K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
How New Energy Order Will Dramatically Change our Daily Lives
By Michael T. Klare, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on April 16, 2008, Printed on April 16, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82476/
It's strange that the business and geopolitics of energy takes up so
little space on American front pages -- or that we could conduct an
oil war in Iraq with hardly a mention of the words "oil" and "war" in
the same paragraph in those same papers over the years. Strange
indeed. And yet, oil rules our world and energy lies behind so many of
the headlines that might seem to be about other matters entirely.
Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices
of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the
last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130 percent, rice by 74
percent, soya by 87 percent, and corn by 31 percent, while there are
now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments
across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror
story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince
might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by
energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the
creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other
climate-change-induced extremes of weather -- a result of the burning
of fossil fuels -- that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-
class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a
growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum
based.
From resource wars to oil wars (the subjects of his last two books),
Michael Klare, Tomdispatch's energy expert, has long been ahead of the
curve when it came to ways in which our planet was being reshaped at
the most basic level. Today, he offers Tomdispatch readers a peek into
some of the key themes in his staggering new book, Rising Powers,
Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. If you want to grasp
the true shape of our shaky world, of where exactly we've been and
where we might be going, this is a book not to be missed. It offers
the profile-in-formation of a shape-shifting planet, a planet in
transition and on a road to nowhere pretty. Check out as well, the
latest Tomdispatch brief video (produced by TD's Brett Story) -- in
which Klare discusses key issues in his new book -- by clicking here.
Introduction written by TomDispatch editor Tom Engelhardt.
The End of the World as You Know It
...and the Rise of the New Energy World Order
By Michael T. Klare
Oil at $110 a barrel. Gasoline at $3.35 (or more) per gallon. Diesel
fuel at $4 per gallon. Independent truckers forced off the road. Home
heating oil rising to unconscionable price levels. Jet fuel so
expensive that three low-cost airlines stopped flying in the past few
weeks. This is just a taste of the latest energy news, signaling a
profound change in how all of us, in this country and around the
world, are going to live -- trends that, so far as anyone can predict,
will only become more pronounced as energy supplies dwindle and the
global struggle over their allocation intensifies.
Energy of all sorts was once hugely abundant, making possible the
worldwide economic expansion of the past six decades. This expansion
benefited the United States above all -- along with its "First World"
allies in Europe and the Pacific. Recently, however, a select group of
former "Third World" countries -- China and India in particular --
have sought to participate in this energy bonanza by industrializing
their economies and selling a wide range of goods to international
markets. This, in turn, has led to an unprecedented spurt in global
energy consumption -- a 47 percent rise in the past 20 years alone,
according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).
An increase of this sort would not be a matter of deep anxiety if the
world's primary energy suppliers were capable of producing the needed
additional fuels. Instead, we face a frightening reality: a marked
slowdown in the expansion of global energy supplies just as demand
rises precipitously. These supplies are not exactly disappearing --
though that will occur sooner or later -- but they are not growing
fast enough to satisfy soaring global demand.
The combination of rising demand, the emergence of powerful new energy
consumers, and the contraction of the global energy supply is
demolishing the energy-abundant world we are familiar with and
creating in its place a new world order. Think of it as: rising powers/
shrinking planet.
This new world order will be characterized by fierce international
competition for dwindling stocks of oil, natural gas, coal, and
uranium, as well as by a tidal shift in power and wealth from energy-
deficit states like China, Japan, and the United States to energy-
surplus states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. In the
process, the lives of everyone will be affected in one way or another
-- with poor and middle-class consumers in the energy-deficit states
experiencing the harshest effects. That's most of us and our children,
in case you hadn't quite taken it in.
Here, in a nutshell, are five key forces in this new world order which
will change our planet:
1. Intense competition between older and newer economic powers for
available supplies of energy: Until very recently, the mature
industrial powers of Europe, Asia, and North America consumed the
lion's share of energy and left the dregs for the developing world. As
recently as 1990, the members of the Organization of Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), the club of the world's richest
nations, consumed approximately 57 percent of world energy; the Soviet
Union/Warsaw Pact bloc, 14 percent percent; and only 29 percent was
left to the developing world. But that ratio is changing: With strong
economic growth in the developing countries, a greater proportion of
the world's energy is being consumed by them. By 2010, the developing
world's share of energy use is expected to reach 40 percent and, if
current trends persist, 47 percent by 2030.
China plays a critical role in all this. The Chinese alone are
projected to consume 17 percent of world energy by 2015, and 20
percent by 2025 -- by which time, if trend lines continue, it will
have overtaken the United States as the world's leading energy
consumer. India, which, in 2004, accounted for 3.4 percent of world
energy use, is projected to reach 4.4 percent percent by 2025, while
consumption in other rapidly industrializing nations like Brazil,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey is expected to grow as well.
These rising economic dynamos will have to compete with the mature
economic powers for access to remaining untapped reserves of
exportable energy -- in many cases, bought up long ago by the private
energy firms of the mature powers like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Total
of France, and Royal Dutch Shell. Of necessity, the new contenders
have developed a potent strategy for competing with the Western
"majors": they've created state-owned companies of their own and
fashioned strategic alliances with the national oil companies that now
control oil and gas reserves in many of the major energy-producing
nations.
China's Sinopec, for example, has established a strategic alliance
with Saudi Aramco, the nationalized giant once owned by Chevron and
Exxon Mobil, to explore for natural gas in Saudi Arabia and market
Saudi crude oil in China. Likewise, the China National Petroleum
Corporation (CNPC) will collaborate with Gazprom, the massive state-
controlled Russian natural gas monopoly, to build pipelines and
deliver Russian gas to China. Several of these state-owned firms,
including CNPC and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, are now
set to collaborate with Petr
By Michael T. Klare, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on April 16, 2008, Printed on April 16, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82476/
It's strange that the business and geopolitics of energy takes up so
little space on American front pages -- or that we could conduct an
oil war in Iraq with hardly a mention of the words "oil" and "war" in
the same paragraph in those same papers over the years. Strange
indeed. And yet, oil rules our world and energy lies behind so many of
the headlines that might seem to be about other matters entirely.
Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices
of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the
last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130 percent, rice by 74
percent, soya by 87 percent, and corn by 31 percent, while there are
now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments
across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror
story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince
might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by
energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the
creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other
climate-change-induced extremes of weather -- a result of the burning
of fossil fuels -- that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-
class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a
growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum
based.
From resource wars to oil wars (the subjects of his last two books),
Michael Klare, Tomdispatch's energy expert, has long been ahead of the
curve when it came to ways in which our planet was being reshaped at
the most basic level. Today, he offers Tomdispatch readers a peek into
some of the key themes in his staggering new book, Rising Powers,
Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. If you want to grasp
the true shape of our shaky world, of where exactly we've been and
where we might be going, this is a book not to be missed. It offers
the profile-in-formation of a shape-shifting planet, a planet in
transition and on a road to nowhere pretty. Check out as well, the
latest Tomdispatch brief video (produced by TD's Brett Story) -- in
which Klare discusses key issues in his new book -- by clicking here.
Introduction written by TomDispatch editor Tom Engelhardt.
The End of the World as You Know It
...and the Rise of the New Energy World Order
By Michael T. Klare
Oil at $110 a barrel. Gasoline at $3.35 (or more) per gallon. Diesel
fuel at $4 per gallon. Independent truckers forced off the road. Home
heating oil rising to unconscionable price levels. Jet fuel so
expensive that three low-cost airlines stopped flying in the past few
weeks. This is just a taste of the latest energy news, signaling a
profound change in how all of us, in this country and around the
world, are going to live -- trends that, so far as anyone can predict,
will only become more pronounced as energy supplies dwindle and the
global struggle over their allocation intensifies.
Energy of all sorts was once hugely abundant, making possible the
worldwide economic expansion of the past six decades. This expansion
benefited the United States above all -- along with its "First World"
allies in Europe and the Pacific. Recently, however, a select group of
former "Third World" countries -- China and India in particular --
have sought to participate in this energy bonanza by industrializing
their economies and selling a wide range of goods to international
markets. This, in turn, has led to an unprecedented spurt in global
energy consumption -- a 47 percent rise in the past 20 years alone,
according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).
An increase of this sort would not be a matter of deep anxiety if the
world's primary energy suppliers were capable of producing the needed
additional fuels. Instead, we face a frightening reality: a marked
slowdown in the expansion of global energy supplies just as demand
rises precipitously. These supplies are not exactly disappearing --
though that will occur sooner or later -- but they are not growing
fast enough to satisfy soaring global demand.
The combination of rising demand, the emergence of powerful new energy
consumers, and the contraction of the global energy supply is
demolishing the energy-abundant world we are familiar with and
creating in its place a new world order. Think of it as: rising powers/
shrinking planet.
This new world order will be characterized by fierce international
competition for dwindling stocks of oil, natural gas, coal, and
uranium, as well as by a tidal shift in power and wealth from energy-
deficit states like China, Japan, and the United States to energy-
surplus states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. In the
process, the lives of everyone will be affected in one way or another
-- with poor and middle-class consumers in the energy-deficit states
experiencing the harshest effects. That's most of us and our children,
in case you hadn't quite taken it in.
Here, in a nutshell, are five key forces in this new world order which
will change our planet:
1. Intense competition between older and newer economic powers for
available supplies of energy: Until very recently, the mature
industrial powers of Europe, Asia, and North America consumed the
lion's share of energy and left the dregs for the developing world. As
recently as 1990, the members of the Organization of Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), the club of the world's richest
nations, consumed approximately 57 percent of world energy; the Soviet
Union/Warsaw Pact bloc, 14 percent percent; and only 29 percent was
left to the developing world. But that ratio is changing: With strong
economic growth in the developing countries, a greater proportion of
the world's energy is being consumed by them. By 2010, the developing
world's share of energy use is expected to reach 40 percent and, if
current trends persist, 47 percent by 2030.
China plays a critical role in all this. The Chinese alone are
projected to consume 17 percent of world energy by 2015, and 20
percent by 2025 -- by which time, if trend lines continue, it will
have overtaken the United States as the world's leading energy
consumer. India, which, in 2004, accounted for 3.4 percent of world
energy use, is projected to reach 4.4 percent percent by 2025, while
consumption in other rapidly industrializing nations like Brazil,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey is expected to grow as well.
These rising economic dynamos will have to compete with the mature
economic powers for access to remaining untapped reserves of
exportable energy -- in many cases, bought up long ago by the private
energy firms of the mature powers like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Total
of France, and Royal Dutch Shell. Of necessity, the new contenders
have developed a potent strategy for competing with the Western
"majors": they've created state-owned companies of their own and
fashioned strategic alliances with the national oil companies that now
control oil and gas reserves in many of the major energy-producing
nations.
China's Sinopec, for example, has established a strategic alliance
with Saudi Aramco, the nationalized giant once owned by Chevron and
Exxon Mobil, to explore for natural gas in Saudi Arabia and market
Saudi crude oil in China. Likewise, the China National Petroleum
Corporation (CNPC) will collaborate with Gazprom, the massive state-
controlled Russian natural gas monopoly, to build pipelines and
deliver Russian gas to China. Several of these state-owned firms,
including CNPC and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, are now
set to collaborate with Petr
