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Energy Policy and National Security Clearly Linked

Posted by Guest Voice in Politics, Science & Technology.
Sep 10th, 2009 | Comments

Guest post by Frankie Sturm

Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a free-lance journalist.

The debate over climate change and energy legislation is becoming a debate over America’s national security. And this is just where the debate belongs. As nearly 150 veterans gear up to visit Washington to ask their senators to take serious action on climate change, Jill Lawrence of Politics Daily reported on the new dynamic that national security is adding to the fight for new energy policy:

In the face of conservative attacks on climate-change legislation as a “job-killing energy tax,” this is a welcome and potentially effective experiment in the politics of addition. We are not talking here about indulging tree-huggers or endangered species, or even about protecting the Earth. We are talking about protecting America. The argument is tough and double-barreled: We need to stop pouring money into oil-producing countries that are hostile to our interests, and we need to take global warming seriously as a threat to our national security — because the military sure does.

From Operation FREE and the CNA report on the national security effects of climate change, to former Republican Senator John Warner and the Pew Project on National Security, Energy, and Climate, the article gives a bird’s-eye view of why climate change is looming large in the minds of those who take national security the most seriously. As Politico reported, it’s also having an effect on public opinion:

Respondents were best persuaded [to support energy legislation] by an America-first national security argument — the notion that “over-reliance on oil from hostile nations hurts economy, helps enemies, and puts security at risk.”

But as this avenue of debate develops, it’s important to remember that messaging is not the motivator here. The plain truth is that climate change is a threat to our security. That’s what we need to keep in mind, and that’s why we need a new energy policy this year.

(Cross-posted from Operation FREE.)

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DLS

There is no excuse for idiotic hype about global warming, or pathological energy policy, of any kind.

Aside from the leftist idiocy, the following more respectable item, for example, is obviously premature:

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/icefree/finalarcticr...

GreenDreams

Good post, Frankie. Let me add another point: PERSONAL security. Right now we have a momentary lull in rising gasoline prices because the economy is in the toilet. There is no hope that oil prices will remain low. Energy prices in general are bound to rise, independently of any climate change issues or "energy tax". Those who prepare now will be in better shape than those struggling in the midst of a crisis.

PWT

I agree! We must prepare the country by drilling domestically as much as possible and by building as many nuclear power plants as necessary as quickly as possible. Not only will those lead to energy independence, but will also create jobs (not that we would need that as Mr. Obama claims to have already saved or created 1,000,.000 since the stimulus was passed).

DLS

"We must prepare the country by drilling domestically as much as possible and by building as many nuclear power plants as necessary as quickly as possible."

Much more intelligent than Lysenkoism that the "global warming" movement is, and worse, but there are political (not scientific or engineering) and cost problems with nuclear plant startups (and at their ends of service live, plant decommissiong). In the meantime, don't overlook the obvious thing we ought to be doing already, which is to work on converting coal into clean, highly-purified liquid fuels primarily for transportation. If we could use coal ash from power plants for this, so much the better.

GreenDreams

Good thing you aren't in charge PWT. Nuclear "as quickly as possible" is a minimum of 10 years. It currently costs twice as much as wind power. Loser proposition both in time and cost. Don't you consider such things?

Drilling is also lame. Just as far off and even the oil companies don't claim that it will lower cost. Another loser in both time and cost.

DLS

"[Nuclear] currently costs twice as much as wind power."

Nuclear is a viable base load source along with hydro (normally) or coal (which is dirty, but cheap).

I've used the helicopter analogy for nuclear power before -- nuclear power is more expensive and complicated than its original fans believed it would be, but it's still possible. It has more potential than another kind of analogy, the SST.

As to the notion that "base load" is a myth, it's a clever attempt to "solve" the problem of an intermittent (and diffuse) source not being able to provide base load power, but I'm unsold:

http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-base...

JeffersonDavis

I wholeheartedly agree, DLS.

"As nearly 150 veterans gear up to visit Washington to ask their senators to take serious action on climate change"

For every "veteran" they produce wanting serious action on "climate change",
I'll introduce them to five who do not buy into that scam.

Interesting fact:
One of our local DNC flunkies was told to stop calling it "Global Warming", and to start calling it "Climate Change", because of the record low temperatures around the world this year.

However.....

I am all FOR green energy. It is, indeed, a national security issue.
As long as we import energy resources, we are at risk and at the whim of dangerous regimes.

T.Boone Pickens had the right idea. (of course he stood to make billions on the deal). And that's ok.
Produce all that you've got, and require the development (serious development) of green renewable energy while our economy readjusts to the new infrastructure. Simple.

If we try to do this overnight, it will kill our economy even further.

DLS

It's an enormous scam. Reducing (real) pollution is a good thing; I'm even in favor of reducing things like "sound pollution," for that matter. (And I don't consider wind farms to be visual pollution, though many do.) Conservation is never a magic solution and deliberately crippling ourselves is pathological, as well as perverse, even though it has its own obvious appeal, to name something else. But what we are seeing with "climate change" (or whatever it will be called next) is a "movement" going back to the 60s, not only with wind and solar power (and against existing technological progress, big business, non-PC technology, etc.), that not only is the latest incarnation of the Malthusian idiots (the "population explosion"; the "food crisis" and imminent famine along with global cooling in the mid-1970s, later "Club of Rome" resource crashes; now, "global warming" or "climate change"), all "require" us, in the West and especially in the Evil USA, to pursue the same solutions, namely socialization and Western de-industrialization, government planning, and a command and control economy -- the little green fascists are not only regurgitated Malthusians (wanting the West to suffer for largely non-Western problems, if problems at all) but in the huge PC celeb case of "global warming," true Lysenkoists.

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