Secretary of the Navy gives talk on energy security, US military

On April 24, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus visited Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability as part of the Wrigley Lecture Series to discuss energy security in the context of the U.S. military.

Kristen Hwang, a student at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and School of Earth and Space Exploration, reported on the event for Slate’s Future Tense channel.

“Environmentalists may laud Sec. Mabus for his Earth-friendly agenda, but finding alternative energy sources to fuel ships and aircraft is about war, not climate change,” writes Hwang.

At the event, Mabus referred to reducing carbon emissions and combating climate change as “side effects,” and asserted that the primary reason for the Navy’s shift toward alternative energy sources is “to become better warfighters” and reduce the Navy’s reliance on foreign-controlled energy reserves.

Mabus also said that the Navy and Marine Corps are on-track to meeting the energy goals he laid out in 2009, which include supplying half of all naval energy needs with alternative sources. “We’re going to meet these goals. It’ll make us better at our jobs. It’ll make us better warfighters. And it will make us and the world far more secure.”

Cultivating alternative energy sources is a pressing issue for all branches of the U.S. military - the Department of Defense is the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels, with an annual fuel budget of about $15 billion.

To learn more about Mabus’ visit to ASU, including connections between a shift to alternative energy and relations between the U.S. and Russia, read the full article at Future Tense.

Future Tense is a collaboration among ASU, the New America Foundation and Slate magazine that explores how emerging technologies affect policy and society.