Planck Foundation




ENERGY POLITICS


ENERGY IS DEFENSE


The most secure defense model/target is creating an global/regional environment where it's not needed. The new realities of the 21st century are quite different from the old ones of the 21th century. The heading above the 20th century was "Difference Economics", the heading above the 21st century will be "Short of Resources'. Materials/Elements we can not harvest, we can only dig them up, use them and maybe recycle them. Water can be different: if we first address the energy issue, we can make sweet water out of seawater (at substantial higher cost than nature provides sweet water) and the water problem will cost us prosperity (condensing water is very energy intensive), but than will not lead to water shortages. Energy certainly can be different story. Regarding energy there are two directions possible. A passive (not choosing) or active (choosing) governmental choice for maintaining the old (fuel based) energy system, is not only a choice for wealth transfer to other nations, it's also a choice for a war on the last resources as last option for collapse. When the going gets tough regarding energy/resources prices/supply (due to wrong strategic choices in the past), war is the only way governments can hide their strategic failures and it the only valid option. Let's not be naïve on the characteristics of the next wars. Each war the war gets more dirty and develops itself each time around more nasty. The next war will be dirtier than ever. New wars always are different. From mainly man to man in WW I to tanks, plane and bombs in WW II. Always much more dirty. New wars will not be fought with rifles, nor with tanks, nor with planes, nor with 'normal' bombs. New wars will be about nations will dam/redirect rivers, so the water supply downstream is reduced to zero. The nations that doesn't get the water will poison the water they do not get any more. The dams will be opened and they will have poisoned themselves also. Don't think in old skool stuff like tanks, planes and warships, don't think even in new skool stuff like drones. Think in terms of targeting sudden economic collapse, abandoning of the national internet domain (can be done by just typing ; for a national toplevel domain in the root zone), think biological, think trade isolation, think cutting of the power, think oil/gas pipelines, think EMP. Do we want such a future? For ourselves, for our children? Still from 2015 on resources will be the only point on the international political agenda of every nation. The Club of Rome her first report and agenda was titled 'limits on growth'. It will be replaced by a second/adjusted agenda of 'Sustainable Prosperity'. The world van easily support Sustainable Prosperity for the current 6.8 billion people that it host, and the same can be said for the less than 9.0 billion people it will host as population will reach it top between 2030-2050. The earth can not host any number of people in the old unsustainable prosperity model. So the key to tension prevention (or better said: prosperity by international stability, often called: peace) is Sustainable Prosperity. Everyone who think the world can not host less than 9.0 billion people nor give these people Sustainable Prosperity, just look to the world without any understanding of technological innovation. Yes, there will be changes. We totally don't have any idea of the huge quantities of energy fossil fuel deliver to our current economic system. As long flying is about old skool technology in burning huge quantities of fossil fuel, aviation will become very expensive and thereby less used. The on cheap fossils based massive aviation period is only 20 years old and will not survive more than another 5 years. But their will be new technology developed, aviation technology that will cope with gravity and speed in different ways than by fossil fuel based jet-engines. The problem is: we're still in denial regarding PeakEnergy, nor have any clue on energy economics (we think emotional driven that cheap oil is a god given right that will stay by us for ever), so we're not searching for paradigmatic changes. The five most simple to implement today already fully available energy transition models are: a) efficiency b) model changes, c) photovoltaic, d) geothermal and e) deserttech. These are the best defences for a nation not to be sucked into any energy war. Each Ministry of Defense should allocate 50% of its resources to this. The Pentagon should do it, the Russians should do it, the States of the Middle East should do it, Mr. Hu Jintao of China's National Defense should do it, all the other nations in the North and South should do it. These five fossil alternatives energy models are so easy to implement that there's really no need to wait one month longer with rising these 5 models to official governmental policy in any nation of the world. If these five exits on the fossil highway are taken, global tension for energy will not be build up as tensed it will be build up without these 5. Not only hitting the fossil energy wall on the end of its dead ended street is something that would give war. The effects of the road to this wall (higher energy prices) is worse enough to deliver some severe tension. High energy prices equals no growth, no growth equals defaulting households, companies, banks and governments. High energy prices are the bomb under the economies, the financial system and the governmental stability and finally even under the currencies. The fossil energy related tension is already build up since fossil energy became the main economic driver almost a 100 years ago. Hitler is funded by the companies who thought this was the way to get their Caspian oil fields back from the communists. The USSR has ruined the democratic green leaves in Afghanistan in the eighties pure as protection that Afghanistan not would be the pipeline that would bring Caspian oil/gas to the High Seas. America has drawn the USSR into bankruptcy by flooding the market with cheap oil in the '80ties. The USA has gone into Afghanistan only for getting a pipe line from the Caspian Region to the High Seas. Smart military leaders understands this all and advocates instant start of the 5 above mentioned easy to realize energy transition exits of the dead ended fossil road. Energy is Defense is certainly a valid statement.


Author: Gijs Graafland


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