Go "Geo-Green" 5

Environmentalists need to seek new allies and new rationales, according to the raging debates spurred by the "Death of Environmentalism." This country's most important foreign affairs column is increasingly giving voice to one such argument.

Tom Friedman in The New York Times once again bangs the drum for energy efficiency, renewables, and lowering oil consumption as a means to spur reform in the Middle East. He does throw in a call for nuclear power, an argument that won't sit well with many greenies.

But Friedman dubs himself a "geo-green," explicitly promoting green behavior for geopolitical ends. He wants to deprive the undemocratic regimes of the Middle East the huge petro dollars that allow them to buy their way out of facing realm reform.

You give me $18-a-barrel oil and I will give you political and economic reform from Algeria to Iran. All these regimes have huge population bubbles and too few jobs. They make up the gap with oil revenues. Shrink the oil revenue and they will have to open up their economies and their schools and liberate their women so that their people can compete. It is that simple.

Geoff Dabelko is director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. He blogs here and at New Security Beat on environment, population, and security issues.

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  1. David Roberts's avatar

    David Roberts Posted 4:20 pm
    29 Jan 2005

    oil is fungibleIs it really that simple?  I'm all for energy efficiency and the rest, but it seems to me that the "geo" argument of the geo-green position is rather simplistic and hopeful.
    If we buy less Middle East oil, does that mean they'll sell less and start opening their economies? Or does it just mean they'll sell the oil to someone else like, say, China, which has a huge and growing appetite for the stuff.
    Again, I'm all for energy efficiency, and as a ruthless pragmatist/instrumentalist/what-have-you I'll support any argument that gets people behind it, but in the end I'm not sure our geopolitical troubles will be so easily solved.

    www.grist.org

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  2. David Roberts's avatar

    David Roberts Posted 3:15 am
    31 Jan 2005

    yglesiasMatt Yglesias -- known in the blogosphere as the "compulsively readable one" -- puts flesh on my reservations in this post. An excerpt:There's a very respectable case to be made that we ought to be trying to promote oil conservation in the United States and it doesn't involve any odd geopolitical theories. Oil causes a lot of pollution. It has, in other words, significant negative externalities. Right now, it's not taxed at a level commensurate with those externalities. If we did tax it proportionally to the real social cost of burning oil the price (to consumers) would rise, and with it interest in more fuel efficient vehicles (already, makers of hybrid cars are plausibly arguing that if you drive frequently it's worth it to shell out more up front in order to save on fuel) which will improve air quality. Better air quality would be an excellent thing. If it should happen to have some beneficial spillover effects on national security, so much the better, but I wouldn't count on it, and I certainly wouldn't go around promising it to people.

    www.grist.org

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  3. Geoff Dabelko's avatar

    Geoff Dabelko Posted 4:54 am
    01 Feb 2005

    Yet what is newYet what is new about Matt's points (pollution from oil is bad, clean air is good, and oil gets perverse subsidies)that might appeal to a broader audience, break through logjams, or convince the currently unconvinced? If the point is to gain additional advocates, then exploring additional (not alternative) rationales appears imperative.  
    Your earlier point about China just taking up any possible slack is however a more substantive one.  The Middle Eastern states certainly would have time to tinker with the business model so to speak and target these alternative markets. And Chinese development of Sudanese oil reserves certainly indicates they aren't afraid to do business with unsavory regimes.

    Geoff Dabelko

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  4. Shalini Ramanathan Posted 11:06 pm
    09 Feb 2005

    geo greenThe U.S. dependence on oil has many trouble geopolitical consequences; the American propping up of the House of Saud is but one. Right now, the U.S. is strengthening its support of Nigeria in order to have a secure, non-Middle East supply of oil. It's hard to imagine that life in the Niger Delta is going to be improved by this development. And, unless life in Nigeria gets better, you're going to keep getting emails from MRS. SANI ABACHA WHO NEEDS YOUR HELP URGENTLY IN DEPOSITING 10 MILLION DOLLARS
    I wouldn't want to promise geopolitical change, either. But everyone knows that oil is polluting and hey -- most people don't care. If linking oil dependence to instability to the Middle East is the way to build support for energy self-sufficiency, what exactly do we as environmentalists have to lose by going along with the hypothesis?

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  5. Geoff Dabelko's avatar

    Geoff Dabelko Posted 12:16 pm
    13 Feb 2005

    Friedman weighs in againFriedman wrote again on geo-greens and his view that the US is paying for both sides of the war terror by supporting high gas prices with a bankrupt energy policy.

    Geoff Dabelko

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