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What Cheney Energy Task Force Talked About
Terrell E. Arnold, EV World
Retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US Department of State offers educated insight into the real purpose of the 2001 energy task force.
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…the scale of the planned American presence in Iraq does not make sense, diplomatically or militarily, if the only goal is to safeguard US interests in that country. The plan begins to make some sense, however, as one looks to the northeast and the Caspian region where a mad scramble is now underway for control over exploitation and movement of Central Asian and Caspian region oil and gas resources. This competition involves all the “stans” in that region (Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Turkmeni, Uzbeki, Tadjiki) as well as Azerbaijan and Georgia that have been part of the Russian outback and Afghanistan.
…Whether or not the “peak” of world oil or gas output has occurred, growing global demand is raising the pressure on supplies from all sources. No matter whether oil is a fossil of natural vegetative processes or a product of basic earth forming chemistry, the expert view is that most of it has been found. Either way the costs of the next barrel to be produced are going up at the same time that predictable demand for that barrel is also rising. The need for greater diversity of sourcing to assure energy security is growing.
…These developments suggest the answers to two long unanswered questions about the energy policy of the George W. Bush administration: Who attended Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force discussions, and what did they talk about? Without too much risk of being wrong, you can now answer both questions. The participants in the group mostly represented the US energy companies that took part in designing the new Iraqi oil law and that are now working on deals in Central Asia. What they discussed was the plan we now see unfolding in Baghdad and in various Caspian and Central Asian capitals.
The name of the game is to enhance US and allied control over global energy resources by adding important long-term new sources of oil and gas. That sounds only prudent in a situation where the key resources cannot readily be replaced by substitutes. However, the game presently is being played by zero sum rules. Those rules mean that sooner or later there will be defined winners and losers. But the global economy is moving toward an urgent need for cooperative principles for allocating resources. If the game is played properly, there should only be winners who share the available pool of resources, the marginal consequences of scarcity, and the costs of adjustment. In the present and prospective global economy the free market approach, meaning sales to the highest bidders, is a distortion. Even in a less advanced global system it has led to conflicts, some of them wars. In the nuclear era such wars can be terminal. Cooperative solutions to this problem so far only have been discussed. We need to implement them now.
(12 April 2007)
Contributor LW writes:
Mr. Arnold is a retired Senior Foreign Officer and author of “A World Less Safe.” He writes about shifts and recommendations for other changes in U.S. policies in Central Asia based upon the central role that oil and natural gas and the U.S. deployment of military forces in Iraq is playing in the region.
Mr. Arnold’s answer to the implicit question in the title is that, “The participants in the group mostly represented the US energy companies that took part in designing the new Iraqi oil law and that are now working on deals in Central Asia. What they discussed was the plan we now see unfolding in Baghdad and in various Caspian and Central Asian capitals.”
And he discusses peak oil in the context of growing demand and attention in the region because of the location of reserves.
Global Warming Called Security Threat
Andrew C. Revkin and Timothy Williams, NY Times
For the second time in a month, private consultants to the government are warning that human-driven warming of the climate poses risks to the national security of the United States.
A report, scheduled to be published on Monday but distributed to some reporters yesterday, said issues usually associated with the environment – like rising ocean levels, droughts and violent weather caused by global warming – were also national security concerns.
“Unlike the problems that we are used to dealing with, these will come upon us extremely slowly, but come they will, and they will be grinding and inexorable,” Richard J. Truly, a retired United States Navy vice admiral and former NASA administrator, said in the report.
The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military.
(15 April 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
At least some people in the U.S. military seem to be far ahead of the U.S. government in recognizing the implications of global warming. (Peak oil too). -BA
Canada’s Dion: Time To Put Big Industry On a Carbon Diet
Canada Needs To Set Absolute Targets To Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Stéphane Dion, The Toronto Star
We live in a global context where we cannot separate environmental and economic challenges from the crisis of climate change. This presents us with an opportunity: By acting now, we can encourage the development and deployment of green energy technology in Canada and secure our prosperity for the long term.Just as Canada was outspending its fiscal capacity with repeated annual deficits in the 1980s and early 1990s, the vast majority of large industries, including our own, are dramatically over-polluting, dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at a rate that is already producing irreversible ecological, social and economic damage.
Canada must take immediate action to balance this environmental deficit by setting absolute emission reduction targets and laying out a comprehensive plan to help industry meet them. It is clear that Canada’s business leaders want and need to be part of this solution.
What they need is a plan that sets absolute reduction targets and creates the necessary tools to reach these objectives. Recently, the Liberal party put forward such a plan.
Our proposal puts industry on a carbon budget and sets absolute national greenhouse gas emission targets that meet our international obligations. It puts a price on carbon so industry can no longer treat our atmosphere as a free garbage dump. It sets up an accountable and transparent mechanism to have industry invest in its own efforts to tangibly reduce pollution.
(15 April 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
