The Crisis in Clean Energy. David G. Victor and Kassia Yanosek, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2011, var. pp. Clean energy was supposed to create jobs while reducing energy insecurity, global warming, and the U.S. trade deficit. But Washington's policies have encouraged quick and easy projects that cannot compete with conventional carbon-based sources. READ MORE

Climate of Denial. Can science and the truth withstand the merchants of poison? Al Gore, Rolling Stone Magazine, June 22, 2011, var. pp. [...] Throughout American history, we relied on the vibrancy of our public square — and the quality of our democratic discourse — to make better decisions than most nations in the history of the world. But we are now routinely making really bad decisions that completely ignore the best available evidence of what is true and what is false. When the distinction between truth and falsehood is systematically attacked without shame or consequence — when a great nation makes crucially important decisions on the basis of completely false information that is no longer adequately filtered through the fact-checking function of a healthy and honest public discussion — the public interest is severely damaged.  That is exactly what is happening with U.S. decisions regarding the climate crisis. The best available evidence demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the reckless spewing of global-warming pollution in obscene quantities into the atmospheric commons is having exactly the consequences long predicted by scientists who have analyzed the known facts according to the laws of physics. READ MORE

The Climate Wars Myth. Bruno Tertrais, The Washington Quarterly, August 2011, pp. 17 - 29. The first decade of the 21st century was the hottest since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Global warming is real and, if present trends continue, its possible effects worry publics and governments around the world. Could it foster armed conflict for resources such as food and water? Will Western armies be increasingly called upon to mitigate the effects of natural catastrophes, humanitarian disasters, and floods of refugees? Think tanks have enthusiastically embraced this new field of research, and militaries around the world are now actively studying the possible impact of a warming planet on global security. Books with titles such as Climate Wars predict a bleak future.1 A well-known French consultant claims that a five degree Celsius increase in average global temperature would generate no less than a ‘‘bloodbath.’’ Former World Bank economist Lord Nicholas Stern the author of the 2006 ‘‘Stern Report’’ on the possible economic impact of climate change even declares that failing to deal with climate change decisively would lead to ‘‘an extended world war.’’However, there is every reason to be more than circumspect regarding such dire predictions. History shows that ‘‘warm’’ periods are more peaceful than ‘‘cold’’ ones. In the modern era, the evolution of the climate is not an essential factor to explain collective violence. Nothing indicates that ‘‘water wars’’ or floods of ‘‘climate refugees’’ are on the horizon. And to claim that climate change may have an impact on security is to state the obvious but it does not make it meaningful for defense planning. READ MORE

Climate Change and Security at the Third Pole. Katherine Morton, Survival, February-March , 2011, pp. 121 - 132. The Tibetan Plateau is the largest high-altitude landmass on Earth, with more than 45,000 glaciers that feed the major river systems in Asia, which in turn support 40% of the world's population. As global warming continues, temperatures in the region are rising twice as fast as the global average, posing serious risks to hydrological systems, agriculture and critical infrastructure. Placing an ecological security lens on regional cooperation raises an important question about the extent to which the threat of large-scale climate-related disaster could trigger new forms of cooperative action. Current responses fall far short of ensuring a mutually secure future. READ MORE

The Era of State Energy Policy Innovation: A Review of Policy Instruments. Sanya Carley, Review of Policy Research, May 2011, pp. 265–294. U.S. energy and climate policy has evolved from the bottom-up, led by state governments, and internationally recognized for the use of unconventional and innovative policy instruments. This study focuses on policy instruments adopted throughout the era of state energy policy innovation that aim to diversify, decentralize, and decarbonize the electricity sector. Specific attention is devoted to the renewable portfolio standard, net metering, interconnection standards, tax incentives, public benefit funds, and energy efficiency resource standards. This analysis synthesizes the findings from the energy policy literature and provides a summary of the current state of understanding about the effects of various state energy policy instruments, and concludes with a discussion of broader trends that have emerged from the use of policy instruments in the state energy policy innovation era. READ MORE

Climate Change Regionalism in North America. Henrik Selin and Stacy D. VanDeveer. Review of Policy Research, May 2011, pp. 295-304. This viewpoint article intends to stimulate both scholars and practitioners to engage in more serious reflection and critical debate about opportunities for further coordinated North American responses to climate change. It draws attention to expected intellectual, economic, political, and environmental advantages of expanded continental climate change and energy governance for all three North American societies. First, we briefly address the notion of climate change regionalism and highlight ways to think about multilevel governance arrangements already developing in North America. This is followed by a discussion of four broad areas of potential benefits of expanded continental climate change policy making: gaining from policy learning, capturing economic efficiency gains, meeting adaptation challenges, and exercising global leadership. The article ends with some remarks on the future of North American climate change governance, calling for more regionally focused empirical research and analysis. READ MORE

Transatlantic Relations in a Multipolar Europe. Riccardo Alcaro, European Security and the Future of Transatlantic Relations, April 2011, pp. 15-39. For decades European security was at the core of the transatlantic relationship. During the first half of the 20th Century the traditional reluctance of the United States to get involved in the highly competitive European security system gave way to the recognition that it was in the country’s national interest to avoid the emergence of an hegemonic power in Europe. The US felt compelled to intervene with massive military, economic, and human resources in two epoch-making world wars resulting from the collapse of the precarious European balance of power. READ MORE

The Green Lantern. Coral Davenport and Yochi J. Dreazen , National Journal, May 27, 2011, var. pp. The Pentagon hopes that by powering the military on renewable energy, it will light the way for an American revolution in clean tech. For American drivers, $4-a-gallon gasoline is painful: It bites deeply into household incomes at a time when millions of people are stretched to a breaking point. But for the U.S. military, the cost of fuel is a magnitude greater—and a matter of life or death. Fuel shipments account for the majority of the supplies trucked through Afghanistan, and militants attack the convoys almost daily. At least one member of the armed forces is killed for every 24 fuel convoys that snake their way along Afghanistan’s dangerous roads; hundreds of troops and contractors have died protecting the trucks. READ MORE

Black Swan over Fukushima. Bruno Tertrais, Survival, June-July 2011, pp. 91-100. The March 2011 Fukushima event was the perfect catastrophe: multiple, simultaneous and grave accidents at several facilities within a large nuclear plant, in a country undergoing extreme stress and facing competing demands for emergency services as a result of the major earthquake and massive tsunami that led to those accidents. This led to an extraordinary outburst of anxiety around the world. In mid-April, an online search for ‘Fukushima’ and ‘apocalypse’ elicited 3.5 million returns. Following the accident, nuclear programmes are being reviewed all around the world, but the catastrophe will not, nor should it, radically alter the future nuclear landscape.   READ MORE

Global Energy: The Latest Infatuations. Vaclav Smil, American Scientist, 2011, var. pp.
In energy matters, what goes around, comes around—but perhaps should go away.
To follow global energy affairs is to have a never-ending encounter with new infatuations. Fifty years ago media ignored crude oil (a barrel went for little more than a dollar). Instead the western utilities were preoccupied with the annual double-digit growth of electricity demand that was to last indefinitely, and many of them decided that only large-scale development of nuclear fission, to be eventually transformed into a widespread adoption of fast breeder reactors, could secure electricity’s future. Two decades later, in the midst of the second energy “crisis” (1979–1981, precipitated by Khomeini’s takeover of Iran), rising crude oil prices became the world’s prime existential concern, growth of electricity demand had slumped to low single digits, France was the only nation that was seriously pursuing a nuclear future, and small cars were in vogue. READ MORE

Globalizing the Energy Revolution How to Really Win the Clean-Energy Race By Michael Levi, Elizabeth C. Economy, Shannon O'Neil, and Adam Segal. Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2010, var. pages. "Clean-energy technology is expensive and the United States is spending far too little on developing it. The U.S. government must do more to promote cross-border innovation and protect intellectual property rights." READ MORE

Energy, Environment, and Security: Critical Links in a Post-Peak World. Shane Mulligan, Global Environmental Politics, November 2010, pp. 79-100. "Energy supplies are central to human ecology and key to the sustainability of human communities, but the decline of fossil fuel resources is largely ignored in global environmental politics. Most political analysis of energy focuses on state-centered "energy security" while largely overlooking discourses of environmental or ecological security. Yet energy and the environment are intimately connected; in the 1970s and 1980s, energy resources were seen as very much a part of the environment to be secured, while today fossil energy is seen as an evident threat to the environment, especially through the medium of climate change. This article surveys the changing relationships among energy, the environment, and security, and suggests a framework for examining the discursive forces that have affected such changes. This framework offers guidance toward developing a more ecologically informed approach to energy and (state, global, and human) security under conditions of scarce and declining global fossil fuel supplies." READ MORE

Fixing the EU Emissions Trading System? Understanding the Post-2012 Changes. Jon Birger Skjærseth and Jørgen Wettestad. Global Environmental Politics, November 2010, pp. 101-123. "This article explains why the significant changes in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) for the 2013–2020 phase were adopted in 2008. The combination of a more stringent EU-wide cap, allocation of emission allowances for payment, and limits on imports of credits from third countries have strengthened the system for the post-2012 period. This will promote reduction in greenhouse gases compared to the old system. The main reasons for these changes are, first, changes in the positions of the member states due to unsatisfactory experience with performance of the EU ETS so far. Second, a 'package approach' where the EU ETS reform was integrated into wider energy and climate policy facilitated agreement on the changes. Third, changes in the position of nonstate actors and a desire to affect the international climate negotiations contributed to the reform." READ MORE

A High-Risk Energy Boom Sweeps Across North America. Keith Schneider, Yale Environment 360, September 30, 2010, var. pp. The author, a contributor to the New York Times, writes that energy companies are pouring huge sums of money into developing new sources of fossil fuels across the Western U.S. and Canada. This so-called unconventional oil and gas are locked in shale or tar sands formations, and are inaccessible by normal drilling methods. Development of unconventional energy carries high environmental risks, including open-pit mining in the case of the Alberta tar sands and hydraulic fracturing fluids for shale gas. It is more energy-intensive, generating far more CO2 emissions than conventional drilling, and requires 3-5 times as much water in a region that does not receive much rainfall. Schneider writes that the explosion in unconventional energy extraction “raises a troubling question – at a time when the country should be embracing a renewable energy revolution, it is hurtling in the opposite direction.” READ MORE 

Balance of Power. How the shifting dynamic between the United States and China could doom the Cancun climate talks. Coral Davenport, The National Journal, November 18, 2010, var. pp. Land of contrasts: China is the world's biggest carbon polluter, but it has also done more than any other nation to promote the use of clean energy. Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, has been involved in the United Nations effort to forge a global treaty on climate change since the endeavor began with a 1992 summit in Rio de Janeiro. In those 18 years, she has attended countless conferences, global meetings, and all-night negotiating sessions—all with the goal of creating a legally binding document that unites the planet in a mission to tackle global warming. But as she looks toward the U.N. climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, which opens on November 29, Petsonk, like so many others, questions whether her dream of a climate-change treaty has become a fantasy. “The original concept—190 countries, all in international agreement, bridging the very deep divide between industrialized and developing countries—that international process is riven with divisions,” she said. “There’s so much uncertainty. They’ve tried for so many years to reach international agreement. There’s a new landscape now, and it’s very challenging.” READ MORE

A Convenient Truth About Clean Energy. Carl E Schoder, The Futurist, Jan/Feb 2011, var. pp.  The convenient truth is that the world does not have an energy shortage; it simply lacks an energy infrastructure capable of using the abundant source of solar energy received from the sun every day. The current worldwide demand of about 363 terawatt-hours per day could be met by covering just 0.5% of the world's land area with silicon solar panels. Doing so, and building out other necessary infrastructure requirements, could meet energy needs and eliminate dependency on nonrenewable petroleum. A significant contribution to the current world energy situation is the consumption creed that has been pushed upon by the marketing geniuses of the global corporations. The public has been enticed by those corporations to buy more and save less. A long-range solution in the form of carbon-free energy is feasible and doable if one plans now, spend for the future instead of the present, and conserve more while spending less. READ MORE