CLIMATE POLICY AND ENERGY SECURITY: TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN?

Abstract A policy of restricting CO2 emissions might appear to address both climate change and energy security. We argue, however, that such restrictions may not be the most efficient way of responding to concerns about the potentially harmful consequences of climate change. They are also likely to severely compromise energy security, especially in the United States. I. Introduction At the height of the controversy over former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support for the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq, Blair said his “special relationship” with the United States would enable him to influence other policies important to European leaders. Foremost among those was the U.S. refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Blair declared in a speech in the United States on October 20, 2006 that “we must treat energy security and climate security as two sides of the same coin” — a refrain that other leaders in the European Union and United States have frequently repeated. The claim that policies may be able to address climate change and energy security at the same time is plausible. On one side of the coin, climate policy is aimed at limiting or reducing human impacts on climate. Research based on global climate models (GCM) has suggested that the observed increases in average global temperatures in the final quarter of the twentieth century were caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions arising predominantly from burning fossil fuels. Furthermore, these same models, applied to scenarios about likely future fossil fuel use in the absence of policy adjustments, predict that future increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 could produce detrimental climate changes. Avoiding this threat is what Prime Minister Blair equated to “climate security.”