{"id":347849,"date":"2018-02-12T01:10:31","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T00:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-donald-trump-plans-to-enlist-fossil-fuels-in-the-struggle-for-global-dominance-by-michael-klare\/"},"modified":"2018-02-12T01:10:31","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T00:10:31","slug":"how-donald-trump-plans-to-enlist-fossil-fuels-in-the-struggle-for-global-dominance-by-michael-klare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-donald-trump-plans-to-enlist-fossil-fuels-in-the-struggle-for-global-dominance-by-michael-klare\/","title":{"rendered":"How Donald Trump Plans to Enlist Fossil Fuels in the Struggle for Global Dominance | By Michael Klare"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

The new U.S. energy policy of the Trump era is, in some ways, the oldest energy policy on Earth. Every great power has sought to mobilize the energy resources at its command, whether those be slaves, wind-power, coal, or oil, to further its hegemonic ambitions. What makes the Trumpian variant\u2014the unfettered exploitation\u00a0of America\u2019s fossil-fuel reserves\u2014unique lies only in the moment it\u2019s being applied and the likely devastation that will result, thanks not only to the\u00a01950s-style<\/a>\u00a0polluting of America\u2019s air, waters, and urban environment, but to the devastating hand it will lend to a globally warming world.<\/p>\n

From the onset of his presidency, Donald Trump has made it clear that cheap and abundant domestic energy derived from fossil fuels was going to be the crucial factor in his total-mobilization approach to global engagement.<\/p>\n

Last month, if you listened to the chatter among elite power brokers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, you would have heard a lot of bragging about the immense progress being made in renewable energy.\u00a0 \u201cMy government has planned a major campaign,\u201dsaid<\/a>\u00a0Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the group. \u00a0\u201cBy 2022, we want to generate 175 gigawatts of renewable energy; in the last three years, we have already achieved 60 gigawatts, or around one-third of this target.\u201d Other world leaders also boasted of their achievements in speeding the installation of wind and solar energy.\u00a0 Even the energy minister of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Khalid Al-Falih,\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0plans for a $30 billion to $50 billion investment in solar power. Only one major figure defied this trend: U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. The United States, he\u00a0insisted<\/a>, is \u201cblessed\u201d with \u201ca substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n

A better quality of life through fossil fuels? On this, he and his Trump administration colleagues now stand essentially alone on planet Earth. Virtually every other country has by now chosen\u2014via the Paris climate accord and efforts like those under way in India\u2014to speed the transition from a carbon-based energy economy to a renewable one.<\/p>\n

A possible explanation for this: Donald Trump\u2019s indebtedness to the very fossil fuel interests that helped propel him into office.\u00a0 Think, for example, of his interior secretary\u2019s\u00a0recent decision<\/a>\u00a0to open much of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to offshore drilling (long sought by the oil and gas industry) or his administration\u2019s\u00a0moves<\/a>\u00a0to lift restrictions on coal mining on federal lands (long favored by the coal industry). Both were clearly acts of payback. Still, far more than subservience to oil and coal barons lurks in Trump\u2019s energy policy (and Perry\u2019s words).\u00a0 From the White House perspective, the U.S. is engaged in a momentous struggle for global power with rival nations and, it is claimed, the country\u2019s abundance of fossil fuels affords it a vital edge. The more of those fuels America produces and exports, the greater its stature in a competitive world system, which is precisely why maximizing such output has already become a major pillar of President Trump\u2019s national security policy.<\/p>\n

He laid out his dystopian world vision (and that of the generals he\u2019s put in charge of what was once known as American \u201cforeign policy\u201d) in a December 18th address announcing the release of the administration\u2019s new\u00a0National Security Strategy<\/a>\u00a0(NSS) document.\u00a0 \u201cWhether we like it or not,\u201d he\u00a0asserted<\/a>, \u201cwe are engaged in a new era of competition.\u201d The U.S. faces \u201crogue regimes\u201d like Iran and North Korea and \u201crival powers, Russia and China, that seek to challenge American influence, values, and wealth.\u201d In such an intensely competitive world, he added, \u201cwe will stand up for ourselves, and we will stand up for our country like we have never stood up before… Our rivals are tough.\u00a0 They\u2019re tenacious and committed to the long term. But so are we.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Trump and his generals, we\u2019ve been plunged into a world that bears little relation to the one faced by the last two administrations, when great-power conflict was rarely the focus of attention and civilian society remained largely insulated from the pressures of the country\u2019s never-ending wars.\u00a0 Today, they believe, the U.S. can no longer afford to distinguish between \u201cthe homeland\u201d and foreign battle zones when girding for years of struggle to come. \u201cTo succeed,\u201d the president concluded, \u201cwe must integrate every dimension of our national strength, and we must compete with every instrument of our national power.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where, in the Trumpian worldview, energy enters the picture.<\/p>\n

Energy Dominance<\/h4>\n

From the onset of his presidency, Donald Trump has made it clear that cheap and abundant domestic energy derived from fossil fuels was going to be the crucial factor in his total-mobilization approach to global engagement. In his view and that of his advisers, it\u2019s the essential element in ensuring national economic vitality, military strength, and geopolitical clout, whatever damage it might cause to American life, the global environment, or even the future of human life on this planet.\u00a0 The exploitation and wielding of fossil fuels now sits at the very heart of the Trumpian definition of national security, as the recently released NSS makes all too clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccess to domestic sources of clean, affordable, and reliable energy underpins a prosperous, secure, and powerful America for decades to come,\u201d itstates<\/a>. \u00a0\u201cUnleashing these abundant energy resources\u2014coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear\u2014stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, yes, the document does pay lip service to the role of renewables, though no one should take that seriously given, for instance, the president\u2019s\u00a0recent decision<\/a>\u00a0to place high tariffs on imported solar panels, an act likely to cripple the domestic solar-installation industry. What really matters to Trump are those domestic reserves of fossil fuels. Only by using them to gain energy self-sufficiency, or what he trumpets not just as \u201cenergy independence\u201d but total \u201cenergy dominance<\/a>,\u201d can the U.S. avoid becoming beholden to foreign powers and so protect its sovereignty. That\u2019s why he regularly hails the successes of the \u201cshale revolution,\u201d the use of fracking technology to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale formations. As he sees it, fracking to the max makes America that much less dependent on foreign imports.<\/p>\n

It follows then that the ability to supply fossil fuels to other countries will be a source of geopolitical advantage, a reality made painfully clear early in this century when Russia\u00a0exploited<\/a>\u00a0its status as a major supplier of natural gas to Ukraine, Belarus, and other former Soviet republics to try to extract political concessions from them.\u00a0 Donald Trump absorbed that lesson and incorporated it into his strategic playbook.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur country is blessed with extraordinary energy abundance,\u201d he\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0at an \u201cUnleashing American Energy Event\u201d last June. \u201cWe are a top producer of petroleum and the number-one producer of natural gas… With these incredible resources, my administration will seek not only American energy independence that we\u2019ve been looking for so long, but American energy dominance. And we\u2019re going to be an exporter… We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attaining Energy Dominance<\/h4>\n

In energy terms, what does dominant mean in practice?\u00a0 For President Trump and his cohorts, it means above all the \u201cunleashing\u201d of the country\u2019s energy abundance by\u00a0eliminating<\/a>\u00a0every imaginable regulatory impediment to the exploitation of domestic reserves of fossil fuels. After all, America possesses some of the largest reservoirs of oil, coal, and natural gas on the planet and, by applying every technological marvel at its disposal, can maximally extract those reserves to enhance national power.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is that we have near-limitless supplies of energy in our country,\u201d he declared last June. All that stood in the way of exploiting them when he entered the Oval Office, he insisted, were environmental regulations imposed by the Obama administration. \u201cWe cannot have obstruction. Since my very first day in office, I have been moving at record pace to cancel these regulations and to eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production.\u201d\u00a0 He then cited his\u00a0approval<\/a>\u00a0of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, the\u00a0cancellation<\/a>\u00a0of a moratorium on the leasing of federal lands for coal mining, the\u00a0reversal<\/a>\u00a0of an Obama administration rule aimed at preventing methane leakage from natural gas production on federal lands, and the\u00a0rollback<\/a>\u00a0of Obama\u2019s Clean Power Plan, which (if implemented) would require sharp cuts in coal usage. And from the recent\u00a0opening<\/a>\u00a0of the pristine Alaskan Arctic Refuge to that of those coastal waters to every kind of drilling, it\u2019s never ended.<\/p>\n

Closely related to such actions has been his repudiation of the Paris Agreement, because\u2014as he saw it\u2014that pact, too, stood in the way of his plan to \u201cunleash\u201d domestic energy in the pursuit of international power. By withdrawing from the agreement, he claimed to be preserving American \u201csovereignty,\u201d while opening the path to a new kind of global energy dominance. \u201cWe have so much more [energy] than we ever thought possible,\u201d he asserted.\u00a0 \u201cWe are really in the driving seat.\u00a0 And you know what? We don\u2019t want to let other countries take away our sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it. That\u2019s not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Never mind that the Paris agreement in no way intruded on American sovereignty. It only\u00a0obligated<\/a>\u00a0its partners\u2014at this point,\u00a0every country<\/a>\u00a0on Earth except the United States\u2014to enact its own greenhouse gas emissions reduction measures aimed at preventing global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above their pre-industrial levels. (That is the biggest increase scientists believe the planet can absorb without experiencing truly catastrophic impacts like a\u00a010-foot rise<\/a>\u00a0in global sea levels). In the Obama years, in its own self-designed blueprint for achieving this goal, the United States promised, among other things, to implement the\u00a0Clean Power Plan<\/a>\u00a0to minimize the consumption of coal, itself already a dying industry. This, of course, represented an unacceptable impediment to Trump\u2019s extract-everything policy.<\/p>\n

The final step in the president\u2019s strategy to become a major exporter involves facilitating the transport of fossil fuels to the country\u2019s coastal areas for shipment abroad. In this way, he would also turn the government into a major global salesman of fossil fuels (as it\u00a0already is<\/a>, for instance, of American weaponry).\u00a0 To do so, he would expedite the approval of permits for the export of LNG, or liquefied natural gas, and even for some\u00a0new types<\/a>\u00a0of \u201clower emissions\u201d coal plants. The Department of the Treasury, he revealed in that June talk of his, \u201cwill address barriers to the financing of highly efficient, overseas coal energy plants.\u201d In addition, he claimed that the Ukrainians tell us \u201cthey need millions and millions of metric tons [of coal] right now.\u00a0 There are many other places that need it, too.\u00a0 And we want to sell it to them, and to everyone else all over the globe who need[s] it.\u201d He also announced the approval of expanded LNG exports from a new facility at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and of a new oil pipeline to Mexico, meant to \u201cfurther boost American energy exports, and that will go right under the [as yet unbuilt] wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such energy moves have generally been viewed as part of a pro-industry, anti-environmentalist agenda, which they certainly are, but each is also a component in an increasingly militarized strategy to enlist domestic energy in an epic struggle\u2014at least in the minds of the president and his advisers\u2014to ensure America\u2019s global dominance.<\/p>\n

Where All This Is Headed<\/h4>\n

Trump achieved many of these maximal-extraction objectives during his first year in office. Now, with fossil fuels uniquely imbedded in the country\u2019s National Security Strategy, we have a clearer sense of what\u2019s happening.\u00a0 First of all, along with the\u00a0further funding<\/a>\u00a0of the U.S. military (and of the \u201cmodernization<\/a>\u201d of the country\u2019s nuclear arsenal), Donald Trump and his generals are making fossil fuels a crucial ingredient for bulking up our national security.\u00a0 In that way, they will turn anything (or any group) standing in the way of the extraction and exploitation of oil, coal, and natural gas into obstructers of the national interest and, quite literally, of American national security.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with the\u00a0further funding\u00a0of the U.S. military (and of the “modernization”\u00a0of the country’s nuclear arsenal), Donald Trump and his generals are making fossil fuels a crucial ingredient for bulking up our national security.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, the expansion of the fossil fuel industry and its exports has been transformed into a major component of American foreign and security policy. Of course, such developments and the exports that go with them do generate income and sustain somejobs, but in the Trumpian view they also boost the country\u2019s geopolitical profile by encouraging foreign friends and partners to rely ever more heavily on us for their energy needs, rather than adversaries like Russia or Iran. \u201cAs a growing supplier of energy resources, technologies, and services around the world,\u201d the NSS declares without a hint of irony, \u201cthe United States will help our allies and partners become more resilient against those that use energy to coerce.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Trump administration moves forward on all this, the key battlefield will undoubtedly be the building and maintaining of energy infrastructure\u2014the pipelines and railroads carrying oil, gas, and coal from the American interior to processing and export facilities on the coasts.\u00a0 Because so many of the country\u2019s large cities and population centers are on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, or the Gulf of Mexico, and because the country has long depended on imports for much of its petroleum supply, a surprising share of existing energy infrastructure\u2014refineries, LNG facilities, pumping stations, and the like\u2014is already located along those same coasts.\u00a0 Yet much of the energy supply Trump seeks to exploit\u2014the shale fields of Texas and North Dakota, the coal fields of Nebraska\u2014is located in the interior of the country. For his strategy to succeed, such resource zones must be connected far more effectively to coastal facilities via a mammoth web of new pipelines and other transport infrastructure. All of this will cost vast sums of money and lead to intense clashes with environmentalists, Native peoples, farmers, ranchers, and others whose lands and way of life will be severely degraded when that kind of construction takes place, and who can be expected to resist.<\/p>\n

For Trump, the road ahead is clear: do whatever it takes to install the infrastructure needed to deliver those fossil fuels abroad. Not surprisingly then, the National Security Strategy asserts that \u201cwe will streamline the Federal regulatory approval processes for energy infrastructure, from pipeline and export terminals to container shipments and gathering lines.\u201d\u00a0 This is bound to provoke numerous conflicts with environmental groups and other inhabitants of what Naomi Klein, author of\u00a0This Changes Everything<\/a><\/em>, calls \u201cBlockadia\u201d\u2014places like the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, where thousands of Native people and their supporters\u00a0camped out<\/a>\u00a0last year in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to block construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. Given the administration\u2019s insistence on linking energy extraction to U.S. security, don\u2019t for a moment imagine that attempts to protest such moves won\u2019t be met with harsh treatment from federal law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

Building all of that infrastructure will also prove expensive, so expect President Trump to make pipeline construction integral to any infrastructure modernization bill he sends to Congress, thereby securing taxpayer dollars for the effort. Indeed, the inclusion of pipeline construction and other kinds of energy build-out in any future infrastructure initiative is already a major objective of influential business groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Rebuilding roads and bridges is fine,\u00a0commented<\/a>\u00a0Thomas Donohue, the Chamber\u2019s influential president, but \u201cwe\u2019re also living in the midst of an energy renaissance, yet we don\u2019t have the infrastructure to support it.\u201d As a result, he added, we must \u201cbuild the pipelines necessary to transport our abundant resources to market.\u201d Given the influence such corporate interests have over this White House and congressional Republicans, it\u2019s reasonable to assume that any bill on infrastructure revitalization will be, at least in part, energy focused.<\/p>\n

And keep in mind that for President Trump, with his thoroughly\u00a0fossil-fuelized view<\/a>\u00a0of the world, this is just the beginning. Issues that may be viewed by others as environmental or even land-conservation matters will be seen by him and his associates as so many obstacles to national security and greatness. Facing what will almost certainly be a series of unparalleled potential environmental disasters, those who oppose him will also have to contest his view of the world and the role fossil fuels should play in it.<\/p>\n

Selling more of them to foreign buyers, while attempting to stifle the development of renewals (and thereby ceding those true\u00a0job-creating<\/a>\u00a0sectors of the economy to other countries) may be good for giant oil and coal corporations, but it won\u2019t win America any friends abroad at a moment when climate change is becoming a\u00a0growing concern<\/a>\u00a0for ever more people on this planet. With\u00a0prolonged droughts<\/a>, increasingly severe storms and\u00a0hurricanes<\/a>, and\u00a0killer heat waves<\/a>\u00a0affecting ever-larger swaths of the planet, with sea levels rising and extreme weather becoming the norm, the urge for progress on climate change is only growing stronger, as is the demand for climate-friendly renewables.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump and his administration of climate-change deniers are quite literally living in the wrong century. The militarization of energy policy at this late date and the lodging of fossil fuels at the heart of national security policy may seem appealing to them, but it\u2019s an approach that\u2019s obviously doomed.\u00a0 On arrival, it is, in fact, already the definition of obsolescence.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, given the circumstances of this planet at the moment, it also threatens to doom the rest of us. The further we look into the future, the more likely international leadership will fall on the shoulders of those who can effectively and efficiently deliver renewables, not those who can provide climate-poisoning fossil fuels. That being so, no one seeking global prestige would say at Davos or anywhere else that we are blessed with \u201ca substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new U.S. energy policy of the Trump era is, in some ways, the oldest energy policy on Earth. Every great power has sought to mobilize the energy resources at its command, whether those be slaves, wind-power, coal, or oil, to further its hegemonic ambitions. What makes the Trumpian variant\u2014the unfettered exploitation\u00a0of America\u2019s fossil-fuel reserves\u2014unique […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":347850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-347849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}