• Unless the U.S. government plans more carefully, generating energy from clean alternatives is almost certain to consume much more water than the fossil fuels that green energy sources are meant to replace.
• The region confronting the energy-water choke point in the most dramatic fashion is the Southwest, where climate change is steadily diminishing snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains, and a prolonged drought is threatening to halt energy production at the Hoover Dam.
• The next era of hydrocarbon development is well underway in the United States, as energy companies invest billions of dollars a year to tap the “unconventional” oil sands of Canada, the oil shales of the northern Great Plains, and the gas shales of the Northeast, Texas, Oklahoma, and the Upper Midwest. However, tapping each of these carbon-rich reserves is using three to four times more water than the conventional oil and gas reserves they are replacing.
• Developers in North Dakota are spending roughly $7 billion annually to drill 1,000 wells a year now into the Bakken Shale. That effort will produce 100 million barrels of oil and 100 billion cubic feet of gas this year, but will use billions of gallons of North Dakota’s scarce groundwater.
• Each of the thousands of wells drilled each year into the unconventional gas shales underlying the Northeast, Gulf Coast states, the West, and Midwest requires three million to six million gallons of water injected under high pressure to fracture the rock and enable gas to flow out of the rock.
• In Kern County, California, where the agriculture and oil industries compete for diminished supplies of water for irrigation and energy production, the winner is the oil industry.
• The energy vector in the United States points strongly to more fossil fuel consumption, not less.
• All new energy technologies except wind and solar PV will require increased freshwater withdrawals.

For as long as the United States has been a nation the central idea guiding energy development is to generate as much as the energy sector is capable of producing. In every way imaginable, though, the 21st century is testing the soundness of that principle. A number of environmental, economic, and political impediments lie in the path to large increases in American energy production.

None, though, is more significant than the nation’s steadily diminishing reserve of fresh water. The place where rising energy demand collides with declining water supplies is a national choke point that the United States has barely begun to address, and certainly isn’t close to resolving.

Two German Shepherds kept as pets in Europe or the U.S. use more resources in a year than the average person living in Bangladesh. The world’s richest 500 million people produce half of global carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest 3 billion emit just 7 percent. Industrial tree-cutting is now responsible for the majority of the 13 million hectares of forest lost to fire or the blade each year — surpassing the smaller-scale footprints of subsistence farmers who leave behind long, narrow swaths of cleared land, so-called “fish bones.”

In fact, urban population growth and agricultural exports drive deforestation more than overall population growth, according to new research from geographer Ruth DeFries of Columbia University and her colleagues. In other words, the increasing urbanization of the developing world — as well as an ongoing increase in consumption in the developed world for products that have an impact on forests, whether furniture, shoe leather, or chicken fed on soy meal — is driving deforestation, rather than containing it as populations leave rural areas to concentrate in booming megalopolises.

So are the world’s environmental ills really a result of the burgeoning number of humans on the planet — growing by more than 150 people a minute and predicted by the United Nations to reach at least 9 billion people by 2050? Or are they more due to the fact that, while human population doubled in the past 50 years, we increased our use of resources fourfold?

Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.

According to the Pew report, the Department of Defense has set a goal of producing or procuring at least 25 percent of its non-tactical electric energy needs from renewable sources by 2025. Highlights of the service’s efforts include:

• The U.S. Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” carrier strike group, which will run entirely on alternative fuels and nuclear power by 2016;
• The construction of a 500-megawatt solar facility in Fort Irwin, California by the U.S. Army which will help the base reach ‘net-zero plus’ status;
• The goal of acquiring 50 percent of the U.S. Air Force’s aviation fuels from biofuel blends by 2016;
• The U.S. Marine Corps’ 10×10 campaign to develop a comprehensive energy strategy and meet ten goals aimed at reducing energy and water intensity and increasing the use of renewable electric energy by the end of 2010.

1. In light of its implications for the global commons, ensure that DOD is included in the emerging debate over geoengineering.
2. Urge U.S. ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in order to provide global leadership and protect U.S. and DOD interests, especially in the context of an opening Arctic sea.
3. Eliminate the divided command over the Arctic and assign U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) as the supported commander.
4. The U.S. government should make an informed decision about constructing nuclear reactors on military bases and provide clear policy guidelines to DOD.
5. Congress and DOD should move away from the “cost avoidance” structure of current renewable energy, conservation, and efficiency practices in order to reward proactive commanders and encourage further investment.
6. All of the services should improve their understanding of how climate change will effect their missions and capabilities; e.g. migration and water issues may impact Army missions, a melting Arctic, the Navy.
7. The Air Force should fully integrate planning for both energy security and climate change into a single effort.

Indeed, in our conversation with officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, it was clear that, in developing the climate change and energy section of the 2010 QDR, the Department of Defense has developed a nascent, intellectual infrastructure of civilian and military professionals who will continue to study the national security implications of climate change, and, we hope, will continue to reevaluate climate change risks and opportunities as the science continues to evolve.