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Founded over 15 years ago, WADG meets once a month to discuss the great global issues of the day and how they intersect with u.s. foreign and domestic policy.
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How Will the Green Revolution Change the Global Power Balance?
Urban Plates, 8707 Villa La Jolla Dr, La Jolla, CA, USThe world is at a hinge point - in energy.
Block out the day-to-day din of craziness and see the whole board. I read once that human civilization, past and present, can be boiled down to one endeavor: The quest to find ways to convert forms of energy that are not useful to us into forms that are. For 8,000 years or so, we turned sunlight, soil nutrients, and firewood into crops, livestock, city-states, armies, nations, and empires. Then we used coal and the water it boiled in steam engines to power the early industrial revolution. The first oil well was drilled in 1871 and it powered the entire 20th century, and much of today’s world.
Now, though, a new age of green energy is within sight and will arrive much more quickly than anyone first predicted. This is because of huge improvements in carbon-free (or at least lower emitting) energy technologies, like wind and solar. And because of HUGE advances in battery storage technologies. Much more work remains, notably building the vast infrastructure to distribute all this electric power to our transportation and to/within many large and populous developing countries. It will be the fastest global energy transition in history, and it is coming whether the Trump Administration and U.S. conservatives want to be a part of it or not
(Whether it will arrive fast enough to save us from the worst effects of global warming is an open question – one we could discuss.)
Yet, for the World Affairs Discussion Group, there is another big consequence worth debating: Such energy revolutions – even the slowest ones - always trigger huge changes to the global balance of power. The steam engine helped tiny England industrialize and conquer an empire. Oil won WWI and WWII, made the Middle East vital to global security, and fueled the rise of the United States.
How will the emerging global energy order affect the global pecking order, the strategic “value” of nations, patterns of global commerce, diplomacy, and conflict? Check back here the week before our June 14th meeting for some background readings on these issues. For now, click on the links below if you want.
Optional background readings -
· The “electro-tech” revolution.
· Links later, but “electro-states” like China may dominate the future.
· The Trump Administration philosophy: “Real men burn things.”11 attendees
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