Long Road to
Energy Security

The global struggle for oil and natural gas has been underway for decades.  However, with rapidly growing energy-dependent economies emerging in China, India and throughout the world, the U.S. has by necessity become involved in an increasingly deadly struggle to meet its energy needs.  This geopolitical struggle involves not only economic and political maneuvering, but a growing dependency on militarization whose cost is played out in the loss of human life and the diversion of critical economic resources away from vital health and human development needs.

Maintaining our lifeline to critical oil supplies already has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people and deprived our communities of billions of dollars for critical domestic programs and projects. A direct relationship can be drawn between the pursuit of energy and the delivery of arms, military training, combat support, the establishment of military bases.  Not surprisingly, the war on terror provides a convenient veil for aggressive and preemptive measures to stabilize oil-rich regions and secure access to oil and gas reserves.

Hidden Costs of
Our Addiction

Billions of dollars in military aid are presently being injected by the U.S. into key gas and petroleum production areas such as the Persian Gulf, central Africa, the Caspian Sea region and Latin America.  In a similar quest, the Chinese and Russians too are providing weapons to competing, oil producing nations in the same regions.

It is widely believed that the on-going U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia following the first Iraq war fueled the hostility and terrorist campaign of Osama bin Laden. Similarly, the future presence of American military and oil installations will continue to arouse tensions in parts of the world that reject American values.

Michael Klare analyzes what’s behind the war on terror. This is video 1 of 4. Videos 2-4 are posted on Youtube.

Out with the Old…
In with the New!

Adhering to a national energy policy that relies primarily on strategies for increasing oil supplies is not only outdated, but extremely dangerous, for in an era of intensifying global competition for diminishing oil supplies we will increasingly have to turn to military operations to achieve our objectives.  The future is indeed dismal under this scenario.

While dramatically changing our energy policy is not an easy sell to those financially vested in an unsustainable  fossil fuel economy, the desire for a livable future offers us little choice.  We can not afford to continue our addiction to oil, but must choose to move quickly to embrace energy conservation measures and aggressive investment in renewable energy sources.  Our children’s future depends on it.

“We will have a severe global energy crunch beginning in 2010 and continuing indefinitely into the future and the renewables are not going to be available at a large enough scale at present rates of development to make up the difference”.    -Michael Klare