Showing posts from category energy.
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Environmental Security – It’s Big in Europe
›April 5, 2007 // By Gib ClarkeTo an American “outsider” like me, a recent conference in Berlin on integrating environment, development, and conflict prevention reflected the stark contrast between our policies and those of the EU. Though we are confronting similar situations – indeed, the same situation – we are dealing with them quite differently. In recent years, European policymakers have tried to balance environmental and energy concerns, working to decrease humans’ impact on climate and the environment and encourage environmental cooperation, while still generating enough energy for growth.
The tone of the conference was bleak, but the EU’s recent action on climate change is an encouraging sign of how governments can use scientific data to make difficult policy decisions. Only a month age, the EU agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2012.
Interestingly, the conference was situated at the center of German’s current political dominance, coming on the heels of the EUs 50th Anniversary celebration in Berlin and during the year of Germany’s joint Presidency of the EU and the G8. The conference’s timing also preceded the start of the UK’s Presidency of the United Nations Security Council. John Ashton, special representative on climate change at the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, announced that the UK will hold a “thematic debate” in the Security Council exploring the relationship among climate, energy, and security. The debate, the first of its kind at such a high level, will focus on the security implications of a changing climate, as well as other factors that contribute to conflict, like population growth, immigration, and access to food, water, and natural resources. -
Princeton Project Outlines New National Security Strategy
›March 29, 2007 // By Sean PeoplesAcademics and policymakers alike appreciate the complexity of new threats to national security like non-state actors and global terror networks. But a report released in September 2006 by the Princeton Project on National Security (PPNS) warns that ignoring unfashionable, but long-established geopolitical threats can endanger U.S. foreign policy. Billed as a bipartisan initiative, PPNS is ultimately an academic affair, with members of its group including such luminaries as Francis Fukuyama, G. John Ikenberry, Laurie Garrett, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Tod Lindberg, and Walter Russell Mead, among many others. The initiative engaged these experts to develop a basic framework of principle threats to U.S. national security and potential responses.
The old and new geopolitical dynamics are worth elucidating, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, gives us something to consider:“Old geopolitics has not gone away. China and Asia are rising rapidly, industrially, and economically. However, we are now just as threatened by the inability of governments to address terrorists within their country, prevent spread of disease and take care of the environment.”
The report cites energy independence and increased consumption as the dominant new challenges, particularly as U.S. consumption of oil increases, and in turn increases our dependence on foreign nations (featuring a who’s-who along the continuum of unpredictability). Rightly, the report supports incentives for energy alternatives. It also supports a gasoline tax and stricter fuel efficiency standards as ways to promote smarter approaches to increasing climatic changes.
Promoting these changes is a good start, but convincing policymakers to adopt them may be a greater challenge.
