It’s Getting Hot In Here

Remember those big concerts about a year ago called Live8? Remember how Bono, Bob Geldof, and Tony Blair were, with the help of 50 Cent and a reunited Pink Floyd, going to end global poverty at the G8 meetings that year? And how they were also talking about global warming, as if development and climate might actually have something to do with each other? Because the UK was hosting the 2005 G8 summit, Prime Minister Tony Blair was able to push these topics to the top of the agenda. When the G8 meets in St. Petersburg, Russia this July, it will be on Vladimir Putin’s turf, and as the President of the second largest producer of oil in the world, from leaked documents it appears he wants to talk “energy security.” In other words: nuclear energy and fossil fuel, and lots of it. It looks like the rest of the G8 countries, including Blair, are ready to go along with this reversal. Oh well, it’s not like we can expect our political leaders to pay attention to problems like global warming and global poverty every year…

The “energy security” agenda that will be discussed by the G8 in July, a copy of which was leaked to and analyzed by our friends at Oil Change International, is all about massive investment in fossil fuels ($17 trillion over 25 years) in order to secure energy supplies for the G8 countries. When a discussion about energy is framed in terms of “energy security” alone, this tends to mean talking about fossil fuels to the exclusion of the kinds of energy solutions that could actually bring security - efficiency, conservation, clean energy sources, and more.

In today’s world it is not possible to have a responsible or even rational discussion about energy policy to the exclusion of the climate. In preparing to push fossil fuels this year, the G8 leaders will not just be ignoring the urgent problems they identified last year, they will be actively undermining any progress made to stop global warming.

In discussing “energy security” for rich nations through fossil fuels, the G8 countries will also be abandoning their discussion of debt, development, and global poverty. Energy security for rich nations means oil being exported from Africa to Europe or the U.S. in pipelines that pass through communities lacking reliable electricity for light bulbs. It means cheaper gas for North America, drought in China, and sea level rise in Bangladesh. And (hat tip to Oil Change International again) it means expanding oil production in places like West Africa and Central Asia and in turn causing higher international debt for these countries (read the linked report - it’s counterintuitive but persuasive). You can’t have a discussion about energy security without talking about poverty and securing energy services for all.

Are President Bush or the new conservative Harper government in Canada likely to oppose Putin’s oil and nuclear agenda? That question isn’t even worth answering. But the spotlight is on Tony Blair of the UK, Jacques Chirac of France, the new Prodi government in Italy, the new Merkel government in Germany, and the Koizumi government of Japan: will they allow Putin to lead the G8 in this abdication of leadership on global warming and poverty, or will they keep the biggest challenges the world faces where they should be, on the top of the agenda of the world’s most powerful leaders?