Page 2 of
2 US
garrisons and global gas
stations By Michael T
Klare
security and national security? After
all, other than George W Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney, who would claim that, more than five
years after the invasion of Iraq, either the
United States or its supply of oil is actually
safer?
Creating real energy security
The reality of America's increasing
reliance on foreign oil only strengthens the
conviction in Washington that military force and
energy security are inseparable twins. With nearly
two-thirds of the country's daily oil intake
imported - and that percentage still going up -
it's hard not to notice that significant amounts
of our oil now come from conflict-prone areas of
the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. As long
as this is the case, US policymakers will
instinctively look to the
military to ensure the safe delivery of crude oil.
It evidently matters little that the use of
military force, especially in the Middle East, has
surely made the energy situation less stable and
less dependable, while fueling anti-Americanism.
This is, of course, not the definition of
"energy security", but its opposite. A viable
long-term approach to actual energy security would
not favor one particular source of energy - in
this case, oil - above all others, or regularly
expose American soldiers to a heightened risk of
harm and American taxpayers to a heightened risk
of bankruptcy. Rather, an American energy policy
that made sense would embrace a holistic approach
to energy procurement, weighing the relative
merits of all potential sources of energy.
It would naturally favor the development
of domestic, renewable sources of energy that do
not degrade the environment or imperil other
national interests. At the same time, it would
favor a thoroughgoing program of energy
conservation of a sort notably absent these past
two decades - one that would help cut reliance on
foreign energy sources in the near future and slow
the atmospheric buildup of climate-altering
greenhouse gases.
Petroleum would continue
to play a significant role in any such approach.
Oil retains considerable appeal as a source of
transportation energy (especially for aircraft)
and as a feedstock for many chemical products. But
given the right investment and research policies -
and the will to apply something other than force
to energy supply issues - oil's historic role as
the world's paramount fuel could relatively
quickly draw to a close.
It would be
especially important that American policymakers
not prolong this role artificially by, as has been
the case for decades, subsidizing major US oil
firms or, more recently, spending $138 billion a
year on the protection of foreign oil deliveries.
These funds would instead be redirected to the
promotion of energy efficiency and especially the
development of domestic sources of energy.
Some policymakers who agree on the need to
develop alternatives to imported energy insist
that such an approach should begin with oil
extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
and other protected wilderness areas. Even while
acknowledging that such drilling would not
substantially reduce US reliance on foreign oil,
they nevertheless insist that it's essential to
make every conceivable effort to substitute
domestic oil supplies for imports in the nation's
total energy supply. But this argument ignores the
fact that oil's day is drawing to a close, and
that any effort to prolong its duration only
complicates the inevitable transition to a
post-petroleum economy.
A far more
fruitful approach, better designed to promote
American self-sufficiency and technological vigor
in the intensely competitive world of the mid-21st
century, would emphasize the use of domestic
ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills to maximize
the potential of renewable energy sources,
including solar, wind, geothermal and wave power.
The same skills should also be applied to
developing methods for producing ethanol from
non-food plant matter ("cellulosic ethanol"), for
using coal without releasing carbon into the
atmosphere (via "carbon capture and storage," or
CCS), for miniaturizing hydrogen fuel cells, and
for massively increasing the energy efficiency of
vehicles, buildings and industrial processes.
All of these energy systems show great
promise and so should be accorded the increased
support and investment they will need to move from
the marginal role they now play to a dominant role
in American energy generation. At this point, it
is not possible to determine precisely which of
them (or which combination among them) will be
best positioned to transition from small to
large-scale commercial development. As a result,
all of them should be initially given enough
support to test their capacity to make this move.
In applying this general rule, however,
priority clearly should be given to new forms of
transportation fuel. It is here that oil has long
been king, and here that oil's decline will be
most harshly felt. It is thanks to this that calls
for military intervention to secure additional
supplies of crude are only likely to grow. So
emphasis should be given to the rapid development
of biofuels, coal-to-liquid fuels (with the carbon
extracted via CCS), hydrogen, or battery power,
and other innovative means of fueling vehicles. At
the same time, it's obvious that putting some of
the US's military budget into funding a massive
increase in public transit would be the height of
national sanity.
An approach of this sort
would enhance American national security on
multiple levels. It would increase the reliable
supply of fuels, promote economic growth at home
(rather than sending a veritable flood of dollars
into the coffers of unreliable petro-regimes
abroad), and diminish the risk of recurring US
involvement in foreign oil wars. No other approach
- certainly not the present traditional,
unquestioned, unchallenged reliance on military
force - can make this claim. It's well past time
to stop garrisoning the global gas station.
Michael T Klare is a professor
of peace and world security studies at Hampshire
College and the author of several books on energy
politics, including Resource Wars
(2001),Blood and Oil (2004),
and, most recently,Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New
Geopolitics of Energy.
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