US National Intelligence Director says access to energy supplies outranks Al-Queda as security threat

The US National Intelligence Director said that access to energy outranked Al-Queda as a US national security threat.

Mike McConnell, interviewed in The New Yorker, when asked if Al-Queda was the greatest threat to American security said “No, no, no, not at all. Terrorism can kill a lot of people, but it can’t fundamentally challenge the ability of the nation to exist….our issue going forward is more engagement with the world in terms of keeping it on a reasonable path, so another ism doesn’t come along and drive it to one extreme or another. And we have to have some balance in terms of equitable distribution of wealth, containment of contagious disease, access to energy supplies, and development of free markets. There are national security ramifications to global warming.”

In China, fuel riots have began late last year because of shortages. The shortages are affecting Shanghai, the southeast coastal provinces, and are spreading to the interior. Diesel is fixed-priced at $2.42 in China, about one third of the price in European markets, and fuel companies are getting squeezed by soaring crude oil costs, leading to production cutbacks and allocations. Prices have not been raised for 17 months despite crude oil rices nearly doubling. Meanwhile, ethanol producers are also under pressure in China from high costs, and from a government shutdown of new ethanol production projects owing to the effect of ethanol demand on food prices.
In Indonesia, government officials and police have been forced to clear the streets in an emergency action after food riots broke out Indonesia over rising soybean prices. Increasing demand in China, reduced US capacity as more farmers plant corn for ethanol, and poor harvests in Brazil and Argentina fueled the protests, the largest since Mexican protests and riots over rising tortilla prices last year.

The current wave of food riots began last winter when Mexican consumers rioted over rising tortilla prices. In Mauritania this past November, one person was killed and several injured when food riots broke out in several provinces. Protesters were demonstrating over rising food prices, and an 18-year old was shot in Kansoaa by security forces after protestors attempted to invade the home of a local official. The rise of food transport costs, associated with the increase in oil prices, and biofuel production were blamed for the price hikes.

The UN FAO released a report saying that 40 nations face critical food shortages, for reasons including climate change, higher meat consumption in developing countries, crop failure, war, and diversion of food crops for biofuels.

The FAO report said that its food price index rose 40 percent in 2007 compared with 9 percent in 2006, and food riots have occurred in Mexico, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Senegal.

Top FAO official Jeff Tschirley, recently said “FAO strongly feels that food security and environmental considerations must be fully addressed before making investments or policy decisions, and we are actively working to ensure this happens. However, a moratorium that ignores the potential of biofuels to support rural development and assist the economies of developing countries would not, in our view, be a constructive approach to this topic.”

He said that the description of biofuels as a “crime against humanity” by Dr. Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on The Right to Food, was regrettable.

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