The backdrop of an intensifying energy crisis has drawn the CIA director to Havana, a visit that underscores the geopolitical tremors of a warming planet. The meeting, confirmed by both Washington and Havana, comes as Cuba grapples with rolling blackouts and fuel shortages that threaten social stability. While intelligence chiefs often shuttle between adversaries to manage risks, this particular encounter is underpinned by a grim reality: the biosphere is in decline, and energy systems are fracturing under compound pressures.
For decades, Cuba’s energy infrastructure has been a Soviet-era relic, increasingly vulnerable to hurricanes and sea level rise. Now, as global fossil fuel markets oscillate between scarcity and price volatility, the island’s reliance on imported oil from Venezuela and Russia has become a liability. The CIA’s engagement signals more than diplomatic backchanneling. It reflects a growing recognition that climate breakdown coupled with energy insecurity can destabilise entire regions, creating humanitarian disasters that spill beyond borders.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, British energy resilience is being held up as a counterbalance to the fragility elsewhere. The United Kingdom’s grid has weathered the past year’s volatility with relative composure, thanks to a diversified portfolio of offshore wind, nuclear capacity, and interconnectors to continental Europe. When a cold snap coincided with a gas supply crunch last winter, Britain activated contingency protocols that kept hospitals powered and homes heated while parts of the EU faced emergency curtailments.
This resilience is not accidental. It is the product of deliberate policy choices: long term contracts for nuclear fuel, subsidies for battery storage, and a grid operator empowered to use market mechanisms to balance supply and demand. The British government has also invested heavily in energy efficiency, insulating millions of homes and encouraging heat pump adoption. These measures do not immunise against disruption, but they create cushions that absorb shocks.
For allies watching from vulnerable geographies, the British model offers a template. It demonstrates that energy independence need not mean isolation. Instead, it can be achieved through strategic interdependence: trading electricity with neighbours, stockpiling strategic reserves, and incentivising renewables alongside baseload capacity. The data are clear: from 2010 to 2023, the UK reduced its per capita carbon emissions by 37 per cent while maintaining gross domestic product growth. That decoupling is the kind of physical reality that should guide policy discussions in capitals from Havana to Berlin.
But the visit to Cuba also serves as a reminder that technology alone cannot solve the crisis. The island’s geography makes it a front line state for climate impacts. Warmer oceans intensify hurricanes that destroy transmission lines; droughts shrivel hydroelectric output; and rising seas threaten coastal power plants. Even if Cuba adopted the UK’s renewables mix, it would still require billions of dollars in adaptation finance, a sum that international commitments have not yet mustered.
The CIA director’s presence in Havana therefore implies a broader calculus. Intelligence agencies are now mapping not just human networks but also physical vulnerabilities: which transformer substations are exposed to floods, which gas pipelines cross seismic zones, and which nations might become failed states due to resource wars. This is the new normal of climate informed statecraft.
For the science correspondent observing these events, the urgency is palpable but not panicked. The planet will warm, but catastrophe is not foreordained. What we see in Britain’s grid is what a sober, evidence driven transition looks like. It is not glamorous. It involves insulating attics and building cables. But it works. The CIA’s flight to Havana is a symptom of the world we have created. The British resilience is a glimpse of the world we could still build.
