Cost of Green
Why should we worry about 5c or 10c on a gallon of fuel down the local gas station when the US Navy (in all her glory) is willing to pay a staggering $26-a-gallon for 'green' synthetic biofuel(made we assume from the very same unicorn tears and leprechaun nipples that funded the ESM). AsReuters reports, the 'Great Green Fleet' will be the first carrier strike group powered largely by alternative fuels; as the Pentagon hopes it can prove the Navy looks just as impressive burning fuel squeezed from seeds, algae, and chicken fat (we did not make this up). The story gets better as it appears back in 2009, the Navy paid Solazyme (whose strategic advisors included TJ Gaulthier who served on Obama's White House Transition team) $8.5mm for 20,055 gallons on algae-based biofuel - a snip at just $424-a-gallon.
In its defense, the Navy Secretary said, ""Of course it costs more. It's a new technology. If we didn't pay a little bit more for new technologies, we'd still be using typewriters instead of computers." Of course, the switch from typewriters to computers proceeded without government mandates (or taxes, as they are called now) and in fact was led by the private sector -- the government trailed in this transition. Further, people paid the extra money for a computer because they found real value in it (document storage, easy editing, font flexibility). What real value is the Navy getting for the extra $22 a gallon? How much better will this task force perform? The answer, of course, is zero.
