The concept of war in Michael Klare’s article should be understood as an actual, intentional, and widespread-armed conflict between political communities (“War”). The thirty years of war that engulfed Europe during 1618-1648 drew several nations in a bloodbath that started over the argument which Christian doctrine should prevail in the society. Klare observes the same phenomenon in today’s energy sector. In the year of 2010, world population used 87 % of fossil fuels for energy needs. After 40 years from now, fossil fuel will not be able to maintain this level of output, not considering 40 % increase in demand predicted by the analysts. According to Klare, the “new thirty years’ war” in the world has started in the energy sector in the year 2011.
Energy sector includes companies focused on energy exploration, extraction, refining, and distribution (“Energy Sector”). The major companies in this area, as noted by Klare, are BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell. These companies and countries associated with them are controlling world monopoly on fossil fuel. This is similar to the Catholic mongolism in Europe that resulted in the Thirty Years’ War in 1618. However, necessity is the mother of invention. Science and technology will engage themselves in finding a new source of energy to offset the fossil fuels in coming decades. Major oil companies will resist implementation of new inventions in the energy sector, as Habsburg Empire resisted Calvinism. The reason is that the future profitability of the world’s richest corporations will be at the risk once new energy sources like hydrogen power, cellulosic ethanol, wave power, and algae fuel try to replace fossil fuel (Klare). The researches say it takes thirty years to bring an innovative energy system from the laboratory to comprehensive industrial production. For today’s giant companies a shift away from fossil fuel business will have a massive economic impact. Thus, for the next thirty years, in the energy sector we are going to observe different battles of 1618-1648 (“The Thirty Years’ of Wars”): Bohemian period of battle (1618-1625), Danish Period of Battle (1625-1629), the Swedish period of battle (1630-1635), and the French Period of Battle (1635-1648). Some battles will be in favor of the existing petroleum giants, as it happened with Habsburg and Catholic victory in the Bohemian and Danish phases of wars. Other battles will end in a different way, as it happened in the Swedish period of the war.
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Though the thirty years of wars started as conflict between Catholic and non-Catholic, eventually, it turned into a new geo-political phase of war when Catholic France joined Protestant Sweden against Catholic Habsburg (“The Thirty Years’ of Wars”). We are bound to observe the same phenomenon in the forthcoming energy sector war. There will be new companies in coming decades that along with current petroleum giants will advocate for alternative energy. In the end, we would see a new Westphalia treaty, which will accept alternative energy sectors, as it was done in 1648 with the recognition of Calvinists and Lutherans (“The Thirty Years’ of Wars”). New energy sector and power will be divided among new powers as Peace of Westphalia divided Europe in separate states.
The above discussion shows strong similarity between current Global Energy Struggle and Thirty Years of Wars of 1618-1648, as predicted by Michael Klare. However, we are probably not going to observe a series of armed battles for the next thirty years, except for battles in geopolitical and financial sectors for taking control of the world energy sector.