– Last week gas prices in Southern California rose to over $4.70 a gallon.
– Indian Point, the 40-year-old nuclear power plant that provides electricity to roughly 25% of the NYC area, risks closure as it is approaching it’s relicensing deadline.
– New York State continues to ban fracking as a means to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale
The ongoing energy debate and skyrocketing fuel costs are often looked at from one of two perspectives: either through the lens of what effects the capturing of energy will have on the environment, or the effect that energy has on our economy. As the Presidential debates shift focus from domestic to foreign policy, I want look at the energy issue from perspective of national security.
The number of options that our policy makers and military leaders have in creating and ensuring a national security plan is greatly limited because of our reliance on oil from the Middle East.
– How should we deal with the ongoing war in Syria?
– How can we respond to the continued effects of the Arab Spring in Libya and Egypt?
– What resources do we have available to deal with a nuclear Iran?
– What should we do if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
– How we can target an Al Qaeda network dispersed around the globe?
The responses to each of these issues, which aren’t even really contingencies but are concerns that we face right now, are complicated enough because of the nature of the threat. The challenges that these issues present are compounded by the fact that any action America takes (or doesn’t take) will have a corresponding effect on our economy. Even a perceived change in the supply of oil results in extreme shifts in our financial markets. From a military perspective, these concerns add in a variable that are not typically present during mission planning. These concerns immediately take some options off the table.
Let’s say that it was in our best interest to simply uproot and leave the Middle East – just pull all of our troops and citizens back to the continental United States. Could we do that today? Alternatively, could we engage in absolute and unrestricted warfare as a means to root out the terrorists targeting our interests? Of course not, and neither of those ideas are plausible or realistic. The impact that those decisions would have on the majority of the population of those countries, who simply want to live their life, would never outweigh the benefit of eliminating the extremist and violent minority.
The point is that the longer we remain tied to the oil supply coming from the Middle East, the longer we are forced to develop and execute policy without having all of the options available to us. The TED talk in this post is a presentation by Armory Lovins, the chief scientist for the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). He talks about ways that private businesses can remove oil from the equation, while pursuing the monetary gains and without input from the government. Are all of his ideas viable? I have no idea – that certainly isn’t my field of expertise. But Mr. Lovins talks about energy in a way that can provide our country the ability to get even further “left of bang.” He talks about energy in a way that provides our leaders, both in the private and public sectors, with the ability to weigh options and make decisions that are in America’s best interest.