Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring 2007 THE CURRENT The Public Policy Journal of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs Ethanol Subsidies on the Verge of Peak Oil: Green Effort or Pork Barrel? Kubilay Kavak Learning to Labor: What Happens to African Women’s Employment in the Course of Educational Transitions Fatou Jah The Immigration-National Security Nexus: Immigration in Contemporary France Charity J. Tubalado Medicare for All: Issues of Policy and Politics Eva DuGoff Carbon Trading: A Method for Preserving the Environment and Reducing Poverty Andrew Timothy Siwo Interview: U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III Denise M. Ziobro THE URRENT C The Public Policy Journal of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs Volume 10, Number 2 Spring 2007 THE CURRENT The Public Policy Journal of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs Editor-in-Chief Caren Kang Senior Managing Editor Micah Gell-Redman Managing Editors Amanda LaBelle Denise Ziobro Articles Editors Morgana Carter Benjamin Fenwick Sean Miskell Kelly Thompson Ammad Bahalim Executive Editors Caitlin Burton Jenny Ho Afshan Khoja Gena Kim Julie Mace Lilian Ng Justine Oller Rami Chami Research Editors Graham Keefe Lindsey Novakovic Mila Singh Andrew Sauer Xiang Yu Andrea Vidler John Barrett Associate Editors Cafer Bicer Jennifer Cheung Contributors Ty Gorman Kajal Gulati Kubilay Kavak Ioseb Nutsubidze Charity Tubalado ii Faculty Advisor Dr. Jerome Ziegler Professional Development Advisor Thomas J. O’Toole Core Faculty of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs David B. Lewis, Director of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs Nancy Chau, Associate Professor of Applied Economics and Management Neema Kudva, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning Daniel P. Loucks, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Theodore J. Lowi, John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions Kathryn S. March, Associate Professor of Anthropology Christine Ranney, Associate Professor of Applied Economics and Management Norman Uphoff, Professor of Government Jerome M. Ziegler, Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Policy Analysis and Mgt. Staff of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs Jennifer Evangelista, Administrative Assistant Linda Haas-Manley, Service Learning Initiative Program Coordinator Lisa Jervey Lennox, Assistant Director for External Relations Judy Metzgar, Administrative Manager Cheryl Miller, Administrative Assistant Thomas J. O’Toole, Executive Director for Professional Development iii Mission Statement As the academic journal of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA), The Current provides a platform for public policy discourse through the work of CIPA fellows and their mentors, with contributions from the public affairs community. Editors’ Notes Kind readers, You have before you the spring 2007 edition of The Current, and along with it we would like to transmit some measure of our satisfaction and, yes, our relief. This semester has been particularly arduous for our team of editors, and we hope you deem the fruit of our labor worthy of the great effort undertaken. We are particularly proud of the breadth and depth of the present edition’s content, which draws from a broad array of disciplines to ask timely, pointed questions about issues of politics and policy. Original research by CIPA fellows is featured prominently, and includes Kubilay Kavak’s probing exploration of alternative energy policy and Charity Tubalado’s compelling examination of immigration and national security. The spring 2007 edition also includes contributions from Cornell’s department of Development Sociology and George Washington University’s School of Public Policy, as well as an engrossing interview with CIPA alumnus and U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III. At CIPA we pride ourselves on taking a multidisciplinary approach to the study of Public Affairs. The editorial board of The Current incorporates our program’s philosophy by adopting the broadest possible interpretation of our mission – to produce timely and relevant scholarship about politics and public policy. We hope that you approve. Sincerely, Micah Gell-Redman Senior Managing Editor iv “There is no substitute for hard work.” Thomas A. Edison The Current members are proud to present the spring 2007 edition. As the spring weather whispered upon the Cornell campus, we worked diligently to collaborate with Cornell students from other programs to organize a law and public policy conference for the next academic year. We also improved the editorial process of the journal for authors who submitted articles for publication. For this edition, we attempted (and hopefully succeeded) in publishing articles that may be the forefront issues in the 2008 presidential election: energy, immigration, and healthcare. The finished product of the journal could not have been accomplished without our two new managing editors, who will take over the leadership of the journal. Furthermore, we thank all our members, especially the articles editors for working with the authors during the editorial process. As always, we thank the authors for their hard work in producing scholarly articles. Special thanks to our senior managing editor, Micah Gell-Redman, for his cerebral and detailed mind. We would particularly like to thank Lieutenant Colonel Wilson for taking the time to interview with us despite his busy schedule. We look forward to reading his forthcoming book. Finally, we would like to thank Professor Lesser for his comments regarding the bottle bill article published in the last edition. We encourage all our readers to submit such letters to the editor so that we can create a two-way dialogue on the issues that we present in our journal. Sincerely, Caren Kang The Current reflects the diverse political, cultural, and personal experiences of CIPA fellows and faculty. The views presented are not neces- sarily the opinions of The Current, the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs or Cornell University. v Contents [Articles] I. Ethanol Subsidies on the Verge of Peak Oil Green Effort or Pork Barrel? 1 by Kubilay Kavak Cornell University II. Learning to Labor What Happens to African Women’s 29 Employment in the Course of Educational Transitions by Fatou Jah Cornell University III. The Immigration-National Security Nexus 59 Immigration in Contemporary France by Charity J. Tubalado Cornell University vi [Views & Reviews] Medicare for All 85 Issues of Policy and Politics by Eva DuGoff George Washington University Carbon Trading A Method for Preserving the Environment and 103 Reducing Poverty by Andrew Timothy Siwo Cornell University Interview with 111 U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III by Denise M. Ziobro Cornell University vii Letter to the Editor Dear Editor, Thank you for sending this volume [Vol. 10, No. 1, the fall 2006 edition of The Current]. I am much interested in the bottle bill issues having participated in a first year review of the New York law back in the mid-1980s. I was though disappointed that the Deitchman article [“A March of Nickels and Dimes for Recycling: A Study of the present ‘State’ Bottle-Bills”] left out several readily available data points which could help readers understand better the overall effects of container deposit legislation. Examples include: • proportion of municipal waste accounted for by the beverage containers (not all food packaging which is not the issue). • the proportion of deposit containers recycled in states with municipal recycling programs which have or do not have deposit laws (The former is higher). • the energy balance of recycling steel and glass. (Three paragraphs are directed to emphasizing the energy efficiency of recycling aluminum – which is absolutely correct – but nothing is said that recycling glass takes almost as much energy as production from raw materials). None of this says that bottle bills are necessarily good or bad, but it would allow for more informed debate. - Bill Lesser Susan Eckert Lynch Professor of Science and Business, Department Chair Department of Applied Economics and Management Cornell University viii Ethanol Subsidies on the Verge of Peak Oil: Green Effort or Pork Barrel? Kubilay Kavak ABSTRACT: This article looks at the upcoming oil problem from the perspectives of supply security and price. It examines whether or not ethanol is a sound, renewable, viable fuel alternative, and then, in the light of these analyses, discusses relevant provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. resent levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) are higher than they have been at any time in the past 650,000 years.1 Carbon levels are Pnearing 380 parts per million (ppm) in the earth’s atmosphere and could easily surpass 500 ppm by the year 2050 unless radical steps 2 are taken. One of the most severe consequences of high levels of CO2 is global warming. Evidence of rising average global temperatures and significant changes in climate conditions have become so publicized in recent years that the voting public is more sensitive to environmental issues than ever before. This sensitivity provides an opportunity for policy makers to implement alternative agendas which were previously politically infeasible. The major input contributing to carbon emissions is oil, which accounts for 45 percent of global emissions from fossil fuels. Today, nearly half of the world’s oil consumption is used for transport.3 Specifically in the U.S., transportation accounts for two-thirds of oil consumption4 and is the predominant source of domestic urban air pollution. All future transportation forecasts include steeply increasing demand in developing countries, leading to a continued rise in both 5 oil consumption and CO2 emissions. Transport is expected to grow faster than any other end-use sector, and the growth in demand in non- OECD countries is expected to be three times higher than in the OECD countries. Oil consumption in transportation has thus become a serious concern due to both increasing dependence on imports and escalating environmental impacts. As the world’s dependence on oil continues to grow, reliable oil supply capacity does not continue to increase at the same pace. Moreover, the security of the oil supply is at risk.