Some days you have to wonder if everyone who’s been sounding the alarm about oil issues for years have been right all along, and the rest of the world, including the US power structure, is just now playing catch-up. At least that’s the thought I had when I read BusinessWeek’s U.S. Reliance on Oil an ‘Urgent Threat’:

A group of retired senior U.S. military officers has concluded that the country’s reliance on fossil fuels undermines its capacity to defend itself. Citing a “serious and urgent threat to national security,” the group has urged the Pentagon to take the lead in shifting to a new age in energy.

The dependence on oil-based fuels left the U.S. military seriously over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the officers’ report, issued on May 18 by CNA, a military think tank based in Alexandria, Va. The 62-page report asserts that the true cost of fuel, including logistics and the military protection of sea lanes, can run to hundreds of dollars a gallon.

“Our energy posture is not sustainable. It can be exploited by those who want to do us harm,” retired Air Force Lieutenant General Larry Farrell, a co-author of the report, said in an interview. Finding a suitable alternative fuel and scaling it up to the size of the U.S. economy “is a 30-year project,” Farrell said. “We’ve got to get started now.”

The report, called “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security,” was written by CNA’s military advisory board, comprised of 12 retired generals and admirals. It’s a follow-up to a 2007 report by the advisory board called “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.”

From the report’s executive summary:

This report identifies a series of current risks created by America’s energy policies and practices that constitute a serious and urgent threat to national security—militarily, diplomatically, and economically:

• U.S. dependence on oil weakens international leverage, undermines foreign policy objectives, and entangles America with unstable or hostile regimes.

• Inefficient use and overreliance on oil burdens the military, undermines combat effectiveness, and exacts a huge price tag—in dollars and lives.

• U.S. dependence on fossil fuels undermines economic stability, which is critical to national security.

• A fragile domestic electricity grid makes our domestic military installations, and their critical infrastructure, unnecessarily vulnerable to incident, whether deliberate or accidental.

Looking forward, the report warns that continuing business as usual is perilous because of the converging national security risks of energy demand and climate change:

• The market for fossil fuels will be shaped by finite supplies and increasing demand. Continuing our heavy reliance on these fuels is a security risk.

• Regulatory frameworks driven by climate change concerns will increase the costs—both economic and geopolitical—of using carbon based fuels.

• Destabilization driven by ongoing climate change has the potential to add significantly to the mission burden of the U.S. military in fragile regions of the world.

The home page for the report is here.

You can directly down the report here [74 page, 750KB PDF].