There are many reasons why the alternative fuels and renewable energy programs are important. Aside from the obvious environmental impact of such initiatives, these efforts have national security implications.
“For quite some time there has been anxiety about the increasing reliance of the U.S. on potentially unstable sources of petroleum imports,” Marvin Soroos, professor of political science, said.
According to Soroos, if one of the world’s major producers of oil, such as Saudi Arabia, were to have a revolution similar to the one in Iran in 1979, the international oil market could be thrown into chaos.
The debate between Iran and the Western world over their nuclear program presents an example of instability that holds the potential to affect the world oil market negatively.
“Disruptions of supply from lesser suppliers such as Mexico, Venezuela or Nigeria could also trigger a dramatic price rise,” Soroos said.
Over the past few years, a group that views energy supply issues as a central component of national security has been gaining ground and popularity.
Most notable among this school of thought is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman dubs this approach, of which he claims to subscribe to, as “geo-green.” It involves the viewing of environmental or green issues through a national security and geopolitical lens, and it is a view Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives alike, have adopted.
During the last two years “a group of former U.S. defense and national security officials from previous Democratic and Republican administrations has been trying to call attention to how vulnerable the United States is to a catastrophic disruption in the availability of oil imports,” Soroos said.
“[This group’s] concerns are not environmental, but simply national security in a more traditional sense,” Soroos said.
According to William Boettcher, associate professor of political science, this joining of forces between environmentalists and national security-minded non-environmentalists is another example of politics making for strange bedfellows.
“They agree on a common threat,” Boettcher said. But the ultimate success of this coalition, he added, will depend heavily on whether or not “they believe in the same solution.”
The planet’s petroleum reserves will only decline as time goes on and some scientists predict that the world will reach peak oil production sooner than expected. Although there is disagreement as to when the world will reach peak oil production, when it does happen, “experience tells us that production will drop quickly — and this is a time when demand for oil around the world will be rising steadily,” Soroos said.
Those raising such concerns are not limited to environmentalists, but include “some of the executives of major oil companies,” Soroos said.
As countries such as India and China develop, their demand and appetite for oil will continue to increase, which will result in fierce competition over limited and decreasing petroleum reserves and “further strain the capacities of oil exporters,” Soroos said.
According to James Barrett, director of sustainable economics at Redefining Progress, a California-based think tank that seeks to shift the economy and public policy towards sustainability “we will find ourselves moving off of oil for a number of reasons.”
“This is not a problem that we can drill ourselves out of,” Barrett said.
In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia weaned itself off the dependence on foreign, namely American, wheat through the application of science and technology. Many believe the U.S. must take similar action in regards to our dependence on foreign oil. The alternative fuels and renewable energy programs and initiatives taking place at NCSU represent the early stages of this country’s efforts to wean itself off foreign, nonrenewable energy sources.
