!”) was made as he signed legislation awarding a congressional honour to Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's detained opposition leader.

The generals will also have noticed that on the same day Congress passed a resolution condemning their constitutional referendum scheduled for May 10th as “one-sided, undemocratic, and illegitimate”. This is an accurate description of both the process and the constitution the generals want to impose on their people—with such urgency, after 14 years in the drafting, that they have delayed voting in the worst-hit areas by just 14 days. Of course they should postpone the vote. Evil enough in itself as a way of providing some legal cover for the perpetuation of military rule, administering it (and presumably fixing the outcome) is now a distraction from what should be the army's main task: saving lives. However, pressure from America will not make the junta yield. Instead, it will make it even cagier in handling the offers of aid. Postponement would have a better chance if the neighbours who have maintained good links with the junta—Thailand and, especially, China—added their weight to calls for a suspension.

Please, please help you

Encouraging Myanmar's rulers to accept more assistance is more than a short-term problem. Partly thanks to Western sanctions, but largely because of its own go-it-alone policies, Myanmar is among the world's neediest and least-helped countries. Some 30% of its 53m people live below the poverty line. Infant mortality rates are high, at 76 per 1,000 live births. The UN's World Food Programme says that about one-third of children under five are malnourished. Of children enrolled in primary school, 57% drop out. Yet, at $3 per head a year, Myanmar receives proportionately less foreign aid than does almost any other country. Neighbouring Laos receives almost 20 times as much. The cyclone has added another huge—and long-lasting—burden to Myanmar's existing misery. Whatever the regime, it needs more long-term humanitarian aid simply to meet basic needs.

Two faint hopes flicker in the sodden gloom left by the cyclone. The first is the possibility that the need for humanitarian help may lead to a renewed engagement with the West. At the very least it might advertise Western expertise, wealth and generosity, and restore some of the influence that has been lost to Myanmar's big commercial partners in the region. Second, the regime's shocking, bungling response to the crisis might lead even some of its own members to wonder whether their leaders know what they are doing. The army believes it must stay in power because no other force can hold the country together and run it competently. The cyclone must have brought home to some senior soldiers what most civilians have long known, that this is nonsense.

It is not unprecedented for a natural calamity to bring political change: in 1972, the embezzlement by Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua's dictator, and his cronies of aid sent after an earthquake contributed to the unpopularity that eventually toppled him; more recently, the tsunami was instrumental in bringing peace to Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In Myanmar, superstitious generals and civilians alike will have seen the cyclone as a sign of divine impatience hinting at the looming downfall of a tyrannical government. You don't have to believe in portents to hope that they are right.