| Energy Security: locally produced renewable energy threatens governments? |
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| Senin, 07 Maret 2011 03:35 | |||
Reliance on foreign sources of energy and geopoliticsThere has certainly been a recognition in recent months and years that energy security is a concern. Even US president George Bush admitted during his 2006 State of the Union speech that, “Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology.” Ignoring for the moment the irony that a major (though not only) reason that those parts of the world are unstable is because of US foreign policy there, there have been signs—for many years—that some major companies and industries, have been considering alternatives. The other concern is that whether this drive or need for competitiveness will contribute to more intense rivalry between powerful nations as witnessed at the end of the 1800s and the early 1900s, or whether this time we will learn from history’s lessons. So far, there is little to indicate that we have evolved into peaceful enough societies to not repeat those past disasters as growing inequality, extremism, power, drive for growth and profit, and our collective short memories all interplay. After all, the 20th century has been described as “the century of war”, not peace. At the beginning of the 21st century, the leaders of two countries that hold themselves as high examples of peaceful members of the international community decided to invade Iraq, without global approval or legal justification. Some foreign policy decisions in past years are coming back to haunt advanced nations. For example, in order to destabilize the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the United States successfully encouraged, trained and sustained Islamic extremism and terrorism so that a relentless, religiously-driven resistance could counter the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. However, the kind of extremists that the US helped create included Osama Bin Laden. With these extremists returning back after defeating the Soviet Union, various events since have seen Islamic extremists resort to terrorist acts, alarmed at the military presence of the US in their holiest lands, the influences of western culture which they fear is against Islam, and so on. As more and more developing countries industrialize, they will naturally want more energy to quench the growth thirst. This will see more involvement in international affairs, and indeed China and India are increasingly active in many regions around the world. Geopolitical issues, new and old, will therefore arise. For example, the Cold War years witnessed both the West and Soviet Union readily support puppet governments, even overthrowing fledgling democracies, in favor of dictatorships, if needed. This was often justified to the home population as being for the “national interest.” (Note, the US and other western countries also supported Saddam Hussein when he was committing some of his worst crimes against humanity.) Legitimate stability and supply issues are also of concern. For example, places like Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, etc. all produce oil but present problems of varying degree for oil consuming nations, as concerns range from stable supply, to stable government. Others, such as Venezuela, “threaten” to use oil and its related profits to develop their own country and region even more. Some countries such as the US have enormous military expenditure in part to protect global oil areas for their interests. A number of other large countries are getting more involved or active in the international arena due to energy related concerns, including China and Russia prompting a fear of a geopolitical cold war centered around energy security. Already many talk about the US using the War on Terror in Asia, and its courting of India (a country with its own ambitions) as an attempt to contain China, for example. Russia has also flexed its muscle lately with neighboring countries as it has access to some of the largest sources of natural gas. China and US interest in parts of Africa are also viewed with some suspicion as some of these countries become sources of oil and other raw materials.The rapid rise of developing countries such as Brazil, China, and India, will also see their increased interested in ensuring secure access to energy, and so a new geopolitical cold war is possible. Countries already powerful (such as the US) and some of these emerging countries will therefore have their own interests at stake.The ironic part to this is that the Pentagon has become an enormous consumer of fuel itself, thus contributing to climate change worries, and increasing global energy security concerns as other large countries are emerging on the scene. Michael Klare, a professor of peace and world security studies, writes about the rising geopolitical battle centered around energy security, and notes that “the Pentagon is itself one of the world's great oil guzzlers, consuming 134 million barrels of oil in 2005, as much as the entire nation of Sweden.”The future could also see continued conflicts for resources. Thus fossil fuel dependency and wasteful use of resources will worsen climate change which already threatens to endanger many of the world’s ecosystems, raise sea levels, and affect food production possibly leading to resource-scarcity driven instability and conflict.
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