Ambassador Bruton:

I will answer Senator Bradford's final question first. There is significant interest in the United States in alternative energy. Of particular interest is ethanol production, which is the production of energy from either corn or sugar cane. The latter is far more efficient as a producer of energy. There is an argument that when one factors in the nitrogenous fertiliser, diesel and so on that must be used for sowing, harvesting and transporting, the net benefit of corn-based ethanol is quite small in terms of the overall energy balance. However, there is major interest in it in the corn belt where farmers are pleased, like farmers everywhere, to discover an alternative market for their product.

Ambassador Bruton:

If all the United States' energy needs are to be produced from ethanol, however, there is probably a requirement for a doubling of the current scale of agricultural land. This is not an option because land is no longer being turned over to agriculture. There is, therefore, a fundamental problem. I believe ethanol will become a part of the energy scene, an element that will expand or contract depending on markets elsewhere. I do not believe, however, it will become the staple energy source for the United States. Unlike Europe, the United States has huge reserves of coal, but it does not yet have the operational technologies for using that coal in a way that does not generate large amounts of greenhouse gases. There will be difficulties in this regard until it masters techniques of carbon sequestration, which involves putting the carbon back into the earth, or some types of clean coal technologies.

Ambassador Bruton:

The other issue Deputy Bradford mentioned is one that is profoundly worrying. It is fair to say that people in the United States are much more favourable to Europe and the European Union than are Europeans to the United States. This is what public opinion surveys show and it is regrettable. Europeans often look to the United States as younger brothers look at their older sibling, as an entity which enjoys some advantages and has stolen a march on oneself. Obviously, the United States is an older democracy than most European ones, so we tend to be a bit critical as the young tend to be. We do not give credit to the fact that fundamentally our values and their values are the same. We have different ways of expressing them and different ways of applying them but there is a fundamental congruence in our value systems.

Ambassador Bruton:

Europeans need to face up to the dilemmas America must face and ask themselves what would they do differently if they were in America's position and how would they guarantee their success in dealing with a problem such as nuclear proliferation which the United States is now taking responsibility for dealing with. Perhaps at the margins we would do some things differently but, fundamentally, we would still have to face the same problems. Just as we criticise Americans for not trying to understand the way other people look at things — perhaps with some justification — we should make a greater effort to understand the way they look at things. If we did so, perhaps some of that difference expressed in the polls would dissipate.

Ambassador Bruton:

A recent opinion survey done by an outfit called Public Agenda on attitudes to foreign policy in American public opinion showed that Americans are highly self-critical. All the criticisms we might tend to make of American foreign policy are being made by Americans, even by those who strongly support the current administration. Affirmative debate takes place in the United States all the time. We should not see it as a sort of uniform, amorphous mass of opinion. There is terrific debate within the United States as there is here about all these choices.