Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
calendar year 2008, including $17.9 billion for electricity production (USEIA 2011b, xiii, xiv). It
is often difficult to obtain empirical data to quantify the value of some taxpayer costs, which must
nonetheless be identified and taken into consideration in a comprehensive cost analysis. Federal
subsidies change somewhat from year to year with fluctuations in the economy and enactment of
new legislation, and many studies present only aggregate data for multiple years (Environmental
Law Institute 2009). In most cases, cost analysis relies most heavily on market prices to consum-
ers, which cover most but not all significant dollar costs for utilizing a fuel technology.
National Security Costs
A political factor, the national security costs of an energy fuel technology are also based on the
physical attributes of the fuel and the technologies used in several phases of a fuel cycle. As is
the case with dollar costs, national security costs may vary at different times due to changes
in technologies and relations between nation-states. National security costs are determined by
application of accepted concepts of what is necessary to sustain the national security of any
nation-state in the contemporary world. National security is defined as the “integrity of the
national territory and of its institutions” (Morgenthau 1960, 562). Fundamentally this includes
two attributes of sovereignty: continued
survival
of a nation and its institutions in their physical
existence and social well-being; and
freedom of action
of a nation's government in the pursuit of
its national interests in the conduct of foreign affairs—the freedom to choose between alternative
foreign policies without interference by others. Threats to the survival of a nation include armed
invasion by another nation-state and the acquisition of nuclear weapons and delivery capability
by a hostile state or terrorist organization. Threats to freedom of action in foreign affairs include
dependence of a nation-state on energy resources that must be imported from other nation-states
hostile to some preferred foreign policy of the importing country, and reluctance of a nation-state
to engage in activities that may directly or indirectly cause the extinction of another nation-state.
Thus, national security costs are viewed as significant threats to the physical existence and well-
being of a nation-state, including those threats that may interfere with or constrain choices between
alternative foreign policies toward other nation-states.
Dependence of the United States on oil resources that must be imported from nation-states in
the Middle East who are hostile toward U.S. foreign policy in support of Israel threatened U.S.
freedom of action in its foreign affairs during the Arab oil embargo of 1973, when Organization of
Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) reduced sales of oil to the United States in retali-
ation for U.S. support of Israel during and after the war of 1967 (Halabi 2009; Nersesian 2010,
150-151; Geller 1993; U.S. Congress 1975). Although the effects of the embargo were relatively
short-lived, due to “leakage” of oil supplies to the United States from international oil markets in
Europe and elsewhere, they did produce significant disruption of the U.S. economy for some period,
rendering U.S. foreign policy makers more sensitive to the views of OAPEC members than they
had been previously and stimulating expansion of the Strategic Oil Reserve in the United States
(Barton et al. 2004, 153; Davis 1993; Kalt 1981). The exact degree to which U.S. support of Israel
has been reduced or has shifted in subsequent years is undetermined, but there has certainly been
an increase in concern for the views of OAPEC countries toward U.S. foreign policy.
Similarly, continued large-scale use of carbon fuels such as coal promises to affect adversely
through sea-level rise nation-states with large populations living in deltaic regions, such as the
Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, and Egypt, and may cause the extinction of
several low-lying island nation-states in the world, such as the Maldives, the Marshall Islands,
Tuvalu, and Kiribati (Henley 2008; O'Carroll 2008; Nicholls et al. 2007, 315-356). According to
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