[See video interview with Chris Field and David Lobell here].

Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing forests to expand farmland will aggravate the climate change problem. How can we maximize our "miles per acre" from biomass?

Researchers writing in the May 7, 2009, edition of the journal Science say the best bet is to convert the biomass to electricity rather than ethanol. They calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would deliver an average of 80 percent more miles of transportation per acre of crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to mitigate climate change.
 
"It's a relatively obvious question once you ask it, but nobody had really asked it before," said study co-author Christopher B. Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. "The kinds of motivations that have driven people to think about developing ethanol as a vehicle fuel have been somewhat different from those that have been motivating people to think about battery electric vehicles, but the overlap is in the area of maximizing efficiency and minimizing adverse impacts on climate."
 
Field, who is also a professor of biology at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment, is part of a research team that includes lead author Elliott Campbell of the University of California-Merced and David Lobell of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment.

Under the aegis of the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Ambassador Jan Eliasson, former U.N. Special Envoy to Darfur, visited Stanford and FSI to offer a new model for global crisis management of a wide range of issues, from piracy to global poverty.   As the former president of the U.N. General Assembly, Eliasson called for concerted action by NATO, the European Union, the U.N., and other actors on pressing security and humanitarian issues.  Arguing that current security and humanitarian challenges are greater than at any time in recent memory, Eliasson urged that world powers, along with international institutions, seek new leadership from the Obama administration grounded in recognition of the global impact of regional crises. 

To make his case for seeing the global in the regional, Eliasson raised the specter of the escalating sea piracy off the coast of Somalia.  Pirates in that region launch from the shores of a failed state – a polity that has degenerated into rival war-lord militias after combined forces of U.N. and Western powers lost their appetite for engagement, and turned their attention elsewhere.  While much of the world is refocused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, multinational corporations are increasingly subject to and pay out multi-million dollar ransoms for the release of ship crews and cargoes that include the world’s commercial arms shipments.  The piracy has grown beyond instances of local plunder, into crime that threatens one of the most heavily trafficked shipping lanes between western and emerging markets.  Merchant marine as well as naval fleets have been forced to change course, altering global transportation and security routes.  Most recently, Eliasson’s call for international leadership would seem to have been heeded by nations attending the international summit in Brussels on the piracy crisis.  At the summit, the E.U. foreign policy chief, the U.N. Secretary General, and U.S. officials joined with more than sixty countries – including Iraq – to pledge over $200 million in aid to the Somali government for security and development.  This international cooperation, and attention to root causes, would seem to be the first sign of the kind of vision that Ambassador Eliasson urges for new and more comprehensive response.

Ambassador Eliasson completed his depiction of the most effective international policy responses with a focus on the world problem of poverty.  Drawing on his years of experience in the international and Swedish diplomatic corps, Eliasson explained that in the most impoverished areas of the world, the most effective investment in international aid is that which funds the education of girls and young women.  Teach a girl essential education, and she herself, along with her family, and her community, benefits in manifold ways. Raising his glass, Eliasson noted that great numbers of peoples still do not have access to cheap and clean water – an essential provision for health and development.  Water, and access to its diminishing supply, must be understood by the world’s new leaders as the high stake behind multiple border wars. 

The Forum hosted Ambassador Eliasson at FSI and Stanford for two days of talks to reach multiple audiences.  At a Stanford Speakers Bureau event, Ambassador Eliasson addressed an overflow crowd of students and offered  insights into the crisis in Darfur.  The Forum welcomed the opportunity to bring Ambassador Eliasson, so recently from his mission in Darfur, to spur student interest in the role of international (U.N.) and regional (European Union and African Union) peace keeping operations.  During the same visit to Stanford, the Forum on Contemporary Europe hosted Kerstin Eliasson, Board Member of the European Commission Joint Research Center, and former Assistant Undersecretary of the Swedish Ministry of Education and Science, to speak on research reforms in the European higher education system.  Kerstin Eliasson’s public address was co-hosted with the Forum by the faculty seminar series of the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research.  The visit by Ambassador Eliasson, and Kerstin Eliasson, was a highlight of spring 2009 research and public dissemination of the Program on Sweden, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Region at the Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Joshua Cohen's Program on Global Justice (PGJ), which explores issues at the intersection of political norms and global political-economic realities, has joined CDDRL Center Director Larry Diamond has announced.  Cohen, a professor of political science, philosophy, and law, came to Stanford from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 2006 to launch a new program on global justice at FSI.

The aim of his program, Cohen said, "is to build dialogue and research that integrates political values - toleration, fairness, and the common good - into discussions about human rights, global governance, and access to such basic goods as food and clean water."  "These issues of global politics are all ethically consequential," Cohen points out, "and addressing them well requires a mix of philosophical thought with the best current social-scientific research."

CDDRL Director Diamond and Associate Director for research Kathryn Stoner joined in saying "We are delighted to welcome Josh Cohen to our team.  His path-breaking work bridges the normative, empirical, and policy dimensions of our Center's ongoing concerns for democracy, equitable economic development, and the rule of law."

Under Cohen, the Global Justice Program's largest effort has focused on the Just Supply Chains project. As globalization of production creates a need for new models of fair treatment for workers in global supply chains, fresh thinking is also needed on the role of unions, the rights of workers to associate, and the role of trade agreement in promoting just working conditions.

Cohen, Diamond, and Terry Winograd, Stanford professor of computer science, have also initiated a the new Program on Liberation Technology which brings together Stanford colleagues from computer science and applied technology with social scientists to explore ways that new information technologies can improve economic, political, and social conditions in low income countries, and materially improve human lives. As Cohen and Diamond note, Liberation Technology "seeks to understand how information technology can be used to defend human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, promote economic development, and pursue of variety of other social goods."  

A prolific author, Cohen has written extensively on issues of democratic theory, especially the theory of deliberative democracy, and implications of that idea for personal liberty. He is the author with Joel Rogers of On Democracy (1983), Rules of the Game (1986), and Associations and Democracy (1995). A volume of his selected papers, Philosophy, Politics, Democracy is forthcoming from Harvard University Press, and his Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals, is forthcoming from Oxford University press.  

Cohen is also the editor of Boston Review, a bi-monthly magazine of political, cultural, and literary ideas, and has edited 18 books that grew out of forums that appeared in the Review. He moderated the Global Poverty and Development Course offered by Google.org in 2007 for google.com employees. The ten week-course addressed issues ranging from growth and globalization to education and urbanization, and can still be watched on YouTube.

Diamond, Stoner-Weiss, and Cohen are part of the distinguished Stanford faculty group who lead the Just Supply Chains each summer.  This highly competitive program each year selects from 600-800 applicants some 30 rising leaders from major transitioning countries such as Russia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Zimbabwe and brings them to Stanford to examine and foster linkages among democracy, sustainable economic development, and good governance. As Diamond and Cohen point out, in today's challenging environment, putting new information technologies to socially, politically, and economic constructive uses is a powerful tool and of growing interest to many of these rising leaders from transitioning countries.