mulligan-peak oil and security

Energy, Environment, and Security: Critical Links in a Post-PeakWorld

Shane Mulligan

Global Environmental Politics, Volume 10, Number 4, November2010, pp. 79-100 (Article)

Published by The MIT Press

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by Bangladesh University of Professionals at 07/31/11 3:42AM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/gep/summary/v010/10.4.mulligan.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/gep/summary/v010/10.4.mulligan.html

79

Energy, Environment, and Security: Critical Links in a Post-Peak World Shane Mulligan

Energy, Environment, and Security:Critical Links in a Post-Peak World

•

Shane Mulligan*

Introduction

Energy security is once again high on government agendas, and while much ofthe current discussion is oriented toward alternative or renewable energy, over80 percent of the energy used by human societies is still derived from fossil fu-els—a proportion the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects will remainfairly constant in coming decades. The discourse of “energy security,” then, isstill a discourse about fossil fuels, and especially oil: by far the world’s mostwidely traded fuel, oil accounts for some 34 percent of primary energy con-sumption. Because resources are concentrated in a relatively small number ofstates, many other states depend upon a functioning global market and the con-tinuing availability of imports.1 Thus energy security has long centered on ques-tions of the reliability of supply and price, and the implications of the strategicwithholding of energy (“the oil weapon”) for the military, industrial, and eco-nomic security of consumer states. The discourse of energy security is in thissense both economic and geopolitical, and in both cases focuses on the impor-tance of human agency—investors, technologists, consumers, and “foreign gov-ernments” dominate the scene.2 The oil price spike of 2008 was for exampleblamed on a number of candidate causes, including political tensions, terrorismand other above-ground factors, increased demand from the emerging econo-mies of China and India, and the role of market speculators.

Within this debate, however, a growing chorus argued that production it-self might be reaching its natural limits: the looming menace of “peak oil” rep-resents an historical turning point at which global oil production reaches amaximum and falls into irreversible decline.3 Peak oil, while purportedly con-troversial, is a characteristic of all oil ªelds and many regions: peaks have to datebeen witnessed in up to 54 of the world’s 65 largest oil producing states.4 While

* Thanks are due to Jennifer Clapp and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and cri-tique. The ªnancial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canadais gratefully acknowledged.

1. IEA 2008, 4.2. Kalicki and Goldwyn 2005; and Moran and Russell 2009.3. See Goodstein 2004; Heinberg 2005; Roberts 2004; and Leggett 2005.4. Aleklett 2005.

Global Environmental Politics 10:4, November 2010© 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

new discoveries continue to make headlines, it is worth noting that the rate ofdiscovery has been declining since discoveries themselves peaked—in 1965.“Worldwide, the frequency of ªnding giant oil provinces and super-giantoilªelds has been declining for decades and will not be reversed.”5 The time be-tween peak discovery and peak production in individual states has rarely ex-ceeded 40 years, and many foresee a near-term global peak in oil production,raising concerns about economic and social threats largely unheard of since the“limits to growth” debates of the 1970s. While the threat of peak oil looms largein some circles, a number of recent studies suggest that peak coal and peak gasmay not be far behind.6 The end of growth of these key fuels surely presentsmodern human societies with an unprecedented challenge.

Depletion of fossil fuels was a key concern in early discourses on the envi-ronment, but a natural science-based view of energy security is today exceed-ingly rare. It is not captured within the agent-centered discourse of energy secu-rity, nor is it represented in the study of global environmental politics orenvironmental security.7 Of course concerns over energy pollution, especially car-bon emissions, now dominate both environmental politics and ecological secu-rity discourses.8 But it seems our ªnite stock of fossil fuels, though surely “natu-ral” resources, constitute an environmental concern only to the extent their useaffects the natural environment. The relationship between energy and the envi-ronment that prevails today is almost the inverse of that which dominated ear-lier works on human ecology.

This article aims to tell a history of this change, with special attention tothe notion of security. It outlines four “waves” of thinking, distinguished by theirdistinct views on fossil fuels in relation to the environment (and security).9 Itseeks to explain changes in the energy-environment-security discourse by con-sidering the role of four discursive threads that have helped to structure that dis-course: ideologies of nature, political considerations, economic arguments, andsecurity discourses. After outlining these factors and their role in framing fossilfuel depletion within discourses on environment and security, the article con-siders how these same factors may affect our perception of the security dilemmaposed by the impending (if not imminent) peaking of global oil production.

“Energy,” Environment, Security: An Historical Sketch

The Limits to Growth: Energy Scarcity as a Global Threat

The seeds of global environmental concern had been planted by the late 1960s,as recognition grew of the tensions between human population and consump-

80 • Energy, Environment, and Security: Critical Links in a Post-Peak World

5. BP’s Francis Harper, to a 2004 conference on oil depletion at the Energy Institute. Cited inLeggett 2005, 35. On historical discovery patterns see Leggett 2005, 30–33.

6. On coal, see Energy Watch Group 2007; and Kavalov and Peteves 2007. On natural gas seeDarley 2004; and Laherrere, 2010.

7. The distinction of environmental and ecological security is discussed below.8. See Dalby 2002a; and Brown, Hammill, and McLeman 2007.9. The notion of “waves” is a common convention in the history of environmental security, but a

tion, on one hand, and the ªniteness of the Earth’s supply of resources and pol-lution sinks on the other. These concerns were most famously modeled by anMIT research team (in association with the Club of Rome) in The Limits toGrowth,10 a report that Dobson suggests marks “the birth of ecologism in its fullycontemporary guise.”11 Yet Limits to Growth was not alone in raising concernsabout the delicate relationship between human civilization and the environ-ment that sustains it. Ehrlich’s Population Bomb and Hardin’s “Tragedy of theCommons” focused on excess population and ecological scarcity.12 The Ecologistmagazine’s Blueprint for Survival responded to fears of an impending “break-down of society and irreversible damage of the life-support systems on thisplanet.”13 Not everyone saw the situation as dire, of course: Commoner focusedon the potential for improved distribution and technology to resolve the crisis(and for this was accused by Ehrlich of “splitting the environmental move-ment”).14 Others, like Lovins and Simon, offered even more optimistic scenar-ios based on human ingenuity and the unexplored resources of the oceanºoor.15 These debates were infused with political ideas, often pitting capitalistagainst socialist proponents—but concerns about scarcity and the environmentwere often seen as transcending ideologies. As Humanity as a whole was threat-ening the planet, the ecological constraints that were becoming apparent werethreatening the human race itself.

Energy resources were central to these analyses. In his popular text on“Buddhist economics,” Schumacher saw fossil fuels as the epitome of naturalcapital, “the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found,and without which he can do nothing.”16 Commoner saw energy throughput asintegral to the “ecosystem” upon which all production and economics de-pends.17 The “new” ªeld of ecological economics looked on energy as not sim-ply a resource, but as the foundation of human economies, and many arguedthat sustainability could only be achieved through a shift to a “steady state”economy.18 Others, following the Limits view, argued that our enjoyment of fos-sil fuels may have already led the human species into “overshoot,” a state fromwhich systemic collapse (of structures, economies, and human populations)was a likely, or even inevitable, consequence.19

The growth of concern over the damage being done to a ªnite planet, andthe dangers of this degradation for the well-being of humanity, represent a “ªrst

Shane Mulligan • 81

focus on the place of fossil fuels is unique to the current effort. See Levy 1995; Rønnfeldt 1997;and Dalby 2002b.

10. Meadows et al. 1972.11. Dobson 2007, 25.12. Ehrlich 1968; and Hardin 1968.13. Ecologist, 1974, v.14. Feenberg 1996.15. Lovins 1977; and Simon 1981.16. Schumacher 1989 [1973], 14.17. Commoner 1976, 2–3.18. Daly 1991. On the history of ecological economics see Martinez-Alier 1987.19. Catton 1980.

wave” of scholarship on the environment as a global threat. In this literature, re-source scarcity—including fossil fuels—was seen as an important aspect of envi-ronmental degradation. The discourse was typically global in scope, and ori-ented toward recognizing “common” concerns over threats to humanity and theEarth, concerns that (it was argued) stood above ideological or nationalist senti-ments. This literature presages the notion of ecological security, which has beendescribed as ensuring that “the physical surroundings of a community providefor the needs of its inhabitants without diminishing its natural stock.”20 Whilesimilar to prevailing notions of sustainability, “[e]cological security emphasizesat least implicitly that it is ecosystems and ecological processes that should besecured; the prima facie referent is therefore non-human.”21 Nevertheless, the ul-timate concern of security talk, aside from proponents of deep ecology, is thepresent and future welfare of humanity—but with the understanding that thiscan only be achieved by maintaining the ecological, economic, and political or-ders which sustain us.

The Environment and “Security”

The ecological concerns of the 1970s proved an important stimulus to a broaderconcept of security, and the environment became a requisite component in thenew security agenda.22 In Redeªning National Security, Brown argued that “thetraditional military concept of ‘national security’ is growing ever less adequate”to the task of addressing the expanse of global, especially environmental,threats.23 Richard Ullman argued that the range of threats to states needed to in-clude “environmental degradation,”24 while Barry Buzan observed that “envi-ronmental events, like military and economic ones, can damage the physicalbase of the state.”25 Many scholars see these works as marking the true begin-nings of scholarship on “environment and security,” although the term “envi-ronmental security” appears to have been used ªrst in the 1987 report Our Com-mon Future, by the World Commission on Environment and Development (theBrundtland Commission).26

“The problem for most of the advocates of environmental security [wasinitially] a scarcity of natural resources” and the implications of that scarcity forstate security.27 Thus environmental security leaned toward the “traditional con-cerns of security studies, while reorienting analysis . . . to the underlying dynam-ics that can serve as the sources of interstate conºict.”28 A key assumption—onewhich was soon to be tested—was that the need to access essential resources un-


20. Rogers 1997, 30.21. Barnett 2001, 108.22. See Krause and Williams 1996; and Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998.23. Brown 1977, 41.24. Ullman 1983.25. Cited in Tennberg 1995, 241.26. Barnett 2001, 41.27. Tennberg 1995, 245.28. Krause and Williams 1996, 235.

der conditions of scarcity could lead to inter-state and inter-group conºict. In-deed, “[f]ew ideas seem more intuitively sound than the notion that states willbegin ªghting each other as the world runs out of usable natural resources.”29

Importantly for the current argument, the conception of “natural resources”that prevailed in this geopolitical notion of environmental security was broad:Westing, for instance, considered oil and gas, as well as minerals, water, ªsher-ies, and food crops, as resources that might lead to conºict; Ullman discussedthe geopolitics of oil resources alongside food, “clean air,” and water.30

But as this discourse matured, most authors soon came to limit the scopeof resources—indeed, to limit the concept of “the environment”—in environ-mental security. In Homer-Dixon’s inºuential research on environmentalchange and conºict, environmental degradation was deªned as “man-caused[sic.] damage to the basic natural resources necessary for survival: water, soil,forests, the atmosphere.”31 He took care to distinguish between “stock” and “re-newable” resources, and focused exclusively on the latter: those resources ofwhich one could see “a ºow, which is the incremental addition to, or restora-tion of, the stock per unit time.”32 Libiszewski, in the ªrst report of the SwissPeace Foundation’s Environment and Conºicts Project, agreed that thedeªnition of environmental conºict should hinge on the renewable nature ofthe resources, along with limits to pollution sinks and the decline of habitats.33

Levy argued that the term “environmental” be reserved “for issues involving bio-logical or physical systems characterized either by signiªcant ecological feed-backs or by their importance to the sustenance of human life. Natural resourcesnot embedded in such systems (such as mineral deposits) are excluded.”34 AndLipschutz and Holdren distinguished security threats due to scarce “mineral re-sources” from those expected due to environmental problems: “In the case ofenergy, in particular,” they argued,

it is becoming increasingly likely that the most intractable problems—andthe greatest threats to international stability—could come not from the eco-nomics or politics of supply but from large-scale environmental and social“side effects” of energy sources—such as climate change by carbon dioxidefrom fossil fuels, or the spread of nuclear bomb materials by nuclear energytechnology.35

These arguments have done much to steer the discourse on environmentand security away from a whole-earth catalogue of natural resources and towarda more limited set of environmental concerns.36 Levy argued that an overlybroad understanding of environmental resources “fails the test of usefulness.


29. Deudney, 1990, 470. Deudney himself rejects this simplistic relationship.30. Westing, 1986; and Ullman 1983.31. Homer-Dixon 1993, 32.32. Homer-Dixon 2001, 47.33. Libiszewski 1992.34. Levy, 1995, 39.35. Lipschutz and Holdren 1990, 126.36. See Barnett 2001, 50–53.

Under Westing’s classiªcation, [which included oil alongside water and land],virtually every war counts as an ‘environmental’ war, because natural resourcesof some sort have ªgured to some degree in almost every belligerent’s waraims.”37 Why this means we should abandon Westing’s approach, however, isnot entirely clear: if natural resources (including land and fuels) are implicatedin virtually every conºict, then these environmental factors must surely be rec-ognized as a key factor in human (geo)political relations. Nonetheless, as theenvironmental security discourse developed, it succeeded in isolating the envi-ronment from “resources” at large, and oil and other fossil fuels were effectivelyexcluded from the research and policy agenda of environmental security.

Yet as this discourse was maturing in the early 1990s, and while prepara-tions for the UNCED meeting in Rio were well underway, the US-led responseto Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait provided ample evidence that global fossil fuel sup-plies were indeed a compelling security issue, to which all the forces of the statemight be applied.38 There can be little doubt that Saddam Hussein’s move andthe US-led response were both motivated by state interests in petroleum as apower resource: the classic “energy security” paradigm. Yet even in that conºict,one of Hussein’s more notorious crimes was the burning of Kuwaiti oil ªelds, amove that caused more uproar as an environmental crime than for its economicor strategic implications.39 The US Army’s return to Iraq in 2003, furthermore, is(notwithstanding protestations from the political establishment) widely viewedas a classic resource war, as articulated under the popular banner of “No Bloodfor Oil.”40

With the recognition of the Gulf Wars as resource wars, however, they arenot viewed in the context of environmental scarcity, but rather as essentiallygeopolitical phenomena. They are what Kaldor et al. refer to as “old wars”—conºicts between states over scarce resources in an unending struggle for powerand survival.41 Such conºicts can be contrasted with the increasing prevalence of“new wars” involving sub-state actors seeking to secure resource rents to ªnanceor “fuel” their quest for territorial and social control (with such rents possiblyeven standing as a major casus belli).42 This “resource curse” literature “hasturned the environmental-scarcity-leading-to-conºict argument on its head[,]suggesting that the connection between resources and violence in the South is amatter of ªghts over control of resources that are in abundance rather than overones that are scarce.”43 Moreover, in this literature there is signiªcant overlap be-tween “resource” and “environmental” conºict. For instance, Le Billon pointsout that “[f]orest products, mostly in the form of timber, are probably the most


37. Levy 1995, 38.38. See Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998.39. Meadows, however, lamented the waste of energy resources, estimating that the ªre was con-

suming around as much oil as West Germany while it burned. Meadows, 1991.40. See Turse, 2008, for a critique of “ofªcial denials” of the oil thesis.41. Kaldor, Karl, and Said 2007.42. Kaldor, Karl, and Said 2007.43. Dalby 2002b, 74.

common resource fuelling wars,” though oil resources are not far behind.44

With regard to Levy’s criticism, then, one might ask whether these conºicts,both “old” and “new,” ought to be seen as environmental ones. Yet by and large,historical, ongoing and expected conºicts over fossil fuel resources are not seenas matters of environmental security.

Global Change: Back to the Limits?

Most observers of environmental politics today would agree that “globalchange” has become the dominant paradigm, while “climate change is now theheadline issue in the environmental security ªeld.”45 Global change inquirylooks to the environmental changes that humans have wrought upon the Earth,including biodiversity loss, ªsheries depletion, deforestation, pollution—whichtogether deªne a period increasingly referred to as the Anthropocene. The viewfrom the Anthropocene is, as in an earlier era of environmental concern, a globalrather than localized one; and the likely victims of global change—apart from“the environment” itself—are human communities and populations. In thissense there is a similarity to the ecological security discourse of the 1970s. Yetthe discourse on global change follows the dominant trends in environmentalthought by ignoring some of the most important natural resources we have: fos-sil fuels.

Fossil fuels are of course implicated in terms of carbon emissions and cli-mate change, and the view of energy emissions as a principal environmentalthreat is embedded in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC), which may be “the nearest thing we have to a global conventiondealing directly with energy concerns.”46 Yet neither the UNFCCC nor the nu-merous analyses of it have much to say about supply. Unlike the ªrst wave, inwhich the scarcity of energy resources was seen as an important environmentalproblem, in the contemporary global change literature there is now little con-cern about—indeed little conception of—scarcity of these resources. The ªnalseparation of energy and environment is their intimate opposition, in whichthe consumption of one inexorably leads to the degradation of the other. Fossilfuels are now decidedly a principal threat to, rather than a component of, “theenvironment.”

The exclusion of energy resources from recent environmental discourseswas clearly not an inevitable or necessary development in environmentalthought; the exclusion was based on, and helped to deªne, an historically spe-ciªc conception of the category of “environment.” Moreover, the current “envi-ronmental anxiety” around climate change, even while it is complementary toenergy security, may be steering attention away from the threat of fossil fuel de-


44. Le Billon 2005, 11.45. Dabelko 2008–09, viii.46. Najam and Cleveland 2003, 128.

cline.47 The following section examines four interconnected areas of discourse—ideas of “man and nature,” political considerations, economic arguments, andsecurity discourses—that have helped to structure the current conceptual rela-tionships among energy, the environment, and security. I suggest a tentativeframework for explaining how these relationships have become the norm, andoffer a starting point for a more suitable approach to 21st century energychallenges.

Mapping the Discourse of Energy

The environment/energy relation rests in large part upon the ideological separa-tion of “man” and “nature.” Historically, at least in Western thought, the “natu-ral world” has been seen either in opposition to, or as the antithesis of, man-made and industrialized landscapes. This image is represented in a wide rangeof cultural narratives (from Bible stories of Genesis to our political emergencefrom a “state of nature”) that reinforce a profound separation between an ab-stract “nature” and an (equally) abstract “man.” The conception of humans assomehow distinct from nature has helped encourage a general disregard for thenatural world in political and economic thought, and natural resources aregiven limited consideration in either discipline. Fossil fuels, perhaps because oftheir close association with the rise of industrial society, are thus seen as part ofthe human (rather than the “natural”) world.

Our ideas of nature are also tied to our political beliefs, and it may be thatpopular rule helps instill a notion of nature as a provider, or a victim of humannegligence—but nature is no longer in control; it is humanity that is “sover-eign,” and that holds the power to destroy nature or save the Earth.48 We seem tobelieve that “we are now at the planetary controls, whether we like it or not.”49

Although the extent of our control is debatable, such ideas support a view of en-ergy security as a matter of technological cleverness and political astuteness, theultimate success of which is generally assumed: “the standard politico-eco-nomic world view denies the possibility that humankind will not be able toachieve any technological feat that may be needed, and in the meantime, re-sources are being used without any thought for the future.”50 Yet in the absenceof a major technological breakthrough (and likely even then), the impendingpeak in oil production dictates that we will reduce our consumption—of oil,anyway—because we really have no choice. This lack of choice, which equates toa lack of control or power, may be the most unwelcome aspect of the peak oilmessage: it competes directly with our political self-image, and runs into en-trenched psychological barriers to bad news.51


47. Warner 2006, 51.48. Williams 1980, 71–72.49. Speth 2002, 1.50. Peet 1992, 155, emphasis added.51. Dickinson 2009.

While our ideas of nature are deeply political, we can nevertheless identifymore explicitly political considerations as a second constraint on integrating en-ergy resources and the environment. Indeed, the message of the Limits view wasin part rejected due to political incorrectness: its calls for reduced economic ac-tivity and consumption directly challenged “business as usual.” Some feel thisthesis was “delegitimized almost from the start through corporate veto,” whilethe corporate world was able to embrace the rubric of “global change” and thegrowth opportunities it afforded.52 The self-identiªed “Cassandras” on the envi-ronment were thus isolated from policy circles.53 Jimmy Carter was an exceptionin this sense: yet his efforts to run a Presidency while highlighting an energy cri-sis, and his repeated calls for energy conservation, were far less marketable thanRonald Reagan’s assurances of prosperity.54 Even the environmental movementabandoned the Limits approach, redeªning its mandate in order to improve itsreception within the mainstream of industrial society.55

International political factors also favored the exclusion of energy fromthe environmental agenda. For one, the oil crises of the 1970s could readily beblamed on political decisions, especially the actions of OPEC, and “above-ground factors” including the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Oilscarcity in these instances was quite clearly induced or even “contrived” by hu-man agency (and hence, was not an ecological scarcity).56 In addition, we mustconsider the suspicion with which the South looked upon environmentalismgenerally: as a threat to economic development, thrust upon these states byboth well-meaning and opportunistic parties of the North. While these con-cerns did not prevent an explosion of environmental diplomacy in subsequentdecades, energy supplies have been largely absent from the sustainable develop-ment agenda.57 Thus in an international setting, the notion of limits to growthfaced serious obstructions from those states that still felt the need to prioritizegrowth—which effectively meant all the world’s nations.

A third important factor can be found in economic arguments, which fromthe beginning challenged the Limits thesis by invoking the expectation that anyproblems of resource decline would be solved through technological advancesand market-driven substitution. Declining commodity prices in the 1980s wereheld by many as evidence of an enduring abundance in resources: Ehrlich’s “stu-pid bet”58 with Julian Simon over future trends in commodity prices left Ehrlichnot only hundreds of dollars poorer, but also facing a raft of critics who now


52. Buttel and Taylor 1994, 244.53. See Ehrlich and Holdren 1988. Interestingly, John Holdren—once a conªrmed Cassandra—was

nominated in late 2008 as US President Obama’s science advisor.54. Kunstler 2005, 29.55. Buttel et al. 1990, 59.56. Gurr 1985, 54–55. This same argument remains relevant in the case of peak oil: “under-

exploited” reserves in Iraq and Iran, for instance, may well hold off the peak date or delay thedecline; however, they do little to alleviate Western energy security concerns.

57. Najam and Cleveland 2003.58. Hall, n.d.

held (what they took to be) conclusive evidence that natural scarcity was not aserious concern for industrial societies. Indeed, during the long period of globaleconomic growth that ground to a halt in 2008, it was not uncommon to hearsuggestions that the vision of The Limits to Growth—“that shortages of energyand other natural resources would soon become widespread in the face of grow-ing demand”—was simply “an error.”59

Such ideas were deeply embedded in the early literature on environmentalsecurity. Mathews argued that “human society has not arrived at the brink ofsome absolute limit to its growth,” but that nonrenewable resources were, para-doxically, “inexhaustible:” “As a nonrenewable resource becomes scarce andmore expensive, demand falls, and substitutes and alternative technologies ap-pear. For that reason we will never pump the last barrel of oil or anything closeto it.”60 Homer-Dixon also took the apparent abundance of resources as reasonto discount their ultimate scarcity:

Many energy-supply predictions made in the 1970s are now truly embarrass-ing. For example, in 1973 the Cornell ecologist David Pimental and his col-leagues asserted that “if current use patterns continue, fuel costs are expectedto double or triple in a decade and to increase nearly ªvefold by the turn ofthe century.” In 1998, real petroleum costs were little higher than in 1973.61

More recently, Dennis Pirages made the rather questionable assertion that thetrends of the 1980s and 1990s constituted “empirical observations that for theforeseeable future, resource scarcity is likely to be a relatively minor source of hu-man suffering.”62

A ªnal consideration in the separation of environment and energy is therole of security discourses. Corresponding with the emergence of a “new” dis-course on environmental security was an “old” security establishment that jeal-ously guarded its domain. This was reºected in the academic community’s aver-sion to broader and deeper notions of security, which in many ways seemed“utterly alien to the security studies community.”63 The environment did notinvoke the specter of organized violence, nor were national security (i.e. mili-tary) technologies and methods likely to be helpful for most environmentalproblems—rather, military research and actions were recognized as a majorcause of degradation.64 And despite the wide range of issues discussed undercritical security studies (CSS), the notion of “threats without enemies”65 rubsgratingly against more established views of security analysts.

On the other hand, analysts have long viewed energy (and especially oil)


59. Conley and Phillips 2005, 105.60. Mathews 1989, 164.61. Homer-Dixon 2001, 31. Homer-Dixon’s more recent work is far less complacent about energy

supplies, perhaps due in part to the major increases in petroleum prices in the decade followingthis statement. See Homer-Dixon 2007; 2009.

62. Pirages 2005, 3, emphasis added.63. Levy 1995, 40.64. Deudney 1990, 461–465.65. Prins 1993.

as a national security concern, and the military role in ensuring (or preventing)access to energy resources is well established. By the time environmental secu-rity came on stage, then, energy supply was already understood as a matter ofnational security.66 Moreover, many key analytical characteristics of environ-mental security did not seem to apply to energy resources. In the latter, sover-eign claims over the resource enabled the identiªcation of an enemy that couldbe confronted, a “will” that might be broken (OPEC, Saddam Hussein). Thus,energy security could be provided for by military means, while also being essen-tial for military superiority. Perhaps most importantly, the structure of sovereignrights and the physical and institutional excludability of energy resources hassidelined efforts to consider these as global or commons resources.67 Surely fos-sil fuels could be seen as a commons problem, similar to freshwater sources, withdistinct rights for “upstream” and “downstream” users—a point that suggestsprospects for international governance arrangements. Yet fossil fuels have his-torically been seen in terms of “property,” and as subject to states’ sovereignright to exploit their natural resources.68

The Crest of a Fourth Wave: Climate Change Meets Peak Oil

The profound public interest in global climate change seems capable of ªnallyengaging the security community in the environment, and some see “the dawn-ing of a new era for environmental security.”69 Yet climate change is only half ofthe energy equation: the peaking of fossil energy combines with the impact ofits consumption to demand a more holistic view of the inputs and outputs ofhuman energy. Perhaps the most obvious connection is that both peak oil (gasand coal) and climate change necessitate a reduction in fossil fuel consumption,and in this sense a response to either problem is a response to both. The increas-ingly ambitious targets for emissions reductions in Europe, for instance, (“20percent by 2020” and better), ªt well with projected decline rates of existing oilªelds, which the IEA puts in the range of 6–7 percent annually.70 By itself such adepletion rate would halve global oil production in about 12 years. This coulddo much to reduce emissions, and if peak coal is not far behind, these naturallimits may be “good news for the climate.” Indeed, the world’s fossil fuel re-serves may actually be insufªcient to fulªll the grim scenarios of the IPCC mod-els.71 Peak oil, then, may be the answer to our emissions problem!

However, the projected declines of oil, before gas and coal, may actuallyincrease emissions in the short term, as prices spur investments into moredifªcult (and more polluting) supply sources and the technologies needed toexploit them. In recent years, declines in conventional oil production have in-


66. Deese and Nye 1982; and Ebinger 1982.67. Cf. Deudney 1990.68. Williams 2003.69. Dabelko 2008–09, xiii.70. See Mearns, Foucher, and Koppelaar 2008.71. Aleklett 2007; and Rutledge 2008.

creasingly been offset through growth in other “liquids,” like natural gas liq-uids, coal-to-liquids, biofuels, and processed bitumen from tar sands. However,virtually all of these alternatives are both less efªcient in terms of energy returnon investment (EROI) and more polluting than the “easy oil” they are replac-ing.72 Because more energy must be used to obtain the same usable energy, thesealternatives are likely to exacerbate the problem of emissions and thus furtherclimate insecurity, as more fuel is consumed in order to produce fuel. Canada’star sands, which have had a devastating impact on the local and downstreamenvironment, also consume tremendous quantities of fossil fuels (especiallynatural gas) in the process of extracting the bitumen. Biofuels, too, dependheavily on fossil fuels for their production; some, like corn ethanol, may noteven provide as much fuel as is consumed in their production.73 Meanwhile,palm diesel production is raising emissions by devastating peat forests in Indo-nesia and Malaysia, along with their animal, plant, and human inhabitants.74 Itseems likely that a decline in petroleum may motivate a shift to electriªed trans-port; but this will increase demand for electricity, and hence for coal for powergeneration, and hence even higher CO2 emissions (at least until peak coal isreached). While the use of these substitutes will have a negative impact on ef-forts to reduce emissions, they nevertheless offer at least a temporary respitefrom declining net energy.

Thus, on the one hand, fossil fuel decline may alleviate climate change byforcing changes in our fuel consumption but, on the other hand, the search foralternative fuel sources to maintain industrialized society may exacerbate theproblem of emissions and climate change. Moreover, in the declining economicenvironment that many experts believe will follow peak oil, reduced demandfor energy and a deteriorating investment climate may slow the search for alter-natives, since there is (for the moment) plenty of oil to go around. But as Rubinsuggests, the next economic upturn will increase demand and prices again, thusdampening any recovery; until the fuel base of the global economy changes,that economy will keep “banging its head” against the ceiling of affordable en-ergy prices.75 Whether this will spur the necessary investment into alternativesand infrastructure, or will generate a series of recessionary periods as the col-lapse of industrial civilization plays out in a warming world, is quite possiblythe question of the next century.

Discursive Constraints on Fossil Fuel Concerns

The preceding discussion suggests we face a serious risk to stability and an im-mense challenge for planners and policy-makers—but what are the chances ofpeak oil receiving a hearing, when climate change alone so dominates the envi-ronmental agenda and the public mindset? Are governments prepared to ad-


72. Hall, Powers, and Schoemburg 2008.73. Pimental and Patzek 2005.74. Knudson 2009.75. Rubin 2009, 23.

dress peak oil as a policy concern, or even as a security concern, as they have be-gun to do with climate change? The answer may depend on whether thediscursive environment is amenable to a new understanding of the relationshipbetween energy, the environment, and security. The discursive threads outlinedabove offer a tentative framework through which to consider how the West mayview and respond to the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change.

In terms of our relationship to nature, peak oil reinforces an image of nat-ural limits, and suggests we look on fossil fuels not merely as commodities orstrategic resources, but as an essential element of human ecology. The energy re-sources on which our economic system relies may be as essential to human life,in their way, as water, biological diversity, or an intact ozone layer. In the mod-ern world, we rely on cheap energy for heat, transportation, manufacturing,food, and clothing, and its decline means that our lifestyles and even our livesare threatened. While lives are already being lost, even in the industrializedworld, due to “energy poverty,” the notion of overshoot and “die-off” puts thisthreat at the level of the species.76

The fact that our principal energy sources are exhaustible and may soonbecome increasingly scarce does not, of course, mean that they will suddenly“run out;” indeed, some oil will likely be mined as long as technologically ad-vanced humans persist on this planet. However, after oil production peaks, theamount that human efforts can extract from the earth will begin to decline, irre-versibly and inexorably. It is not a matter of reserves being “equivalent to X yearsleft at current rates of production:” the problem is maintaining the rate of produc-tion. Geological factors will demand greater efforts and investment—in time,money, and energy—for each successive barrel, even while the availability ofcapital may be stymied by declining economic activity due to energy scarcity.Declining net energy stands as a potential limit to the human project, and de-mands recognition of the fact that humans are not “exempt” from the laws ofnature.77

In terms of political considerations, it may be a lot to ask leaders to ad-dress peak oil. Democratic politics still demands the rhetoric of hope, and fewofªcials seem ready to address the possibility that “the [fossil-fueled] party isover.”78 A recent petition sent to the UK government, asking the Prime Minister“to acknowledge that global oil and gas supplies are peaking and will soon de-cline,” was met with “the Government’s assessment . . . that the world’s oil andgas resources are sufªcient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable fu-ture.”79 While many ofªcials regularly cite energy security concerns, peak oil re-mains a taboo topic for public discourse. However, it has been the focus of anumber of government reports. The US Department of Energy commissioned astudy in 2005 which pointed out that, while the date of the peak was uncertain,


76. The UK NGO Age Concern, for instance, has long campaigned for public relief of fuel povertyfor the sake of seniors’ health and lives.

77. Peet 1992, 157–165.78. Heinberg 2005.79. Vernon, 2007.

“without timely mitigation” (by which the authors meant decades in advance ofthe peak), “the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented.”80 A2007 US Government Accountability Ofªce report emphasized that “there is nocoordinated federal strategy for reducing uncertainty about the peak’s timing ormitigating its consequences.”81 In the US, a “peak oil caucus” has been runningfor a number of years, while the UK’s “All-Party Parliamentary Group on PeakOil” (APPGOPO, see www.appgopo.org.uk) includes 32 elected representatives,and the Swiss Chapter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas(ASPO-Switzerland) currently counts 23 Parliamentarians among its mem-bers.82 In 2005, the Australian state of Queensland convened its own “Oil Vul-nerability Taskforce” which cited “overwhelming evidence” that “world oil pro-duction will peak within the next ten years.”83 At the local level, “post-carbon”and peak oil groups across North America and Europe have become increas-ingly popular, while a growing “transition towns” movement may be leading anew international approach to town planning.84 Concerns over peak oil are stillfar behind the headline issue of climate change, however, and the relative ob-scurity of the voices on peak oil is a sign of the continued lack of enthusiasm forhearing about limits, steady-state economics, and energy descent.

The state whose mandate includes providing security (energy and other-wise) for a population may be loath to admit its impotence in the face of thisthreat. The rhetoric of “energy independence,” while common in the world’slargest energy consumer, is hardly realistic, at least for oil: the import share ofUS consumption has grown steadily since production peaked in 1971. Yet thenotion of independence still resonates alongside complaints of “unstable” and“unfriendly” suppliers (though two of the three top suppliers to the US are Can-ada and Mexico). Illusions of independence are harder to sell in Japan, where99 percent of oil and 96 percent of natural gas are imported; Europe expects toimport some 94 percent of its oil and 84 percent of its natural gas by 2030.85

All import-dependent states are vulnerable to a decline in available fuel, and/ora rise in price, yet the admission of this vulnerability runs counter to public de-mands for security. The need for long-term planning on the issue is hard tooverestimate, but democratic systems offer few incentives to cultivate expecta-tions of a future of scarcity and sacriªce.

Is the global economic environment any more amenable to meeting thechallenges of the fourth wave? The unprecedented oil price spike of 2008 cer-tainly drew attention to the supply issue, though economists debated the degreeto which the price reºected the “fundamentals” of supply and demand. Highprices and climate change concerns suggest ample opportunities for investment


80. Hirsch, Bezdek, and Wendling 2005, 4.81. GAO 2007, summary.82. ASPO Switzerland, 2009.83. Queensland Oil Vulnerability Taskforce 2007, 8.84. The Post Carbon Toronto group holds its monthly “Meetup” at Toronto’s City Hall. Meanwhile,

Rob Hopkins’ Transition Handbook is reportedly on the summer reading list of many of UKofªcials. BBC, 10 August, 2008.

85. EIA 2008; and Bahgat 2006, 964.

in alternatives; in themselves, energy security and climate change can both act asdrivers for renewable energy systems, the electriªcation of transport and masstransit, the expansion of electrical supply and transmission infrastructure, andconservation. Governments are, by and large, supporting these efforts, thoughthe notion of a “green new deal” remains a sideshow among efforts to addressthe current crisis of capitalism. On the other hand, the ªnancial crisis and lowerenergy prices are dampening investment into alternatives and even conven-tional oil; this declining investment now will hinder production for years, andthe longer this economic situation continues, the less likely it is that productionwill ever again reach its 2008 peak.86 The renewed interest in nuclear energy issimilarly dependent on ªnancing that may be hard to come by, even while pro-jects are already being shelved due to lack of demand.

The prospect of a long-term decline in net energy supplies suggests thesetrends will continue, perhaps indeªnitely.87 The economics of energy are gener-ally viewed in terms of production costs and prices in “dollar terms,” but it is es-sential to recognize the value, and the costs, of inputs in terms of energy. Withinthis frame it is clear that as the “easy oil” is depleted, each successive marginalbarrel will be increasingly costly (on average) in both economic and energeticterms. That is, a greater investment of energy will be required to gain a givenreturn, and many alternative fuels may have too low an energy return on invest-ment (EROI) to sustain economic growth.88 EROI is generally a receding func-tion, and in any mined resource there will come a point where further extrac-tion is both “economically and energetically useless.”89 In the absence of aprofound technological breakthrough, an increasing portion of the new fueland/or electricity generated will need to be invested into producing that fuel orelectricity, a phenomenon some refer to as the “law of receding horizons” andothers as “energy cannibalism.”90 As a result, many see “growth” itself as a thingof the past—but this suggestion is profoundly inimical to popular and scholarlyeconomic discourse, and is unlikely to be embraced by either business orgovernments.

Finally, the security dimension of energy ties a number of these threads to-gether. Climate change has initiated a growing subset of literature within theframe of environmental security, with concerns ranging from environmentalrefugees to food scarcities, and the potential for social disruption and violenceas a result. Supply concerns, on the other hand, are embodied in the resurgenceof writing on resource wars, concern in Canada and elsewhere over Arctic sover-eignty, and Western suspicion of Russian and Chinese moves in the global en-ergy game.91 Yet energy security may be coming to reºect a growing awareness ofthe impending mismatch between supply and demand. Before becoming US


86. IEA 2009, 5.87. Hall, Powers, and Schoemburg 2008.88. Hall, Balogh, and Murphy 2009.89. Peet 1992, 91.90. Pearce 2008.91. Stulberg 2007; and Lai 2007.

Vice President, Richard Cheney noted that the world would need some 50 mil-lion barrels per day, or the equivalent of ªve new Saudi Arabias, to meet demandin 2030.92 NATO is increasingly concerned with the geopolitical implications ofsupply constraints,93 while the Shanghai Cooperation Organization could bindRussia, Iran, and other central Asian states in a profoundly geopolitical concen-tration of the world’s limited natural gas reserves. The (ªrst wave) concerns overnatural scarcity thus appear to be re-emerging, though still largely within the(national and militaristic) discourse of security.94

The possibility remains, however, that declining global fossil fuels may berecognized, along with climate change, as a threat to the world, rather than justto speciªc states and economies. This view could provide an impetus to subject-ing these resources to the sorts of liberal management efforts typical of globalenvironmental issues. Some peak oil educators have called for a cooperativeglobal “energy descent plan,” while the APPGOPO has endorsed the idea of“tradable energy quotas” as a means of addressing both peak oil and climatechange.95 Such efforts could complement steps toward global and regionalemissions reductions, and could even incorporate some of the same mecha-nisms we see in climate governance, including technology transfers and aid,and grandfathering clauses that recognize consumption alongside pollution“rights.”96 There is already some limited precedent for such measures. TheNAFTA proportionality clause, for instance, demands that a sustained propor-tion of Canada’s energy be made available for export (to the US). The IEA hasmechanisms for demand restraint and sharing among member states in a crisissituation, while the European Union is well on the way to developing a com-mon stance on energy security.97 International agreements addressing other en-vironmental resources may offer other models for dealing with a future of de-clining energy and climate security, without resort to “traditional” mechanismsof conºict among the world’s states. But such a shift in the practice of energy se-curity necessitates a shift in the concept of security that, instead of emphasizingstate-centered and military aspects, is grounded in discourses of global and hu-man security.

Conclusion: Expanding the Scope of Energy Security?

This article has sought to show the ways in which natural, political, economicand security discourses have affected perceptions of fossil fuels as an environ-mental and security issue. It has argued that a more natural or ecological view ofenergy (and security) may be found by considering fossil fuel decline as a natu-


92. Aleklett 2004.93. Karbuz 2007.94. Klare 2002; 2008.95. See APPGOPO and the Lean Economy Connection 2009.96. See Baer 2002.97. Bahgat 2006.

ral resource limit, and recognizing the dependence of homo industrialis on theseenergy sources. Yet while peak oil may help us to recognize our dependenceupon nature, there are strong political obstacles to addressing the issue, notleast the lack of power and control it admits, and the threat it poses to economicgrowth. Market forces might assist the transition, but economic thought cannoteasily embrace the constraints on growth that peak oil and declining net energyimply. And despite recognition of the importance of broadening and deepeningthe security agenda, security discourses continue to hinder the embrace of aglobal view of ecological vulnerability and security.

The growing discourse on peak oil, climate change, and environmentaldegradation may yet have such an effect. Many feel that a conºuence of ecologi-cal issues, including fossil fuel decline, “resonate[s] strongly with the feedbackdynamics of ‘overshoot and collapse’ displayed in the [Limits to Growth] ‘stan-dard run’ scenario (and similar scenarios).”98 If the specter of “collapse” doesnot present humanity with a global security dilemma, it is hard to imagine whatwould. Yet there is a risk to addressing peak oil through a security discourse;although many would argue for addressing these issues urgently, doing sothrough a “security” frame may generate further problems, including an evenmore rapid decline of resources as both states and rebel groups use access to en-ergy resources to achieve dominance and inºuence, expending precious re-sources in a largely unproductive struggle over a shrinking pie. This article hassought to push scholars of energy and ecological security to begin a discussionthat might help avert such a future, but we should beware of holding too muchhope for change: if there are limits to human control over nature, these willsurely be exacerbated by humanity’s limited control over itself.

ReferencesAleklett, Kjell. 2004. Dick Cheney, Peak Oil and the Final Count Down. Available at

www.peakoil.net/Publications/Cheney_PeakOil_FCD.pdf, accessed 15 March2009.

———. 2005. The Oil Supply Tsunami Alert. Published April 25 by ASPO. Available atwww.energybulletin.net/node/5655, accessed 16 February 2009.

———. 2007. Severe Climate Change Unlikely Before We Run Out Of Fossil Fuel. OnlineOpinion, June 5. Available at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article�5933, accessed 11 April 2008.

APPGOPO and the Lean Economy Connection. 2009. Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs):A Policy Framework for Peak Oil and Climate Change. Available at http://appgopo.org.uk/documents/APPGOPO_TEQs_2009.pdf, accessed 11 November 2009.

ASPO Switzerland. 2009. Members. Available at http://www.peakoil.ch/new/e/peakoilparlament.php, accessed 11 February 2010.

Baer, Paul. 2002. Equity, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Global Commons Resources.


98. Turner 2008, 410.

In Climate Change Policy: A Survey, edited by Stephen H. Schneider, ArminRosencranz, and John O. Niles, 393–408. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Bahgat, Gawdat. 2006. Europe’s Energy Security: Challenges and Opportunities. Interna-tional Affairs 82 (5): 961–975.

Barnett, Jon. 2001. The Meaning of Environmental Security: Ecological Politics and Policy inthe New Security Era. London: Zed.

BBC. 2008. “MPs choose Hague books over Blair,” BBC News, 10 August 2008. Availableat http://www.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7552481.stm, accessed 11 February2010.

Brown, Lester. 1977. Redeªning National Security. Worldwatch Paper No. 14. Washington,DC: Worldwatch.

Brown, Oli, Anne Hammill, and Robert McLeman. 2007. Climate Change as the ‘New’Security Threat: Implications for Africa. International Affairs 83 (6): 1141–1154.

Buttel, Frederick H., Ann P. Hawkins, and Alison G. Power. 1990. From the Limits toGrowth to Global Environmental Change: Constraints and Contradictions in theEvolution of Environmental Science and Ideology. Global Environmental Change 1(1): 57–66.

Buttel, Frederick, and Peter Taylor. 1994. Environmental Sociology and Global Environ-mental Change: A Critical Assessment. In Social Theory and the Global Environment,edited by Michael Redclift and Ted Benton, 228–255. London: Routledge.

Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde. 1998. Security: A New Framework for Analy-sis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Catton, William. 1980. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Chicago,IL: University of Illinois.

Commoner, Barry. 1976. The Poverty of Power: Energy and the Economic Crisis. New York:Knopf.

Conley, Heather, and Warren Phillips. 2005. Energy, Security, and Cooperation over theNext Quarter Century. In From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security: Exploring NewLimits to Growth, edited by Dennis Pirages and Ken Cousins, 105–126. Cambridge,MA, and London: MIT Press.

Dabelko, Geoffrey. 2008–09. Foreword: Environmental Security Heats Up. ECSP Report13: viii–x. Available at: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/ECSPReport13_lo.pdf, accessed 22 June 2010.

Dalby, Simon. 2002a. Environmental Security. Minneapolis, MN: University of MinnesotaPress.

———. 2002b. Environmental Change and Human Security. Isuma—Canadian Journal ofPolicy Research 3 (2): 71–79.

Daly, Herman E. 1991. Steady-state Economics. Washington, DC: Island Press.Darley, Julian. 2004. High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis. White River Junc-

tion, VT: Chelsea Green.Deese, David A., and Joseph S. Nye, eds. 1982. Energy and Security. Cambridge, MA:

Ballinger.Deudney, Daniel. 1990. The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and Na-

tional Security. Millennium 19 (3): 461–476.Dickinson, Janice L. 2009. The People Paradox: Self-Esteem Striving, Immortality Ideol-

ogies, and Human Response to Climate Change. Ecology and Society 14 (1): 34.Available at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss1/art34/, accessed 1 Octo-ber 2009.


Dobson, Andrew. 2007. Green Political Thought, 4th ed. New York: Routledge.Ebinger, Charles K. 1982. The Critical Link: Energy and National Security in the 1980s; A Re-

port of the International Resource Division, Amos A. Jordon, Executive Director. Cam-bridge, MA: Ballinger.

Ecologist. 1974. A Blueprint for Survival. New York. Signet Books.Ehrlich, Paul. 1968. The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine.Ehrlich, Paul R., and John P. Holdren, eds. 1988. The Cassandra Conference: Resources and

the Human Predicament. College Station: Texas A & M University Press.EIA. 2008. Country Analysis Briefs: Japan. Available at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/

cabs/Japan/Background.html, accessed 11 March 2009.Energy Watch Group. 2007. Coal: Resources and Future Production. EWG-Paper

No. 1/07. Available at http://energy-watch-group.com/ªleadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Report_Coal_10-07-2007ms.pdf, accessed 12 October 2009.

Feenberg, Andrew. 1996. The Commoner-Ehrlich Debate: Environmentalism and thePolitics of Survival. In Minding Nature: the Philosophers of Ecology, edited by DavidMacauley, 257–82. New York: Guildford Press.

GAO. 2007. Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strat-egy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production. GAO 07-283. Washing-ton, D.C.: US Government Accountability Ofªce, February.

Goodstein, David. 2004. Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil. New York: Norton.Gurr, Ted Robert. 1985. On the Political Consequences of Scarcity and Economic De-

cline. International Studies Quarterly 29 (1): 51–75.Hall, Charlie A. S. no date. The Great Scientiªc Coverup of the Most Important Issue in

Western Civilization. Available at http://www.esf.edu/EFB/hall/, accessed 22 Octo-ber 2008.

Hall, Charles A. S., Robert Powers, and William Schoemburg, 2008. Peak Oil, EROI, In-vestments and the Economy in an Uncertain Future. In Biofuels, Solar and Wind asRenewable Energy Systems: Beneªts and Risks, edited by David Pimental, 109–132.New York: Springer.

Hall, Charles A. S., Stephen Balogh, and David J. R. Murphy. 2009. What is the MinimumEROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have? Energies 2 (1): 25–47.

Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162 (3859): 1243–1248.Heinberg, Richard. 2005. The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies.

Gabriola Island, BC: New Society.Hirsch, Robert L., Roger Bezdek, and Robert Wendling. 2005. Peaking of World Oil Produc-

tion: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management. US Department of Energy, February.Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 1993. Environmental Scarcity and Global Security. New York: For-

eign Policy Association.———. 2001. Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press.———. 2007. The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization.

Toronto, ON: Alfred Knopf.———, ed. 2009. Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change

Will Deªne the Future. Toronto, ON: Random House Canada.IEA. 2008. World Energy Outlook 2008. Paris: OECD/International Energy Agency.———. 2009. World Energy Outlook 2009. Paris: OECD/International Energy Agency.Kaldor, Mary, Terry Lynn Karl, and Yahia Said, eds. 2007. Oil Wars. London: Pluto Press.


Kalicki, Jan H., and David L. Goldwyn, eds. 2005. Energy and Security: Toward A New For-eign Policy Strategy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Karbuz, Sohbet. 2007. NATO and Energy Security. Energy Bulletin, November 3. Availableat http://www.energybulletin.net/node/36716, accessed 2 February 2009.

Kavalov, Boyan, and Stathis D. Peteves. 2007. The Future of Coal. Brussels: DG JRC Insti-tute for Energy.

Klare, Michael T. 2002. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conºict. New York:Owl Books.

———. 2008. Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. New York:Henry Holt.

Knudson, Tom. 2009. The Cost of the Biofuel Boom: Destroying Indonesia’s Forests. YaleEnvironment 360, January 19. Available at http//www.e360.yale.edu/content/fea-ture.msp?id�2112, accessed 2 February 2009.

Krause, Keith, and Michael C. Williams. 1996. Broadening the Agenda of SecurityStudies: Politics and Methods. Mershon International Studies Review 40 (2): 229–254.

Kunstler, James Howard. 2005. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophesof the Twenty-ªrst Century. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.

Laherrere, Jean. Personal website. Available at http://www.oilcrisis.com/laherrere/, ac-cessed 1 February 2010.

Lai, Hongyi Harry. 2007. China’s ‘Oil Diplomacy’: Is it a Global Security Threat? ThirdWorld Quarterly 28 (3): 519–537.

Le Billon, Philippe. 2005. The Geopolitical Economy of ‘Resource Wars.’ In The Geopoliticsof Resource Wars: Resource Dependence, Governance and Violence, edited by PhilippeLe Billon, 1–28. London: Frank Cass.

Leggett, Jeremy. 2005. The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global FinancialCatastrophe. New York: Random House.

Levy, Marc A. 1995. Is the Environment a National Security Issue? International Security20 (2): 35–62.

Libiszewski, Stephan. 1992. What is an Environmental Conºict? Occasional Paper No. 1,Environment and Conºicts Project. Swiss Peace Foundation, Berne, and Center forSecurity Studies and Conºict Research, Zurich, Switzerland, July.

Lipschutz, Ronnie, and John P. Holdren. 1990. Crossing Borders: Resource Flows, theGlobal Environment, and International Security. Bulletin of Peace Proposals 21 (2):121–33.

Lovins, Amory B. 1977. Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace. Cambridge, MA:Ballinger.

Martinez-Alier, Juan. 1987. Ecological Economics: Energy, Environment and Society. Oxford:Basil Blackwell.

Mathews, Jessica T. 1989. Redeªning Security. Foreign Affairs 68 (2): 162–177.Meadows, Donella H. 1991. “Kuwait’s Oil—The Future Up in Flames,” Available at

http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php, accessed 9 July 2009.Meadows, Donella H., Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III.

1972. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books.Mearns, Euan Samuel Foucher, and Rembrandt Koppelaar. The 2008 IEA WEO—

Production Decline Rates. Available at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4763,accessed 17 November 2008.


Moran, Daniel, and James A. Russell, eds. 2009. Energy Security and Global Politics: TheMilitarization of Resource Management. London and New York: Routledge.

Najam, Anil, and Cutler J. Cleveland. 2003. Energy and Sustainable Development atGlobal Environmental Summits: An Evolving Agenda. Environment, Developmentand Sustainability 5 (1–2): 117–138.

Pearce, Joshua M. 2008. Thermodynamic Limitations to Nuclear Energy Deployment as aGreenhouse Gas Mitigation Technology. International Journal of Nuclear Governance,Economy and Ecology 2 (1): 113–130.

Peet, John. 1992. Energy and the Ecological Economics of Sustainability. Washington, DC: Is-land Press.

Pimental, David, and Tad W. Patzek. 2005. Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass,and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunºower. Natural ResourcesResearch 14 (1): 65–76.

Pirages, Dennis. 2005. From Limits to Growth to Ecological Security. In From ResourceScarcity to Ecological Security: Exploring New Limits to Growth, edited by DennisPirages and Ken Cousins, 1–20. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Prins, Gwyn, ed. 1993. Threats without Enemies: Facing Environmental Insecurity. London:Earthscan.

Queensland Oil Vulnerability Taskforce. 2007. Queensland’s Vulnerability to Rising OilPrices: Taskforce Report, May. Available at http://postcarboncities.net/node/1688,accessed 11 February 2009.

Roberts, Paul. 2004. The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Boston: Hough-ton Mifºin.

Rogers, K. 1997. Ecological Security and Multinational Corporations. EnvironmentalChange and Security Report 3: 29–36.

Rønnfeldt, Carsten F. 1997. Three Generations of Environment and Security Research.Journal of Peace Research 34 (4): 473–482.

Rubin, Jeff. 2009. Why Your World is about to get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End ofGlobalization. Toronto: Random House Canada.

Rutledge, D. 2008. Hubbert’s Peak, The Coal Question, and Climate Change. Eos, Trans-actions, American Geophysical Union [AGU] 89 (53), Fall Meeting Supplement, Ab-stract available at http://rutledge.caltech.edu/, accessed 11 February 2010.

Schumacher,Ernst Friedrich1989 [1973]. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mat-tered. New York: Harper and Row.

Simon, Julian. 1981. The Ultimate Resource. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Speth, James Gustav. 2002. The Global Environmental Agenda: Origins and Prospects. In

Global Environmental Governance: Options and Opportunities, edited by Daniel C.Esty and Maria Ivanova, 1–20. New Haven: Yale School of Forestry and Environ-mental Studies.

Stulberg, Adam N. 2007. Well-Oiled Diplomacy: Strategic Manipulation and Russia’s EnergyStatecraft in Eurasia. Albany: SUNY Press.

Tennberg, Monica. 1995. Risky Business: Deªning the Concept of Environmental Secu-rity. Cooperation and Conºict 30 (3): 239–258.

Turner, Graham M. 2008. A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 Years of Reality.Global Environmental Change 18 (3): 397–411

Turse, Nick. 2008. The Military-Petroleum Complex. Foreign Policy in Focus, March 24,2008. Available at http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5097, accessed 21 December 2008.

Ullman, Richard. 1983. Redeªning Security. International Security 8 (1): 129–153.


Vernon, Chris. 2007. UK Government Response to Peak Oil Petition. The Oil Drum, Octo-ber 3. Available at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3045, accessed 12 July 2010.

Warner, Rosalind. 2006. The Place of History in International Relations and Ecology:Discourses of Environmentalism in the Colonial Era. In International EcopoliticalTheory: Critical Approaches, edited by Eric Laferrière and Peter J. Stoett, 34–51. Lon-don: Routledge.

Westing, Arthur H., ed. 1986. Global Resources and International Conºict: EnvironmentalFactors in Strategic Policy and Action. New York: Oxford University Press.

Williams, Paul A. 2003. The Common and Uncommon Political Economies of Waterand Oil ‘Wars.’ The Review of International Affairs 3 (1): 13–28.

Williams, Raymond. 1980. Ideas of Nature. In Problems in Materialism and Culture, 67–85edited by Raymond Williams, 67–85. London: Verso.


mulligan-peak oil and security

Documents