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Maybe if THEY say it…
By Alan Septoff
Friday, February 12, 2010
An interesting post at the Financial Times's energysource blog shows that it's not just military experts who think oil dependency causes national security risks, no matter where the oil comes from.Military experts having been making the case that climate change — and by extension tar sands oil — are a risk to U.S. national security.
Now the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors is making the same case — but not just on a climate basis. They also argue that oil price volatility — the upswing of which being the reason big oil heavily invested in the oil sands (and the downswing of which being the reason they’re now having second thoughts) — coupled with oil dependence threaten national security.
In the United States, continued reliance on petroleum-based fuels poses challenges that go beyond climate change. It makes the economy susceptible to potentially costly spikes in crude oil prices and imposes significant national security costs. A panel of retired senior military officers and national security experts concluded that unabated climate change may act as a “threat multiplier” to foment further instability in some of the world’s most unstable regions (CNA Corporation 2007). Fossil fuel consumption is also associated with other forms of pollution that harm human health, such as particulate, sulfur dioxide, and mercury emissions from coal-powered electricity generation.
Tagged with: oil prices, energy security, national security, financial times, council of economic advisors
