Proliferation, Oil, and Climate: Solving for Pattern

Three of the most daunting foreign-policy tangles that threaten security, prosperity, environment,
and democracy—nuclear proliferation, climate change, and oil dependence—are normally
thought of in separate boxes, discussed in different fora, described in disparate language,
analyzed with unrelated tools, and dealt with by diverse communities schooled in dissimilar
disciplines. Yet these three problems hold in common three profound similarities.

All look intractable only because of a mistaken assumption about their economic fundamentals.

All share profitable, practical, proven solutions rooted in using energy in a way that saves
money—solutions that simultaneously solve all three problems plus many more.

All have powerful establishments—informed more by economic theory than by empirical
experience—whose immune systems reject those maverick solutions and default to familiar
futility.

To escape this dysfunction, we must, as epistemologist Gregory Bateson and farmer/poet
Wendell Berry put it, “solve for pattern.” President Obama’s Copenhagen speech did this by
linking an efficient clean-energy economy not just to climate protection but also to economic
gain, oil displacement, and national security. That was not a rhetorical flourish but a refreshing
expression of solving multiple problems simultaneously without creating more.

Within that context, this essay emphasizes...