Planck Foundation




ENERGY POLITICS


ENERGY IS WAR


Something we often totally forget that government structures are mushrooms that grows on the feed on the real economy. No economy, no government income, no government. Governmental structures exist by the grace of economic production. When the relation between those gets reversed (as in: when governments think they can replace -partial or even fully- the creating power of the market) both the economy as the government will collapse, taking the currency that dominates the trade, loans, savings, loans and pensions in that nation with it down. The best recent example is the imploding of the USSR in the eighties and begin nineties. Nations that maintain their dependency on the old (from somewhere else imported) fuel system are playing with their future due to the wealth draining effect of this. If they get into certain situations (budget deficits with attached currency declines by declining economies due to too expensive fossil imports) where they can't pay any longer for this fuel (also due they have to pay for it with real money, a hard currency). Than everything hits the wall. The only option left than is war. War is a simple three character word, that changes everything for the worst. The attitude than will be: go and get it. The show must go on. Moral issues will be abandoned as luxurious. This war will not be like the wars we know. Wars get more dirty per cycle. No more trenches based man to man (WW I), no more tanks and planes (WW II), but just typing one character (just an ;) for the nations national internet domain in the global roots serves will do the job, or just an old fashion trade isolation lobby: works always in a global interconnected world. If this doesn't work, there will be biological warfare (viruses) or detonating an EMP (electro magnetic pulse) weapon that takes out all digital e equipment in a second. Iraq and Afghanistan has learned the world the lessons about 'how to do not' conduct a war. Both wars only have losers, no one can declare any victory or eat the fruits of that. History (like Germany in the past century) has showed that a nation can be propagandised into conducting war. This is one of the reasons a free press is so important, governments should honour free press: it delivers them a free insurance of good policy. Maintaining the old fuel based energy system is just ordering huge not very attractive global events. War is not good for any thing. War is just a wast of people/labour and resources. Any idea that war is profit is a misconception. War damages the productivity of a nation severely, war increases the governmental budget deficits severely (less income, more costs). As an economist I don't want to talk about the human suffering of war, but for sure there's a huge price also to pay. Conducting a war or suffering for war changes people and not for the best. War is just wasting everything that's valuable. War is the last option, the proof of wrong policies in the past. As I want this document to be accepted all around the globe, I don't want to mention actual energy driven wars or conflicts. But it safe to say that there where are resources there is by foreign capital fuelled unrest or war. One simple and safe/neutral example out of my own nation of birth (Holland). Under the soil of the remote province of Groningen was/is the biggest natural gas deposit of Europe. Bloomberg published a year ago a top ten of most exploited regions. Number one was Groningen, Holland. The region was global numbero uno in not benefiting of it resources. In Groningen (due the huge fossil wealth beneath it) this is not a real problem, so therefore it's a safe neutral example. The days of the the old energy system are over. Only nations that abuse democracy to keep small talking and don't change there energy system will hit the wall and therefore go (or support: no war happens without -political or actual- support). Don't ask the baker if bread is healthy, don't ask the Pope what's the best religion and don't ask the carbon companies advice on energy future. Independent thinking has become scares. This we must change. We must revitalize our governmental structures. Not only the USSR needed Glasnost and Perestroika. We all do. Our energy system (and therefore our economy, our governments and our currencies, better said: our future perspectives) is as weak as the economic model of the USSR. Time to change to a fuel free energy as income instead of energy as cost energy model. If we don't do that, it's very clear that blocks of nations will have huge contrary interests and thereby tensions will grow each day a little, until it got open en hostile. Let's face it: China, Europa en the USA are all there energy deficit in terms of the old on foreign imported fuel based energy system: they change to the new fuel-free energy system, or they will hit the wall en prevent sudden collapse by conducting wars. I don't mention the capital fuelling of social unrest in resources rich parts of the world. Everybody with a little knowledge of both resources and conflicts knows that these two global maps have almost the same hotspots. But unrest is not war. War is the last (and therefore only valid) option for nations that thought that the past was the blueprint for the future and doesn't understand the total game changing reality of PeakX. Change your energy system or get involved in wars in the near future. So simple is the blueprint of the 21st century. Energy is war is a very valid statement.


Author: Gijs Graafland


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