Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
The Sole Superpower in Decline
The Rise of a Multipolar World
Dilip Hiro, Tom Dispatch
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall — militarily invincible, economically unrivalled, diplomatically uncontestable, and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true “American century,” with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.
Yet, with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of American supremacy — Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode American hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.
How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon?
…there are other explanations — unrelated to Washington’s glaring misadventures — for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe’s leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news.
…As with Qatar, so with Russia and Venezuela, the funding for these TV news ventures has come from soaring national hydrocarbon incomes — a factor draining American hegemony not just in imagery but in reality.
Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation “Iraqi Freedom” and, most recently, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources, both published by Nation Books.
(20 August 2007)
Priority changes on U.S. green policies
Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times
Democrats in Congress turn to lower-profile projects to combat global warming and aim to boost funding 33%.
—
Reflecting a shift in priorities under the Democratic majority, Congress is moving to spend as much as $6.7 billion next fiscal year to combat global warming, an increase of nearly one-third from the current year.
House appropriations bills call for about $2 billion in new spending on initiatives aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and oil dependency, significantly expanding the budgets for numerous federal research initiatives and launching some new ones.
While legislation to raise vehicle miles-per-gallon standards and cap emissions from power plants has been slower moving — because of resistance from some lawmakers — Democrats have turned to the budget to advance their environmental priorities by increasing spending on a variety of lower-profile programs.
That is likely to set up a showdown this fall between Congress and President Bush, who wants to spend less on climate-change initiatives.
(21 August 2007)
Administration breaking law by withholding global warming report, judge rules
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
The Bush administration has violated a 2004 congressional deadline for presenting the latest scientific research about global warming to lawmakers and the public and must submit its report by next spring, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
Federal officials have “unlawfully withheld action they are required to take,” preparing a new scientific assessment by November 2004 and a research plan by July 2006, said U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Oakland. “Congress has imposed clear-cut, unambiguous deadlines for compliance.”
A 1990 federal law requires the government to produce a scientific report every four years on climate change and its effects on the environment, including land, water, air, plant and animal life, and human health.
The Clinton administration issued the first report in October 2000, warning of severe effects on different regions. The Bush administration has not issued a report and, according to environmental groups that filed a lawsuit in November, has tried to bury the Clinton report.
“This administration has denied and suppressed the science of global warming at every turn,” said Brendan Cummings, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
(22 August 2007)
Related from Associated Press.
Rule to Expand Mountaintop Coal Mining
John M. Broder, New York Times
The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.
It has been used in Appalachian coal country for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion.
The new rule would allow the practice to continue and expand, providing only that mine operators minimize the debris and cause the least environmental harm, although those terms are not clearly defined and to some extent merely restate existing law.
The Office of Surface Mining in the Interior Department drafted the rule, which will be subject to a 60-day comment period and could be revised, although officials indicated that it was not likely to be changed substantially.
The regulation is the culmination of six and a half years of work by the administration to make it easier for mining companies to dig more coal to meet growing energy demands and reduce dependence on foreign oil.
(22 August 2007)
Go Green and Save Money
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
Have your eyes recently popped out of your head when you opened your electric bill? Do you, like me, live in one of those states where electricity has been deregulated and the state no longer oversees the generation price so your utility rates have skyrocketed since 2002?
If so, you need to listen to a proposal being aired by Jim Rogers, the chairman and chief executive of Duke Energy, and recently filed with the North Carolina Utilities Commission. (Duke Energy is headquartered in Charlotte.) It’s called “save-a-watt,” and it aims to turn the electricity/utility industry upside down by rewarding utilities for the kilowatts they save customers by improving their energy efficiency rather than rewarding them for the kilowatts they sell customers by building more power plants.
Mr. Rogers’s proposal is based on three simple principles. The first is that the cheapest way to generate clean, emissions-free power is by improving energy efficiency. Or, as he puts it, “The most environmentally sound, inexpensive and reliable power plant is the one we don’t have to build because we’ve helped our customers save energy.”
Second, we need to make energy efficiency something that is as “back of mind” as energy usage. If energy efficiency depends on people remembering to do 20 things on a checklist, it’s not going to happen at scale.
Third, the only institutions that have the infrastructure, capital and customer base to empower lots of people to become energy efficient are the utilities, so they are the ones who need to be incentivized to make big investments in efficiency that can be accessed by every customer.
(22 August 2007)
Original column is behind a paywall. Public version is at PEN-L mailist. Background and comments at Environmental Economics.
US Oil Dependency — The New Weapon of Mass Disruption (PDF)
Lieutenant Colonel Joseph E. Czarnik, United States Army War College
This [Strategic Research Project] is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Strategic Studies Degree. …
America’s economy, American’s very way of life, has become dependent on foreign oil. America can reverse its oil dependency over generations, but in terms of days, weeks, or even months, the nation is perilously dependent on the free flow of oil and the energy oil produces. It is reasonable to suggest that America should have a plan to deal with a man-made (9/11) or natural (Katrina) disruption to America’s oil needs. Hurricane Katrina suggests that America does not have an emergency energy plan to deal with short-term energy disruption. This paper’s focus is America’s need for a plan to deal with short-term energy disruption, a proposed plan, and how that plan could be used as a Flexible Deterrent Option.
…The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) has now exceeded the time it took to win World War Two, and there appears to be no end in sight. Although the United States has experienced many tactical victories in this war, strategic success against fundamental extremists and their terror tactics is unlikely to occur without fundamental changes to United States foreign and domestic policy. America’s adversaries increasingly recognize that they cannot beat us on the conventional battlefield, so their strategy will continue to rely on unconventional methods. One such method America’s adversaries have and will continue to use against her is to take advantage of America’s dependence on foreign oil. America’s adversaries see this dependence as an opportunity to disrupt the economy thereby giving them a leverage position in strategic negotiations.
America’s military can not get the United States out of what decades of failed foreign and domestic policy has gotten them in to. Time and time again presidents have committed to break our reliance on foreign oil and each commitment has failed. It may be time for the United States to open a second front in this global war – a war on foreign oil imports with the incremental change to renewable energy sources. The United States Government, starting with the White House, should lead its nation to conserve energy on a grand scale and a switch from fossil fuel to renewable energy sources.
…The United States is the wealthiest country in the world, yet it is increasingly held hostage by its insatiable appetite for oil, the majority of which must be imported. Much of this imported oil comes from regions of the world that are hostile toward United States interests; oil-rich national leaders have and will continue to use oil against the United States as a weapon of mass disruption. Equally likely, nature can cause major disruptions to United States energy needs
(22 March 2007)
An increasingly popular argument that often appears in U.S. military and intelligence circles. No mention of peak oil, though. -BA
