Energy Politics

Economic growth and most of the creature comforts enjoyed in developed and, increasingly, developing countries depend on the instant availability of power. Our lives would quickly become unrecognizable if the power stopped coming.

On May 1, President Evo Morales seized control of Bolivia's electric grid from one Spanish company and inaugurated a $600 million gas processing plant with another. Two weeks earlier, he boosted incentives for crude oil production in Bolivia's "nationalized" oil and gas sector by 300%, demonstrating an increasingly pragmatic, investor-friendly approach to nationalization.

It is not surprising to hear that representatives of the U.S. State Department stationed in Tegucigalpa, Honduras believed since at least March 2004 that the wealthiest man in Honduras, and U.S. government ally, was involved in the cocaine trade.

In remote corners of Bolivia, local communities are pioneering sustainable mining and forestry strategies that could provide useful models in the global struggle against climate change. Cotapata Mining Cooperative

The United States is courting Brazil's new president, Dilma Rousseff, about U.S. business interests in the country. President Obama will meet with Rousseff in Brazil on March 19-20 to lobby for Boeing to get a multibillion-dollar contract to make 36 fighter jets for the Brazilian Armed Forces, and to broker other economic opportunities for U.S companies around offshore oil reserve exploration, improving its tourism and transportation infrastructure, and strengthening its security operations before and during the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Christmas in Bolivia was short-lived last year, as tens of thousands thronged to the streets to protest the gasolinazo, a massive increase in gasoline prices provoked by the MAS government's abrupt cancellation of fuel subsidies on December 26. Five days later, the government was forced to rescind the decree amidst the first massive popular uprising against a leftist government.

On May 18 Brazilian President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan negotiated with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium. The success of the negotiations was hailed internationally, sealing Brazil's designation as a rising global power in what many are calling a new multi-polar world. However, this new wave of south-to-south solidarity also challenges what once was Washington's unipolar stranglehold on global politics.

Proclaiming its lithium deposits to be a permanent reserve of the state, the Bolivian government last month authorized a new state company to undertake "the full chain of lithium production," including "exploration, development, industrialization, and marketing." At issue is the future of Bolivia's vast Uyuni salt flats, the world's largest untapped lithium reserve, holding at least 5.4 million tons—almost half the world's known supply. Also at stake is a potentially significant source of wealth and an alternative development model that, if successful, could bring substantial benefits to Bolivia's impoverished population.

"I won't pay until the union workers return!" proclaimed 300 voices in unison on a recent Sunday in Mexico City, igniting a new campaign that joins consumer resistance in solidarity with the embattled Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME). In October Mexican President Felipe Calderón forcibly liquidated the state-owned Central Light and Power Company, suddenly dismissing 44,000 SME union members to the ranks of the unemployed. The nascent No Pague (Don't Pay) campaign represents the newest phase of the SME struggle against this and has three basic demands: emergency rehiring of the 18,000 SME workers who have not accepted termination; a freeze on electricity rates and restoration of pensioner subsidies; and a halt to privatization of energy resources.

On April 20, 2007, the communities of Ixcán, the northern region of Guatemala's department of El Quiché, voted overwhelmingly to reject the construction of a hydroelectric dam known as Xalalá. The result was hardly a surprise, given that at least 17 Ixcán communities, will be inundated because of the dam, according to El Observador, a bimonthly journal based in Guatemala City. Although the results of the consultation were sent to the Guatemalan government, it has yet to respond. But, the protests had an impact. In 2008, financiers withdrew support for the project and the national government is still working to renegotiate funding.

In northern Ecuador, a pine tree plantation was planted to absorb enough carbon to "offset" the emissions of coal-fired power plants on the other side of the globe. Despite the questionable scientific reasoning behind such "carbon offsetting" projects, the local indigenous community expected the plantation would help improve local economic conditions. Instead, everything went terribly wrong.

The Republican nominee's campaign team is packed with lobbyists of the oil industry and the Arizona Senator himself has been a reliable friend to the oil industry, leading him to support bloody U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Colombia to keep his friends at several oil companies happy. Under a potential McCain administration, the United States would remain the belligerent policeman of the world's oil fields.