There Is Only The War For Resources  

The prolific Michael Klare has another article out at Tom Paine - this one on the war for resources, sparked by the recent speech by the UK secretary of Defence.

It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British Defense Secretary John Reid warned that global climate change and dwindling natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, “will make scarce resources, clean water, viable agricultural land even scarcer”—and this will “make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely.”

Although not unprecedented, Reid’s prediction of an upsurge in resource conflict is significant both because of his senior rank and the vehemence of his remarks. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur,” he declared. “We should see this as a warning sign.”

Resource conflicts of this type are most likely to arise in the developing world, Reid indicated, but the more advanced and affluent countries are not likely to be spared the damaging and destabilizing effects of global climate change. With sea levels rising, water and energy becoming increasingly scarce and prime agricultural lands turning into deserts, internecine warfare over access to vital resources will become a global phenomenon.

Reid’s speech, delivered at the prestigious Chatham House in London (Britain’s equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations), is but the most recent expression of a growing trend in strategic circles to view environmental and resource effects—rather than political orientation and ideology—as the most potent source of armed conflict in the decades to come. With the world population rising, global consumption rates soaring, energy supplies rapidly disappearing and climate change eradicating valuable farmland, the stage is being set for persistent and worldwide struggles over vital resources. Religious and political strife will not disappear in this scenario, but rather will be channeled into contests over valuable sources of water, food and energy.

Tom Paine has another article looking at the recent mad plan by Newt Gingrich and Donald "the torturer" Rumsfeld to wind up the war on terror (or the "long war" as Newt like to call it, to use a much overloaded term) and thereby lock us ever more tightly onto the war and collapse track.

They point out the the Europeans are slowly developing a concensus much like the line I like to push here - moving to alternative energy sources solves 3 problems - global warming, peak oil and the instability (and its symptoms of war and terrorism) that fight over the remaining oil (and other resources) is causing.

Two weeks ago, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer declared that America and Europe need "a new strategic consensus." He cited "energy, energy, energy" as the basis of that consensus. In essence, Reid is singing from the same page. Reid says that climate change is a major cause of the emerging threats to international peace and security. Climate change, as we know, is fundamentally a product of our post-war industrial economic order—an economic order based on a transportation system that is 96 percent dependent on oil.

That Reid and Fischer generally agree on the big strategic picture should be a powerful wake-up call to Democrats. Two senior European statesmen have now posited the basis of a new transatlantic strategic consensus: the interdependent issues of energy security and climate change. But to join that consensus, the U.S. must agree to decisively transform its own economic system away from scarce, destabilizing fossil fuels and do so in a way that increases overall security, peace and prosperity.