The World’s First Energy Crisis | Foreign Affairs Interview Podcast

Foreign Affairs invites you to listen to its podcast, the Foreign Affairs Interview. This episode with Jason Bordoff and Meghan O'Sullivan was originally published on June 23, 2022.
The global energy market is in a state of upheaval. The war in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions against Russian oil and gas have forced the West, especially Europe, to quickly find new energy sources to keep the lights on and the cars running this summer. In the United States, rising gas prices are pushing President Joe Biden to make a controversial trip to Saudi Arabia to encourage the oil-rich state to increase production. This scramble for quick-fix energy solutions comes as the world is trying to kick its addiction to fossil fuels and reduce the effects of climate change. How will these short-term needs affect the urgent but longer-term transition to clean energy? And could today’s energy market turbulence be a harbinger of challenges to come as the global energy system is remade?
Jason Bordoff is the co-founding dean of the Columbia Climate School and the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. During the Obama administration, he served as senior director for energy and climate change on the National Security Council. Meghan O’Sullivan is a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power. During the George W. Bush administration, she was deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan. Together, they bring years of experience-both inside and outside of government-to the debates around energy, climate, economics, and geopolitics.
We discuss how the war in Ukraine continues to affect the global energy market, Biden’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, how governments can meet their energy security needs without decelerating the green transition, and why changes in the global energy system will continue to disrupt geopolitics.
SOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE
“The New Energy Order” by Jason Bordoff and Meghan O’Sullivan
www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...
“Green Upheaval” by Jason Bordoff and Meghan O’Sullivan
www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...

[@melw2389]

Thank you.

[@WT_Door]

I am listening to this August 1, 2023 - a week or so after attacks by Russia on Ukraine targeting their ability to export grain, and designed to provoke a food crisis. Meghan O'Sullivan discussed the immensity of the challenge of the energy crisis on top of food crisis. I was amazed by the fact she had reached this conclusion a **year** before, in late June 2022, when this interview was originally recorded!

[@brucevilla]

Thanks for Uploading.

[@ndavies8]

Awesome as always

[@user-tw4un8tt6d]

We cannot make any notable progress towards a transformation away from fossil fuels without a large amount of growth of fossil fuel consumption. The scale of our global predicament of climate warming coupled to the fact that everything we have built, including the population at 8 billion, was made possible by fossil based energy. And now we have this expectation that we can change a system in a reasonable timeframe, a system that is under attack by the external forces of nature. Our systems actively degrade the very planetary boundaries that we have leveraged for success in our history as a species. We are in a new era of ecological scarcity which will play a formidable role as it squeezes profits and mortality.

[@tannerlover2]

I think volatility in energy markets will get worse the further into the green transition nations go. There was not a large incentive (other then financial) to force other nations to transition from coal to gas. What happens when wealthy nations complete their transitions but the human effects on climate continue to show a negative trend line. I believe these new incentives will increase the need/use of geopolitical influences from nations in an an attempt to get a global consensus on emissions.

[@nathanngumi8467]

Great interview!

[@moxinghbian]

scarcity is usually artificially manufactured by us, so will this so called "Crisis".

[@eugene_dudnyk]

No one talks about US imports of russian aluminum and uranium. Hypocritical US in its best.