Michael Klare
"Oil, Water, and Global Security"
Friday, April 21, 2006, 12:30 PM
Michael Klare is a professor and the Director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies (PAWSS) at Amherst College, a position he has held since 1985. Before assuming his present post, he served as Director of the Program on Militarism and Disarmament at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. (1977-84).Klare has written widely on U.S. defense policy, the arms trade, and world security affairs. In addition, Klare is the defense correspondent for The Nation, a contributing editor of Current History, and a member of the editorial board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He has contributed articles to the three aforementioned journals and to Arms Control Today, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harper’s, International Security, Issues in Science and Technology, Journal of International Affairs, Le Monde Diplomatique, Technology Review, Third World Quarterly, and World Policy Journal.
Michael Klare serves on the board of directors of the Arms Control Association, the National Council of the Federation of American Scientists, and the advisory board of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch; he is also a member of the Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Klare is the author of more than 13 books and a contributing author to many more. His latest book is Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (2004).
Democracy Now! interview with Michael Klare
Lecture Summary
Gas prices are rising. Oil companies are raking in record profits. We’re bogged down in a quagmire in the middle of the world’s biggest oil patch. And people are demanding “What’s our government going to do about it?”
What many people may not understand is that our government has been doing a lot about it. For the better part of a century. The United States and Western Europe have been neck deep in politics and power struggles in virtually every oil-producing nation in the world since before World War II. We even kick-started some of these nations, most famously Saudi Arabia, when we found the biggest, baddest nomad in the desert, Iban Saud, and set him, and his family, up with his own kingdom. Elsewhere in the neighborhood (Iran, Iraq), we arranged coups for oil. Or we helped post-colonial governments keep sending us natural resources (Nigeria, Indonesia).
So what do we do now? Peel away all the rhetoric and finger pointing, and the fact is, there isn’t much this administration can do about gas prices in the short term. Sure, they’ll free up a little oil by putting less in the strategic reserve. They’ll provide more subsidies to oil giants. They’ll encourage energy development on our nation’s wildlands. And they’ll “look into” price gouging. None of these things will keep gas below three dollars a gallon this summer. And long term, all of these actions are trivial.
Why? Four reasons, as outlined by Michael Klare in his talk on “Oil, Water and Global Security” at the First Congregational Church on Friday April 21st.
First, oil is in high demand. It supplies nearly forty percent of the nation’s energy, and virtually all of our transportation power. And demand is growing.
Second, conventional oil is a finite resource, and globally we’ve already extracted about half of it. The cheap half. Conventional oil production will likely decline in the next decade,
Third, not only has the easy oil been pumped, it’s been pumped from convenient places, like North America, the North Sea, and the Middle East of the 20th century. The remainder is in the difficult places. Central Asia, The Middle East of the 21st Century, the South China Sea, and our pals in Nigeria and Venezuela.
Fourth, don’t look now, but China is looming large in the rear-view mirror. So are India and several other developing economies. So increasing global demand will compete with our own growing domestic demand.
Let’s summarize: Decreasing supplies, increasing demand. What’s that spell? Chronic price volatility and long term price increases. A few years from now we’ll long for the days of three dollar-a-gallon gas.
So what do we do about it? Well, we know what needs to be done: develop good relations with countries that have oil, use oil more efficiently, and develop renewable energy sources, ASAP. Our federal government is doing none of those things. In fact it’s moving in the opposite direction on all three fronts.
So how do we frame this issue? Klare maintains that we need to speak to two issues. First, energy sanity is patriotic. Sending a billion dollars a day overseas to countries that sponsor terrorism is just the opposite. Yet that is what our current leadership has been enabling.
Second, that billion dollars-a-day adds up. Specifically, it adds up to intergenerational warfare. By not finding sustainable energy solutions now, we’re putting off the pain for a generation. And when our kids look in the piggy bank for resources to tackles this problem, it will be empty. We’ll be broke as a nation and a government, having blown our money on a dead-end energy source. Klare claims this is essentially the 2001 Cheney energy plan.
He calls it irresponsible and immoral.
