Center for a New American Security

Yesterday the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program hosted the Army Environmental Policy Institute’s 31st sustainability lecture on the Department of Defense’s (DoD) strategic energy opportunities and challenges. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Environment, Safety, and Occupational Health Tad Davis introduced keynote speaker Dr. Amory Lovins who sits on the Defense Science Board’s Task Force on DoD Energy Strategy and helped advise the 2008 DSB report, More Fight – Less Fuel.

According to Lovins, DoD’s long energy logistics tail is putting the Department’s core mission at risk and it is paying for it in “blood, treasure, and lost combat effectiveness.” Fuel and fuel logistics are what has become largely understood as the “soft underbelly” of the Department of Defense. As Lovins pointed out, 1/2 of DoD personnel and 1/3 of its budget are dedicated to logistics. When the Defense Science Board was conducting its study several years ago it concluded that 1/2 of in-theater causalities were associated with convoys as well (though Lovins noted that this number does not reflect today’s total).  Lovins also pointed out that of the military’s top 10 most fuel-intensive platforms, 8 are noncombat systems. “It’s an odd way to fight a war when the water heater uses more fuel than a helicopter,” Lovins said.

As we near the December conference in Copenhagen, we are starting to see a flurry of activity around climate change in the United States. Yesterday, the Senate began to debate the Kerry-Boxer bill (officially, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, S.1733).

The three days of hearings kicked off on Tuesday (video) with Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) introducing and discussing their bill before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Yesterday’s hearing featured many of the Obama administration’s heavyweights, including: Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The committee also heard from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Back in September we highlighted the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) plan to launch a new agency apparatus dedicated to studying the implications of climate change on U.S. national security. According to a September 25, 2009 press release, CIA director Leo Panetta said, “Decision makers need information and analysis on the effects climate change can have on security. The CIA is well positioned to deliver that intelligence.” In the same press release the CIA clarified the role of the new Center on Climate Change and National Security, stating that its mandate will not focus on the science of climate change, per se, “but the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources.”

There is an interesting debate happening in Washington on whether or not the CIA or intelligence community writ large should be playing a role at all when it comes to climate change. Critics such as Wyoming Senator John Barrasso question whether or not it is an unnecessary burden on already strained resources. “I don’t believe creating a center on climate change is going to prevent terrorist attacks,” Senator Barrasso said when he offered an amendment to the FY 2010 National Defense Authorization Act to block funding for the new center. But despite how critics may feel, it is important to point out that the intelligence community has been working on climate change for some time already, helping climate scientists with access to better data to do their research while offering analysis for policy makers to prepare for the implications of climate change.

One of my recent posts mildly chastised an author for not strictly defining the difference between “strategic” and “critical” minerals. But as I looked further into language and definitions in minerals reports, I couldn’t really blame anybody for choosing the skirt the issue. There are basically as many definitions of these terms as there are agencies or committees writing about them. As a quick reference to give our readership an advantage, we decided to present the different definitions of critical and strategic minerals.

This is a piece of cassiterite, the most common tin ore in the world today. Though this sample comes from a mine in Alaska, cassiterite is mined all over the world, including conflict-ridden areas such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tin is used mainly to manufacture containers and for electrical purposes, and the Defense National Stockpile keeps tabs (pdf) on American supply.

Photo: Courtesy of Will Rogers and Sharon Burke.

I’ve heard a lot about Iraqi oil and the important role this resource plays in international politics, but I’ve never been clear about exactly what the Iraqi oil laws were. If you also think this seems like a big debacle and want a bit more detail, walk with me through this. The Iraqi government has given cabinet approval to an agreement with two companies after delaying since June auctions in order to agree on current production levels, future outputs, and other details of a final contract. The bid by China’s CNPC and Britain’s BP to develop the southern oilfield in Rumaila is now thought to be three weeks from a signed agreement. This marks the first major oil agreement between the Iraqi government and foreign companies offered in competitive bidding since the fall of Saddam.

Although there have been fits and starts along the way, notably when Saddam briefly signed oil contracts with other countries in 1997 (these contracts were never implemented due to sanctions), the Iraqi government and people have strongly supported the nationalization of the oil industry for nearly 50 years.  The new Iraqi government, however, has supported a policy that is open to foreign investment and relinquishes much of the control and profits of oil wells.

Given all our recent work and the recent press on critical minerals (or “strategic” minerals; more on the distinction later), I gave a look back this week to Peter Harben’s 1992 article “Strategic Minerals” from Earth magazine (print only, but those with access to databases like Ebsco should be able to access it).

I sat down last night preparing for 3+ hours of panel and PowerPoint presentations. While this came to fruition, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the diversity of my colleagues at the dinner table. Although I enjoy a good lecture, having it commentated by a nuclear physicist, energy consultant, and Senate staffer added immensely to my experience.

To get right down to the nuts and bolts of it, I attended part of a lecture series called “The Energy Conversation.” This is a great program that aims to “foster and showcase the unprecedented collaboration between government, industry, and non profits” in order to “successfully build a sustainable energy future.”  The specific lecture I attended was even more interesting: “U.S. Military Energy Strategies.” The panel represented some of the finest in our armed forces working on energy issues, including members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and Office of the Secretary of Defense.  I highly suggest checking out their biographies and getting acquainted with their programs.

I want to make sure that we are including some homeland natural security issues every now and again here at the Natural Security Blog. I also wanted to read something semi-fictitious other than comic strips this summer. For this I chose The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by New York Times writer Timothy Egan. As the book described it thusly: “John Steinbeck gave voice to those who fled the Dust Bowl in his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath. This is the story of those who stayed and survived.” The joke was on me. I was deceived by the comparison to Grapes, but this book is cold, hard nonfiction.

Egan’s account walks the reader through the gray, grisly details of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. In one of the (if not the) worst natural episodes in the country’s history, the author details both the human role in creating the ecological tragedy, and the human reaction to it.

The Dust Bowl was in part severe, extended drought, and in part the results of abuse of the land by Americans expanding into some of the last unsettled regions of the country and attempting a dramatic and poorly planned ramp-up in agricultural production of crops not endemic to the region. The manmade environmental devastation to parts of Oklahoma, Texas, and surrounding states was in response to very attractive prices as well as irresponsible federal homesteading policies and fraudulent marketing on behalf of a few companies. In fact, many of the factors contributing to the human side of the Dust Bowl are ingredients that today we look for in unstable countries abroad as we monitor world economic, political, and natural trends.

While The Worst Hard Time provides details as to the causes of the Dust Bowl, its utility for the work we do here stems more from its detailed excavation of what the physical effects were and how the Americans most affected by the natural tragedy reacted. In looking at issues of land management and climate change, many of our questions to our scientist collaborators always come down to these factors: what do natural effects look like on the ground, and how will people respond?

An interesting theme emerged in natural security news this week: tradeoffs. As any economist will tell you, you can’t have it all. Tradeoffs are inevitable. Energy is no different, and measures taken to reduce dependency on one energy source may increase dependency on another, or may end up exacerbating the consequences of climate change.

Wars over timber, shrinking water supplies, and constant forward deployment of our military to protect oil and natural gas reserves, this was the vision that Michael Klare, the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and a  proponent of ideas like peak oil, espoused in his May 2001 Foreign Affairs article “The New Geography of Conflict” (subscription required).  Klare is a controversial figure due to his unabashed critiques of the Bush administration and his habit of making the Left look Right. However, in this article, he outlines a pre-9/11 worldview that is interesting to examine in light of the last eight years.