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Kicking Our Oil Addiction, Fixing Global Woes
Bracken Hendricks and Ana Unruh Cohen, Washington Post
In the face of all these problems — what President Bush has called an “addiction to oil” — America faces a major test. Will we embrace policies designed to prolong our reliance on oil, simply seeking to drive down prices and extend supplies, or will we pair solutions to oil security with answers to climate change? Not all oil security solutions are created equal when examined through the lens of climate security. As the nation decides on how to kick the oil habit, policies must be adopted that reduce oil consumption (PDF) and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. This must become the dual measure of our success.
Until lately, energy legislation rarely aspired to meet this higher standard, but recent developments may indicate a turning point. Two weeks ago, House Democrats unveiled a crash program to transition America to bio-fuels like bio-diesel and E-85, an 85% blend of ethanol and gasoline, and to empower farmers in a future carbon market. Last Wednesday Senate Democrats unveiled a plan to move toward energy independence by 2020. The Senate plan is comprehensive in its scope. It catches many of the good ideas that were orphaned in recent years under this administration’s focus on expanding oil supply and consumption, and it rolls back the tax breaks and giveaways to the oil companies of last summer’s energy bill. But perhaps most importantly of all, it explicitly links a comprehensive domestic energy policy with measures that track carbon emissions and their impact on the global climate.
These are promising starts, but bigger and bolder ideas are needed to meet the challenges of oil at home and abroad.
Farm-based renewable energy, and in particular biobased fuels, have the capacity today to deliver a secure and stable supply of fuel, provide support for farmers, create long-term jobs for rural communities, and make tangible reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. American farmers are struggling to compete in today’s global marketplace, while an uneven international playing field in agriculture keeps millions of small-scale producers in the developing world mired in poverty. Farmers around the world share a common goal and a mutual frustration: the inability of the global trading system to deliver a fair market price for their products.
In Growing the World’s Energy Future, the Center for American Progress has proposed a plan to increase domestic farm revenues from energy that would reverberate through the global economy in mutually beneficial ways. Our energy program would boost our national security by reducing oil imports and by linking U.S. agricultural competitiveness to the alleviation of poverty and despair abroad — two key elements in the appeal of terrorism in the developing world.
Bracken Hendricks is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Ana Unruh Cohen is the Director for Environmental Policy at the Center for American Progress.
(24 May 2006)
More comprehensive than many energy strategies (for example, the group’s document Securing Our Energy Future).
Unfortunately, the imperative to cobble together a political coalition makes it tempting to gloss over problems, such as those with biofuels and nuclear. Many subsidies are recommended to keep the car culture going. Perhaps the next campaign should be “Kick the Car Addiction.” -BA
Energy security is a non-zero-sum game
Nikolai Kaveshnikov, RIA Novost
The next Russia-EU summit scheduled for May 25 is certain to discuss energy. Russia and the European Union are connected not only by pipelines, but also by the experience of cooperation within the framework of the Energy Dialogue.
Unfortunately, the Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict has strengthened the stand of those Europeans who distrust Russia and see what they want to see rather than facts. According to them, Russia is using energy deliveries for blackmailing those who reject its imperial policies.
They refuse to see the economic essence of the conflict, or to admit that Ukraine had paid a quarter of the market price for Russian gas over the past ten years, and that it was Ukraine who started the unauthorized withdrawal of Russian gas transported to Europe.
This selective European vision promoted the transformation of the traditional thesis of energy security into “security from Russia.” The official EU stand formulated by the Council of Europe in late March was more substantiated, yet it is difficult to accept some of its arguments.
First, the EU has again proclaimed the task of diversifying energy sources.
For the past few years, it has been trying to get the best of both worlds, pressing for guarantees of increased energy deliveries from Russia, while carrying on its energy diversification policy.
This reminds me of a bizarre declaration of love, when a man proposes to a girl but warns her that he would continue diversifying his private life. Moreover, Russia’s attempts to diversify its gas export routes are regarded as anti-European.
(23 May 2006
Concern Soars Over Energy Demand in Russia
Alex Nicholson, Chron.com
Concern over Russia’s ability to meet surging energy demand is soaring, even as the country prepares to host world leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations at a July summit, and to portray itself the world’s most stable energy supplier.
Compounding worries raised by January disruptions of gas supply to Europe, the International Energy Agency said this week it feared that Russia would not be able to fulfill its gas supply contracts over the next few years.
IEA executive director Claude Mandil said that Russia’s state gas monopoly, OAO Gazprom, was not making sufficient investments in developing new reserves, which could endanger its existing contracts.
(23 Mar 2006)
The Great Game’ comes to South Asia
M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times
Travelers to Bukhara in Uzbekistan seek out an obscure, ill-lit, vermin-infested dungeon not far from the palace in which Arthur Conolly, British intelligence officer of the Sixth Bengal Light Cavalry, was confined for over six months before Emir Nasrullah Khan ordered his execution in June 1842 on charges of spying for the British Empire, and had him buried in an unmarked grave in the town square.
Conolly had set out from Calcutta (now Kolkata) on his perilous mission of espionage and intrigue – and, it so happened, he was also the person to coin the term “Great Game”. This was the nearest that India came to the classic great game.
That is, until last Thursday, when a meeting of the Indian cabinet announced its decision that India would join the US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline (TAP) project. The TAP would stretch from the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan border to Multan in Pakistan, and up to the borders of western India. The project is estimated at US$3.5 billion.
The Indian Petroleum Ministry, which recommended the TAP to the cabinet, was obviously promoting the business interests of Indian petrochemical companies. But, according to Indian media reports, Delhi also took into consideration that the TAP would be “in tune with the latest US strategic thinking for the region”.
…The US strategic thinking remains obsessed with minimizing the Russian and Chinese presence in Central Asia. The strategy is fundamentally flawed in so far as it lacks the dynamism and creativity that can only come out of positive energy. It overlooks what is apparent to the naked eye.
The US, in effect, having lost its petty squabbles and having been slighted time and again in the Central Asian capitals, has evacuated itself to South Asia, bringing with it the entire baggage of the Great Game. From the South Asian perspective, Washington may prove to be putting spokes in the wheel of the region’s promising cooperation with the SCO.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India’s ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
(24 May 2006)
