Tomgram: Michael Klare on the End of the World as You Know It...and the Rise of the New Energy World

Tomgram: Michael Klare on the End of the World as You Know It...and the Rise

of the New Energy World Order

By Tom Engelhardt

Created Apr 16 2008 - 8:19pm

- from TomDispatch [1]

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 [2] 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 [3] across the planet because the prices

of staples are soaring [4], while stocks of basics are falling. In the last

year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and

corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks

left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering [5]. This

is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo

and Port au Prince [6] 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 [7]. 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 [8].

-- Tom

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% 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 [9].

[10]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 [11] approximately 57% of world energy;

the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact bloc, 14% percent; and only 29% 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% and, if current trends persist, 47% by 2030.

China plays a critical role in all this. The Chinese alone [12] are

projected to consume 17% of world energy by 2015, and 20% 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% of world energy use, is projected to reach 4.4% 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 [13] 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 [14], 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 [15], 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