Editors at ENN share this perspective:

http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/11/11092001/s_45525.asp

One of the best things we can do for our national security is to minimize foreign oil. How?

Some people might suggest wind or solar power stations. But even Canada with over 60% renewable electrical infrastructure would either have to double the hydroelectric capacity or build over 760,000 wind turbines to replace the 40% non-renewable nuclear & diesel powerplant capacity.

Neither is the best option for the environment. The best option is zero growth of population & GDP, imposed limits on energy supplies, and trading of pollution permits combined with a program to reduce electrical consumption by 40%. This may be a lot easier than you think. For example replacing incandescent lights with high-pressure sodium lights would cut consumption by 75%. Using light-emitting diodes would reduce it by 95%. But simple supply-and-demand economics is not enough to achieve this. Some people will still buy incandescent bulbs and SUVs, environment and world political stability be damned. The Kyoto Protocol was meant to take care of pollution permit trading, and clearly OPEC has no problem at all imposing artificial limits to energy supplies. To go one step further would be to ban sales of particular products because they violate energy consumption limits.

If we are having resource wars it is clearly because there is not enough to go around. Sometimes people use religion to explain macroscopic patterns in society - effects that are clearly beyond man and attributable to god. But what they don't understand I think we can.