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YOGI BERRA was a baseball player for the New York Yankees in the 1960s who
had a way with words. He can still emit the occasional bons mots. But he has an
old favourite that’s perfect for NASA’s interest in giving Senator John Glenn a
chance to become an astronaut on the space shuttle: it’s déjà
vu all over again.

Glenn wouldn’t be the first politician to climb into a spacesuit. Utah
Senator Jake Garn flew on the shuttle, as did Florida Representative Bill
Nelson. Curiously, Garn was chairman of the Senate committee that set NASA’s
budget, and Nelson was chairman of the House of Representatives committee that
sets NASA’s goals. Glenn is retiring from the Senate, but NASA could still
expect a public relations bonanza by putting the first American to orbit the
Earth back into space.

LET’S say you’re a 69-year-old physicist looking for something to do. You are
short of cash, you’ve had to move out of your home and your prospects aren’t
very bright. What do you do? Well, if you’re Richard Seed, you tell the world
that you’re planning to clone human beings. Then you stand back.

The full weight of the global media descended on Seed after National Public
Radio announced his cloning plans on 6 January. That in itself was a bit
surprising, since news of his plans had appeared in print—The
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Washington Times, to name two
media outlets. But after NPR did the story, the media world was in an
uproar.

Did it matter that Seed still didn’t have any money? Or that he didn’t have a
firm commitment from the clinic doctors who said they would perform the
procedure? Or that despite his intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit, there
was no a priori reason to think that Seed could achieve his goal? No, none of
that mattered. Seed said he was going to try, and that was good enough to secure
his appearances on every major television network, both in the US and around the
world. It even prompted a call from President Clinton to ask Congress to pass
legislation banning human cloning, and legislators just might take up the
challenge.

In the end, what did the Seed episode prove? It proved that just the
possibility of human cloning will get people up in arms. It makes you wonder
whether this episode will even get a mention by the time human cloning becomes a
reality, if it ever does.

PRESIDENT CLINTON’S climate corps are breathing a sigh of relief after the
Kyoto global warming conference ended with a real treaty document in hand. The
post-conference glow was heightened by the conveniently timed announcement last
month by American car makers that they’ll have a hybrid electric/gas car ready
within four years. And that it will more than double typical gas mileage and cut
greenhouse gas emissions. The car makers in Detroit started this research and
development long before Kyoto was a gleam in Clinton’s eye. And Japan’s apparent
lead in the race for hybrid electric/gas cars has doubtless got Detroit worried
about dollars and cents as much as the atmosphere warming up. Nonetheless, it
looks as if at least some in the business world are responding to the events in
Kyoto.

But those who went to Kyoto to lobby for a watered-down treaty have barely
recovered from their jet lag yet. When the sleeping giants awake there will be a
fine fracas over the 7 per cent cutback
(Forum, 17 January, p 48) in greenhouse
gases that the US agreed to, as well as the fact that developing countries got
away without promising any firm reductions. There is already a move in Congress
to pass a resolution—non-binding but establishing a sense of Congress’s
mood—that would take Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to task over the
Kyoto treaty. But Gore is ready. As eco-warrior for the White House, Gore has
already swung a deal to win the hearts and minds of consumers by getting many of
the top electronics manufacturers to make more electrically efficient
televisions. Saving what amounts to a trickle of charge may not sound like much,
but just think of the symbolism—something good for the planet finally
comes from television.