Ambassador's Corner

WEEKLY MESSAGE FROM AMBASSADOR JOHN BRUTON

October 31, 2007 

Senator Jim Bunning

Last week, I met Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky. A Republican, he was a nationally renowned baseball player before embarking on a political career. He was the second pitcher ever to achieve 1,000 strikeouts and 100 wins in both the American and the National Leagues. As the baseball World Series is taking place at the moment, it was a good week to meet Jim Bunning.

As a former athlete, he has taken a big interest in the debate on the use of steroids in professional sports, advocating stiff penalties for use.

He is a strong opponent of abortion and his voting record in the Senate wins him a high rating from the American Conservative Union.

He started his political career on the city council in his home town of Fort Thomas, serving subsequently in the Kentucky State Senate and US House of Representatives before coming to the Senate in 1998.

The Fort Thomas area was settled by Germans and Irish and is named after a Union General in the Civil War, George Thomas.

My discussions with Senator Bunning concentrated on the Iran nuclear issue. We discussed the sanctions announced last week by Secretary Rice and Secretary Paulson. We agreed that a united approach between allies was vital, and I said that it would be wise to avoid unilateral sanctions with extraterritorial effect as they could damage unity.

Center for Transatlantic Relations

I spoke at a Center for Transatlantic Relations seminar in Washington on relations between the European Union and the United States. I was delighted to share the platform with my good friend Andrew Crockett of Morgan Stanley, who spoke about the economic relationship, and with Scott Bittle of Public Agenda, who presented the results of a very interesting poll his firm conducted on the attitudes of Americans to foreign policy. The meeting was chaired by Dan Hamilton of Johns Hopkins University, who has done pioneering work outlining the depth of the economic interdependence across the North Atlantic. He is also Director of the Washington, DC, EU Center of Excellence--partially funded by the European Commission, in which SAIS [Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies]-John Hopkins is the lead institution with partner universities American, Georgetown, George Mason and George Washington.

Shell and climate change

Last week I met Dr. Graeme Sweeney, Executive Vice President of Shell International Renewables. We discussed climate change. I asked him about carbon capture and storage – trapping the carbon before it escapes with the atmosphere and burying it underground – as it is a possible way of mitigating global warming. There are worries about its technical and financial viability. Dr. Sweeney told me he believes carbon capture and storage is a viable technology. There is still work to be done, but the expertise on pipelines and underground storage exist. There is no complete guarantee that the CO2 will not leak, but a monitoring regime can be established and federal regulations can address liability issues.

There are three ways of capturing CO2 in a power station: post-combustion, oxyfueling and pre-combustion. Pre-combustion or integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants are expensive, but they are 15% cheaper than post-combustion. However, it would be difficult for investors to support IGCC if there is no CO2 credit.

Peter Sutherland

A surprise and very welcome visitor last week was Peter Sutherland, who was the Director of WTO who brought the most recent trade liberalization round [Uruguay Round] to a successful conclusion. This round instituted the WTO Disputes Settlement mechanism, which has proved its worth already. Prior to that, Peter was the member of the European Commission responsible for Competition policy.

In the 1980s Peter and I served together in the Irish Government, he as Attorney General and I in a number of Ministries. Peter is now Chairman of BP and of Goldman Sachs. He lives in London and contributes regularly to the newspapers on European issues. He had a very interesting article in the Financial Times recently.

And on a lighter note

It was not all work last week either. I was delighted to be asked officially to open a new pub/restaurant in Washington “James Hoban’s,” which is named after the Irish man (from Kilkenny) who was the architect of the White House. The owner, Paddy Whelan, and his family gave all their guests a very warm welcome at their premises at 1 Dupont Circle.

My son and I attended a play as guests of the Washington Shakespeare Company at their Clark Street playhouse in Arlington [Virginia]. The play was Caligula [right] by Albert Camus, which is a study of the corruption induced by unlimited power. We received a very warm welcome from one of the Company’s Board of Directors, Bill Schaeffler, and his wife.