International Law

Energy and the New World Order

By Stan

Great article in Asia Times on energy and changing geopolitics. This is not a news piece, but a nice digestible article summarizing some current energy-related trends and how things will progress in the next few decades. The author, Michael Klare, gives us five "key forces" for the new energy-influenced world order:

1. Intense competition between older and newer economic powers for available supplies of energy.
2. The insufficiency of primary energy supplies.
3. The painfully slow development of energy alternatives.
4. A steady migration of power and wealth from energy-deficit to energy-surplus nations.
5. A growing risk of conflict.

China’s role in all this is fairly obvious. I’m not going to comment in depth, however. Better to read Klare’s article and soak up the stats, which is the best way of understanding the scope of the problem(s).

One point that I would like to make, however. The political debate over all of this often pits countries like China against developed nations. The rhetoric often makes it sound like everything would be OK with energy prices, the environment, etc. if only China and other developing countries were not growing so rapidly and using so much energy.

Whether that statement is even true or not (it isn’t), I take issue with the nature of the accusation. When we say that China is "responsible" for a large percentage of the growth in fossil fuel use, the numbers are certainly startling. But the implicit judgment is that somehow the developed countries are entitled to their level of consumption and that newcomers should figure out how to grow some other way. This is rather arrogant, to say the least. The fair approach is to first look at aggregate global energy consumption (i.e. as everyone’s problem) and only then take a look at individual national consumption to see what opportunities there are to reduce growth. Get the judgmental tone out of the dialog, please.

This is one additional reason why I support multilateral environmental initiatives. If only Al Gore had won the 2000 election . . . well, best not to dwell on things like that.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).