Air Force Affirmative

AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
GT Air Force
GT Air Force............................................................................................................................................................1
1AC (1/14)...............................................................................................................................................................5
1AC (2/14)...............................................................................................................................................................6
1AC (3/14)...............................................................................................................................................................7
1AC (4/14)...............................................................................................................................................................8
1AC (5/14)...............................................................................................................................................................9
1AC (6/14).............................................................................................................................................................10
1AC (7/14).............................................................................................................................................................11
1AC (8/14).............................................................................................................................................................12
1AC (9/14).............................................................................................................................................................13
1AC (10/14)...........................................................................................................................................................14
1AC (11/14)...........................................................................................................................................................15
1AC (12/14)...........................................................................................................................................................16
1AC (13/14)...........................................................................................................................................................17
1AC (13/14)...........................................................................................................................................................18
1AC (14/14)...........................................................................................................................................................19
Inherency – Current DoD Strategy........................................................................................................................20
Inherency – Current DoD Strategy........................................................................................................................21
Inherency – Dependent Now ................................................................................................................................22
Inherency – Jet Fuel Demand................................................................................................................................23
Inherency – Renewables Cut Now.........................................................................................................................24
Inherency – Synfuel Now......................................................................................................................................25
Inherency – Algae Not Coming.............................................................................................................................28
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AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
Air Power – Key to Heg.........................................................................................................................................29
Air Power – Deterrence.........................................................................................................................................30
Air Power – Chinese Deterrence............................................................................................................................31
Air Power – Key to Ground Power........................................................................................................................32
Air Power – Urban Warfare...................................................................................................................................33
Air Power – Urban Warfare...................................................................................................................................34
Air Force Dependence – Readiness.......................................................................................................................35
Air Force Readiness – On the Brink......................................................................................................................36
Air Force Dependence – Readiness – Flying Hours..............................................................................................37
Air Force Dependence – Readiness - Comptrollers...............................................................................................38
Air Force – Readiness – Recapitalization..............................................................................................................39
Air Force Dependence – Indirect Dependency......................................................................................................40
Air Force Readiness – Key to All Readiness.........................................................................................................41
Oil Dependence – Economy..................................................................................................................................42
Oil Dependence – Laundry List.............................................................................................................................43
Oil Dependence – Peak Oil....................................................................................................................................44
Oil Dependence – Readiness.................................................................................................................................46
Oil Dependence - Readiness..................................................................................................................................47
Oil Dependence – Readiness – Convoys...............................................................................................................48
Oil Dependence – Readiness – Tech......................................................................................................................49
Oil Dependence – Terrorism..................................................................................................................................50
Oil Dependence – Terrorism..................................................................................................................................51
Oil Shocks – U.S. Vulnerable................................................................................................................................52
Oil Shocks – Readiness..........................................................................................................................................53
DoD – Heg/Energy Transition...............................................................................................................................54
Airlines – Brink......................................................................................................................................................55
Airlines – Want Algae............................................................................................................................................56
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AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
Airlines Want Algae...............................................................................................................................................57
Algae Solves Airlines.............................................................................................................................................58
Competitiveness – Market Spillover......................................................................................................................59
Competitiveness – Market Spillover......................................................................................................................60
Competitiveness – Military Defines Market..........................................................................................................61
Competiveness – Airlines......................................................................................................................................62
Algae Solvency – General.....................................................................................................................................63
Algae Solvency – General ....................................................................................................................................64
Algae Solves Dependency.....................................................................................................................................65
Algae – Solves Dependency..................................................................................................................................66
Algae – Replaces FF..............................................................................................................................................67
Algae Solvency – Warming/Pollution....................................................................................................................68
Algae Solves Now..................................................................................................................................................69
Solvency – Shifts from FT.....................................................................................................................................70
Solvency – Military Key........................................................................................................................................71
Algae – Solves Ethanol..........................................................................................................................................72
Solvency – Air Force Key......................................................................................................................................73
Solvency – Fed Key...............................................................................................................................................74
Solvency – Contracts.............................................................................................................................................75
Solvency – Cost.....................................................................................................................................................76
Food Prices Advantage (1/3)..................................................................................................................................77
Food Prices – Ethanol Ups Them..........................................................................................................................80
Ethanol Ups FF Use...............................................................................................................................................81
Iraq Advantage (1/2)..............................................................................................................................................82
Iraq Advantage (2/2)..............................................................................................................................................83
3
AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
2AC A2: Allies Will Give Us Cheap Oil...............................................................................................................84
2AC NAVY Add-On..............................................................................................................................................85
2AC Sequestration Add-On (1/2)...........................................................................................................................86
2AC Sequestration Add-On (2/2)...........................................................................................................................87
Algae Biofuel = Carbon Negative.........................................................................................................................88
Sequestration Increasing........................................................................................................................................89
2AC Alternate Military Sector CP.........................................................................................................................90
2AC Efficiency CP................................................................................................................................................91
2AC Ethanol CP.....................................................................................................................................................92
2AC Synfuel CP.....................................................................................................................................................93
2AC Synfuel CP.....................................................................................................................................................94
2AC Synfuel CP.....................................................................................................................................................95
Synfuel CP.............................................................................................................................................................96
Politics – Popular...................................................................................................................................................97
*** Neg ***...........................................................................................................................................................98
Solvency – Timeframe...........................................................................................................................................99
Solvency – More Energy.....................................................................................................................................101
Synfuel Good.......................................................................................................................................................102
Synfuel – Military Key........................................................................................................................................103
Synfuel – Gov’t Funding Key..............................................................................................................................104
Synfuel – Spillover..............................................................................................................................................105
Synfuel – Obama Gets Credit..............................................................................................................................106
Synfuel – Obama No Credit.................................................................................................................................107
Unpopular – Environmental Lobby.....................................................................................................................108
Bipartisan.............................................................................................................................................................109
AE?.......................................................................................................................................................................110
4
AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
1AC (1/14)
Contention One is Air Force Dependency
Military oil reliance is rising unsustainably now – a supply disruption would cripple overseas forces and
worldwide power projection.
Yochi J. Dreazen, WSJ staff, 5/21/2008, U.S. Military Launches Alternative-Fuel Push Dependence on Oil
Seen as Too Risky; B-1 Takes Test Flight, Wall Street Journal, L/N [ND]
With oil's multiyear ascent showing no signs of stopping -- crude futures set another record Tuesday, closing at $129.07 a barrel in
New York trading -- energy security has emerged as a major concern for the Pentagon.
The U.S. military consumes 340,000 barrels of oil a day, or 1.5% of all of the oil used in the country. The Defense Department's
overall energy bill was $13.6 billion in 2006, the latest figure available -- almost 25% higher than the year before. The Air Force's
bill for jet fuel alone has tripled in the past four years. When the White House submitted its latest budget request for the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, it tacked on a $2 billion surcharge for rising fuel costs.
Synthetic fuel, which can be made from coal or natural gas, is expensive now, but could cost far less than the current price of oil if it's
mass-produced.
Just as important, the military is increasingly concerned that its dependence on oil represents a strategic threat. U.S. forces in Iraq
alone consume 40,000 barrels of oil a day trucked in from neighboring countries, and would be paralyzed without it. Energy-security
advocates warn that terrorist attacks on oil refineries or tankers could cripple military operations around the world. "The endgame
is to wean the dependence on foreign oil," says Air Force Assistant Secretary William Anderson.
And, the Air Force is turning to synthetic fuels now, but they won’t work in the military or private sector.
General Michael P.C. Carns and Dr. James Schlesinger, Ret. United States Air Force general and co-chairman
of Defense Science Board, February 2008, “More Fight – Less Fuel,” Report of the Defense Science Board
Task Force on DoD Energy Strategy, http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2008-02-ESTF.pdf [ND]
The U.S. is an expeditionary oriented force. When it fights, it uses fuel closest to the point of engagement. Yet, DoD is currently
pursuing a number high profile, high cost demonstrations of domestically produced synthetic fuel. For example, the Air Force recently
completed a $35M test program which showed that a jet fuel comprised of 50% Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel and 50% commercial
fuel performs well in TF-33 engines on B-52 aircraft. This result is not unexpected since South African Airways have been flying a
50/50 mix of synthetic and commercial fuel for about 8 years. The expressed purpose of the initiative is to stimulate a domestic market
for synthetic jet fuel. Further, the Air Force has stated a goal of obtaining half its domestic fuel consumption from domestic synthetic
sources by 2016. Specifically, the Air Force has stated its intent to secure this fuel from a coal-to-liquid Fischer-Tropsch process.
The Task Force has strong concerns about the viability of this technology for a variety of reasons. Capital costs and production costs
are high, putting investments at long term risks. The environmental control technologies needed to allow the plants to operate over the
long term have only been demonstrated at limited scale and their costs are highly uncertain. Water demand also is very high using
current production technology, and many coal reserves are in arid regions. The process produces large amounts of contaminated
wastewater that must be treated. Further, a recent National Academy of Sciences report has raised questions about the estimates of
coal reserves.23 The Task Force concluded these large expenditures could be used for more productive contributions to DoD’s most
pressing energy challenges, rather than demonstrating synthetic fuel technologies that do not appear to have a viable market future
or contribute to reducing battlespace fuel demand.’
And, the Air Force is uniquely vulnerable – status quo efficiency measures won’t be enough.
The problems are particularly acute for the Air Force, which uses about 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, or 10% of the entire
domestic market in aviation fuel. The Air Force's fuel costs neared $6 billion last year, up from $2 billion in 2003, even as its
consumption fell by more than 10% over the same period because of energy-savings measures, including a campaign to shut off lights
and lower thermostats at bases.
5
AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
1AC (2/14)
Rising oil costs destroy Air Force operating capabilities.
Reuters, 5/23/2008, Every $10 oil rise ups Air Force costs $610 million,
http://www.enn.com/energy/article/36736/print [ND]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force operates the "world's largest airline" and every $10-per-barrel increase in crude oil
boosts its annual operating costs by $610 million, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said on Thursday.
The Air Force's bill for aviation fuel was about $6 billion in fiscal 2007, Wynne told a defense industry group. He declined to predict
what the total would be for 2008.
U.S. crude oil futures soared to a record above $135 a barrel on Wednesday, more than double the price of one year ago.
"We are very concerned about the instability in oil prices because it wreaks havoc on how we manage our flying-hour program across
the Air Force, just as it is wreaking havoc on the pricing statistics for an airline," Wynne said.
And fuel costs specifically drive budget and training cuts – lowers combat readiness.
Marc V. Schanz, Associate Editor of Air Force Magazine, 6/2007, The Fuel War,
http://www.afa.org/magazine/june2007/0607fuel.pdf [ND]
Since then, fuel costs have risen by roughly one-third, even as the overall budgets have grown tighter. The result is reduced funding
for flying hours to train aircrews. Flying commands have set minimum requirements for aircrew training, according to John Cilento,
an ACC fl ying hour program analyst. “It is an issue,” said Gen. Ronald E. Keys, ACC commander. “It’s always an issue.” Col. Eric
Best, chief of ACC flight operations, told Norfolk’s Virginian- Pilot that pilots are encouraged to land when a training mission is
completed, even if it ends early, rather than continue flying until allotted time expires. In addition, said Best, operators are being
encouraged to make more frequent use of simulators, though everyone realizes the systems can replicate only part of the flight
experience. Indeed, the Air Force Flying Hour Program budget is slated to be reduced by around 10 percent each year from Fiscal
2008 until 2013. One big reason is high fuel cost. The result, ACC officials say, is less training and lower combat readiness.
And the budget is key to force modernization and operations – any reductions directly affect readiness.
Lawrence Spinetta, 1st Fighter Wing Safety Office chief, Fall, 2006, Air Force Journal of Logistics,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBO/is_3_30/ai_n27099563/print?tag=artBody;col1 [ND]
The Air Force is not concerned with profitability, but it is concerned with managing shocks to its budget from price volatility.
Fluctuations in the price of oil adversely affect the Air Force's ability to ensure the necessary funds are available to finance force
modernization and fund operations. The timeline of the federal government budget cycle requires the Office of the Under Secretary
of Defense (the Comptroller) to estimate and establish a stabilized price for fuel and other fuel-related commodities 18 months in
advance of budget execution. Figure 1 diagrams the Defense Department's budget process as related to fuel. Not surprisingly, prices
set by the Comptroller often prove wildly inaccurate. For example, last year the Pentagon's forecast was so inaccurate that it had to set
a revised oil price that was 50 percent higher than the original price. (16) The problem is that the Services' budgets use inaccurate
forecasts and make budgeting decisions based on prices that are not representative of actual costs (see Figure 2).
6
AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
1AC (3/14)
Air power’s the U.S.’s key asymmetric advantage – it’s the only way to deter rivals in the Middle East,
stop insurgents, and solve Chinese conflict.
Charles J. Dunlap Jr., USAF Maj. Gen., 9/2006, America’s asymmetric advantage,
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/09/2009013 [ND]
INFLICTING HOPELESSNESS
So where does that leave us? If we are smart, we will have a well-equipped high-technology air power capability. Air power is
America’s asymmetric advantage and is really the only military capability that can be readily applied across the spectrum of conflict,
including, as is especially important these days, potential conflict. Consider the record. It was primarily air power, not land power, that
kept the Soviets at bay while the U.S. won the Cold War. And it was not just the bomber force and the missileers; it was the airlifters,
as well. There are few strategic victories in the annals of military history more complete and at so low a human cost as that won by
American pilots during the Berlin airlift. Armageddon was avoided.
And the flexibility and velocity of air power also provides good-news stories in friendly and low-threat areas. For example, huge U.S.
transports dropping relief supplies or landing on dirt strips in some area of humanitarian crisis get help to people on a timeline that can
make a real difference. Such operations also illustrate, under the glare of the global media, the true American character the world
needs to see more often if our strategic goals are to be achieved.
Air power also doesn’t have the multi-aspect vulnerabilities that boots on the ground do. It can apply combat power from afar and do
so in a way that puts few of our forces at risk. True, occasionally there will be a Francis Gary Powers, and certainly the Vietnam-era
POWs — mostly airmen — became pawns for enemy exploitation. Yet, if America maintains its aeronautical superiority, the enemy
will not be able to kill 2,200 U.S. aviators and wound another 15,000, as the ragtag Iraqi terrorists have managed to do to our land
forces.
And, of course, bombs will go awry. Allegations will be made (as they are currently against the Israelis) of targeting civilians and so
forth. But the nature of the air weapon is such that an Abu Ghraib or Hadithah simply cannot occur. The relative sterility of air power
— which the boots-on-the-ground types oddly find distressing as somehow unmartial — nevertheless provides greater opportunity for
the discreet application of force largely under the control of well-educated, commissioned officer combatants. Not a total insurance
policy against atrocity, but a far more risk-controlled situation.
Most important, however, is the purely military effect. The precision revolution has made it possible for air power to put a bomb
within feet of any point on earth. Of course, having the right intelligence to select that point remains a challenge — but no more, and
likely much less so, than for the land forces. The technology of surveillance is improving at a faster rate than is the ability to conceal.
Modern conveniences, for example, from cell phones to credit cards, all leave signatures that can lead to the demise of the increasing
numbers of adversaries unable to resist the siren song of techno-connection.
Regardless, eventually any insurgency must reveal itself if it is to assume power, and this inevitably provides the opportunity for air
power to pick off individuals or entire capabilities that threaten U.S. interests. The real advantage — for the moment anyway — is that
air power can do it with impunity and at little risk to Americans. The advances in American air power technology in recent years make
U.S. dominance in the air intimidating like no other aspect of combat power for any nation in history.
The result? Saddam Hussein’s pilots buried their airplanes rather than fly them against American warplanes. Indeed, the collapse of
the Iraqi armed forces was not, as the BOTGZ would have you believe, mainly because of the brilliance of our ground commanders
or, in fact, our ground forces at all. The subsequent insurgency makes it clear that Iraqis are quite willing to take on our ground troops.
What really mattered was the sheer hopelessness that air power inflicted on Iraq’s military formations.
A quotation in Time magazine by a defeated Republican Guard colonel aptly captures the dispiriting effect of high-tech air attack:
“[Iraqi leaders] forgot that we are missing air power. That was a big mistake. U.S. military technology is beyond belief.” It is no
surprise that the vaunted Republican Guard, the proud fighting organization that tenaciously fought Iran for years, practically jumped
out of their uniforms and scattered at the sound of approaching U.S. aircraft.
This same ability to inflict hopelessness was even more starkly demonstrated in Afghanistan. For a millennium, the Afghans have been
considered among the toughest fighters in the world. Afghan resistance has turned the countryside into a gigantic military cemetery for
legions of foreign invaders. For example, despite deploying thousands of troops, well-equipped Soviet forces found themselves
defeated after waging a savage war with practically every weapon at their disposal.
So what explains the rapid collapse of the Taliban and al-Qaida in 2001? Modern air power. More specifically, the marriage of
precision weapons with precise targeting by tiny numbers of Special Forces troops on the ground. The results were stunning.
Putatively invulnerable positions the Taliban had occupied for years literally disappeared in a rain of satellite-directed bombs from B-
1s and B-52s flying so high they could be neither seen nor heard.
7
AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
This new, high-tech air power capability completely unhinged the resistance without significant commitment of American boots on the
ground. Indeed, the very absence of American troops became a source of discouragement. As one Afghan told the New York Times,
“We pray to Allah that we have American soldiers to kill,” adding disconsolately, “These bombs from the sky we cannot
1AC (4/14)
fight.” Another equally frustrated Taliban fighter was reported in the London Sunday Telegraph recently as fuming that “American
forces refuse to fight us face to face,” while gloomily noting that “[U.S.] air power causes us to take heavy casualties.” In other words,
the Taliban and al-Qaida were just as tough as the mujahideen who fought the Russians, and more than willing to confront U.S. ground
forces, but were broken by the hopelessness that American-style air power inflicted upon them.
MORE THAN BOMBS
Today it is more than just bombing with impunity that imposes demoralization; it is reconnoitering with impunity. This is more than
just the pervasiveness of Air Force-generated satellites. It also includes hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles that are probing the
landscape in Iraq and Afghanistan. They provide the kind of reliable intelligence that permits the careful application of force so
advantageous in insurgency and counterterrorism situations. The insurgents are incapable of determining where or when the U.S.
employs surveillance assets and, therefore, are forced to assume they are watched everywhere and always. The mere existence of the
ever-present eyes in the sky no doubt inflicts its own kind of stress and friction on enemy forces.
In short, what real asymmetrical advantage the U.S. enjoys in countering insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan relates to a dimension
of air power. Strike, reconnaissance, strategic or tactical lift have all performed phenomenally well. It is no exaggeration to observe
that almost every improvement in the military situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is attributable to air power in some form; virtually
every setback, and especially the strategically catastrophic allegations of war crimes, is traceable to the land forces.
While it will be seldom feasible for America to effectively employ any sort of boots-on-the-ground strategy in current or future
counterinsurgency situations, the need may arise to destroy an adversary’s capability to inflict harm on U.S. interests. Although there
is no perfect solution to such challenges, especially in low-intensity conflicts, the air weapon is the best option. Ricks’ report in
“Fiasco,” for example, that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program never recovered from 1998’s Operation Desert Fox and its
four days of air attacks is interesting. It would appear that Iraq’s scientific minds readily conceded the pointlessness of attempting to
build the necessary infrastructure in an environment totally exposed to U.S. air attack.
This illustrates another salient feature of air power: its ability to temper the malevolent tendencies of societies accustomed to the
rewards of modernity. Given air power’s ability to strike war-supporting infrastructure, the powerful impulse of economic self-interest
complicates the ability of despots to pursue malicious agendas. American air power can rapidly educate cultured and sophisticated
societies about the costs of war and the futility of pursuing it. This is much the reason why air power alone delivered victory in
Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999, without the need to put a single U.S. soldier at risk on the ground.
At the same time, America’s pre-eminence in air power is also the best hope we have to dissuade China — or any other future peer
competitor — from aggression. There is zero possibility that the U.S. can build land forces of the size that would be of real concern to
a China. No number of troops or up-armored Humvees, new radios or advanced sniper rifles worries the Chinese. What dominating air
power precludes is the ability to concentrate and project forces, necessary elements to applying combat power in hostile areas. As but
one illustration, think China and Taiwan.
Saddam might have underestimated air power, but don’t count on the Chinese to make the same mistake. China is a powerful, vast
country with an exploding, many-faceted economy with strong scientific capabilities. It will take focused and determined efforts for
the U.S. to maintain the air dominance that it currently enjoys over China and that, for the moment, deters them. Miscalculating here
will be disastrous because, unlike with any counterinsurgency situation (Iraq included), the very existence of the U.S. is at risk.
8
AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
1AC (5/14)
And those are the most likely locations for nuclear shoot-outs to break out.
Paul Dibb, Prof at Australian National University, 1/1/2001, Strategic Trends.(military and political in Asia),
Naval War College Review, L/N [ND]
Asia at a Crossroads
The areas of maximum danger and instability in the world today are in Asia, followed by the Middle East and parts of the former
Soviet Union. The strategic situation in Asia is more uncertain and potentially threatening than anywhere in Europe. Unlike in Europe,
it is possible to envisage war in Asia involving the major powers: remnants of Cold War ideological confrontation still exist across the
Taiwan Straits and on the Korean Peninsula; India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and these two countries
are more confrontational than at any time since the early 1970s; in Southeast Asia, Indonesia--which is the world's fourth-largest
country--faces a highly uncertain future that could lead to its breakup. The Asia-Pacific region spends more on defense (about $150
billion a year) than any other part of the world except the United States and Nato Europe. China and Japan are amongst the top four or
five global military spenders. Asia also has more nuclear powers than any other region of the world.
Asia's security is at a crossroads: the region could go in the direction of peace and cooperation, or it could slide into confrontation and
military conflict. There are positive tendencies, including the resurgence of economic growth and the spread of democracy, which
would encourage an optimistic view. But there are a number of negative tendencies that must be of serious concern. There are deep-
seated historical, territorial, ideological, and religious differences in Asia. Also, the region has no history of successful multilateral
security cooperation or arms control. Such multilateral institutions as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the ASEAN
Regional Forum have shown themselves to be ineffective when confronted with major crises.
And readiness is key to heg – signals deters hostile nations.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy at The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic
Policy Studies, 9/15/2K, “The Facts about military readiness”, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #1394
Military readiness is vital because declines in America's military readiness signal to the rest of the world that the United States is not
prepared to defend its interests. Therefore, potentially hostile nations will be more likely to lash out against American allies and
interests, inevitably leading to U.S. involvement in combat. A high state of military readiness is more likely to deter potentially hostile
nations from acting aggressively in regions of vital national interest, thereby preserving peace
9
AIR FORCE AFF
DDI 2008 – GT
DONLAN/KATS-RUBIN
1AC (6/14)
Heg solves extinction – multipolarity is the comparatively more likely scenario for nuclear shoot-outs.
Rob Kagan, Senior Assc @ Carnegie, Aug/Sept 2007 "End of Dreams, Return of History." Policy Review,.
Avail Online: www.hoover.org
By the same token, foreign policy failures do not necessarily undermine predominance. Some have suggested that failure in Iraq
would mean the end of predominance and unipolarity. But a superpower can lose a war — in Vietnam or in Iraq — without ceasing to
be a superpower if the fundamental international conditions continue to support its predominance. So long as the United States
remains at the center of the international economy and the predominant military power, so long as the American public continues to
support American predominance as it has consistently for six decades, and so long as potential challengers inspire more fear than
sympathy among their neighbors, the structure of the international system should remain as the Chinese describe it: one superpower
and many great powers. This is a good thing, and it should continue to be a primary goal of American foreign policy to perpetuate this
relatively benign international configuration of power. The unipolar order with the United States as the predominant power is
unavoidably riddled with flaws and contradictions. It inspires fears and jealousies. The United States is not immune to error, like all
other nations, and because of its size and importance in the international system those errors are magnified and take on greater
significance than the errors of less powerful nations. Compared to the ideal Kantian international order, in which all the world 's
powers would be peace-loving equals, conducting themselves wisely, prudently, and in strict obeisance to international law, the
unipolar system is both dangerous and unjust. Compared to any plausible alternative in the real world, however, it is relatively stable
and less likely to produce a major war between great powers. It is also comparatively benevolent, from a liberal perspective, for it is
more conducive to the principles of economic and political liberalism that Americans and many others value. American predominance
does not stand in the way of progress toward a better world, therefore. It stands in the way of regression toward a more dangerous
world. The choice is not between an American-dominated order and a world that looks like the European Union. The future
international order will be shaped by those who have the power to shape it. The leaders of a post-American world will not meet in Brussels but in Beijing, Moscow,
and Washington. If the world is marked by the persistence of unipolarity, it is nevertheless also being shaped by the reemergence of competitive national ambitions of the kind that have shaped human affairs from time
immemorial. During the Cold War, this historical tendency of great powers to jostle with one another for status and influence as well as for wealth and power was largely suppressed by the two superpowers and their rigid
bipolar order. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not been powerful enough, and probably could never be powerful enough, to suppress by itself the normal ambitions of nations. This does not mean the world
has returned to multipolarity, since none of the large powers is in range of competing with the superpower for global influence. Nevertheless, several large powers are now competing for
regional predominance, both with the United States and with each other. National ambition drives China's foreign policy today, and although it is tempered by prudence and the
desire to appear as unthreatening as possible to the rest of the world, the Chinese are powerfully motivated to return their nation to what they regard as its traditional position as the preeminent power in East Asia. They do not
share a European, postmodern view that power is pass é; hence their now two-decades-long military buildup and modernization. Like the Americans, they believe power, including military power, is a good thing to have and
that it is better to have more of it than less. Perhaps more significant is the Chinese perception, also shared by Americans, that status and honor, and not just wealth and security, are important for a nation. The Chinese do not
share the view that power is passé; hence their now two decades- long military buildup. Japan, meanwhile, which in the past could have been counted as an aspiring postmodern power — with its pacifist constitution and low
defense spending — now appears embarked on a more traditional national course. Partly this is in reaction to the rising power of China and concerns about North Korea 's nuclear weapons. But it is also driven by Japan's own
national ambition to be a leader in East Asia or at least not to play second fiddle or "little brother" to China. China and Japan are now in a competitive quest with each trying to augment its own status and power and to prevent
the other 's rise to predominance, and this competition has a military and strategic as well as an economic and political component. Their competition is such that a nation like South Korea, with a long unhappy history as a
pawn between the two powers, is once again worrying both about a "greater China" and about the return of Japanese nationalism. As Aaron Friedberg commented, the East Asian future looks more like Europe 's past than its
present. But it also looks like Asia's past. Russian foreign policy, too, looks more like something from the nineteenth century. It is being driven by a typical, and typically Russian, blend of national resentment and ambition. A
postmodern Russia simply seeking integration into the new European order, the Russia of Andrei Kozyrev, would not be troubled by the eastward enlargement of the eu and nato, would not insist on predominant influence
over its "near abroad," and would not use its natural resources as means of gaining geopolitical leverage and enhancing Russia 's international status in an attempt to regain the lost glories of the Soviet empire and Peter the
Great. But Russia, like China and Japan, is moved by more traditional great-power considerations, including the pursuit of those valuable if intangible national interests: honor and respect. Although Russian leaders complain
about threats to their security from nato and the United States, the Russian sense of insecurity has more to do with resentment and national identity than with plausible external military threats. 16 Russia's complaint today is
not with this or that weapons system. It is the entire post-Cold War settlement of the 1990s that Russia resents and wants to revise. But that does not make insecurity less a factor in Russia 's relations with the world; indeed, it
makes finding compromise with the Russians all the more difficult. One could add others to this list of great powers with traditional rather than postmodern aspirations. India 's regional ambitions are more muted, or are
focused most intently on Pakistan, but it is clearly engaged in competition with China for dominance in the Indian Ocean and sees itself, correctly, as an emerging great power on the world scene. In the Middle East there is
Iran, which mingles religious fervor with a historical sense of superiority and leadership in its region. 17 Its nuclear program is as much about the desire for regional hegemony as about defending Iranian territory from attack
by the United States. Even the European Union, in its way, expresses a pan-European national ambition to play a significant role in the world, and it has become the vehicle for channeling German, French, and British
ambitions in what Europeans regard as a safe supranational direction. Europeans seek honor and respect, too, but of a postmodern variety. The honor they seek is to occupy the moral high ground in the world, to exercise
moral authority, to wield political and economic influence as an antidote to militarism, to be the keeper of the global conscience, and to be recognized and admired by others for playing this role. Islam is not a nation, but
many Muslims express a kind of religious nationalism, and the leaders of radical Islam, including al Qaeda, do seek to establish a theocratic nation or confederation of nations that would encompass a wide swath of the
Middle East and beyond. Like national movements elsewhere, Islamists have a yearning for respect, including self-respect, and a desire for honor. Their national identity has been molded in defiance against stronger and often
oppressive outside powers, and also by memories of ancient superiority over those same powers. China had its "century of humiliation." Islamists have more than a century of humiliation to look back on, a humiliation of
which Israel has become the living symbol, which is partly why even Muslims who are neither radical nor fundamentalist proffer their sympathy and even their support to violent extremists who can turn the tables on the
dominant liberal West, and particularly on a dominant America which implanted and still feeds the Israeli cancer in their midst. Islamists have more than a century of humiliation to look back on. Israel has become its living
Americans have insisted
symbol Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative,
on preserving regional predominance in East Asia; the Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was
its goal after the Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration and continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its influence
eastward across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as it maintains its position as the predominant global power, it is also engaged
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in hegemonic competitions in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and Central Asia, and
with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States, too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath
to acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global place as "No. 1" and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having entered a region, whether for practical or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from
it until they believe they have substantially transformed it in their own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the behavior of billions of people
Nationalism in all its
around the globe. The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War international system.
forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for power, influence, honor, and status. American
predominance prevents these rivalries from intensifying — its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the United States to
diminish its influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle disputes as great and
lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and wars of
1AC (7/14)
varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess
nuclear weapons. That could make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is easy but also
dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in providing a measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts
stability. For instance, the United States is the dominant naval power everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it even
in their home waters. They either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of international waterways
and trade routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the United States engages in a war, it is
able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not. Nations would
compete for naval dominance at least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict between nations would involve struggles on
the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in World War i and other major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows
in a way that is now impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests not only on the goodwill of peoples but also on American
power. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation provided by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to
American power, for without it the European nations after World War ii would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the thought, but even today Europe 's stability depends on the
In a genuinely multipolar world, that would
guarantee, however distant and one hopes unnecessary, that the United States could step in to check any dangerous development on the continent.
not be possible without renewing the danger of world war. People who believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to
the present American predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys today exists independently of American power. They
imagine that in a world where American power was diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would remain in place. But that 's not the way it works. International order
does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by configurations of power. The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the world since
World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its own kind of
order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping it. Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is
doubtful that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe. The current order, of course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no guarantee against major conflict among the world 's
great powers. Even under the umbrella of unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt between China and Taiwan and draw in both the United States and Japan. War could erupt
between Russia and Georgia, forcing the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the consequences of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does
conflicts may be unavoidable no matter what
conflict between Iran and Israel or other Middle Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United States. Such
policies the United States pursues. But they are more likely to erupt if the United States weakens or withdraws from its positions of
regional dominance. This is especially true in East Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable American power has a stabilizing and pacific effect on the region. That is certainly the view of most of China 's
neighbors. But even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the dilemma that an American withdrawal could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist
Japan. Conflicts are more likely to erupt if the United States withdraws from its positions of regional dominance . In Europe, too, the departure of the
United States from the scene — even if it remained the world's most powerful nation — could be destabilizing. It could tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially forceful approach to unruly nations on its
periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to the possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent
American role in Europe, history suggests that conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even without Soviet communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe — if it adopted what some call a strategy of
"offshore balancing" — this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving Russia and its near neighbors, which could in turn draw the United States back in under unfavorable circumstances. It is also optimistic
to imagine that a retrenchment of the American position in the Middle East and the assumption of a more passive, "offshore" role would lead to greater stability there. The vital interest the United States has in access to oil and
the role it plays in keeping access open to other nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would stand back and hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a
more "even-handed" policy toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the need to come to Israel 's aid if its security became threatened. That
commitment, paired with the American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world, practically ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the ground. The
subtraction of American power from any region would not end conflict but would simply change the equation. In the Middle East, competition for influence among powers both inside and outside the region has raged for at
least two centuries. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism doesn 't change this. It only adds a new and more threatening dimension to the competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between Israel and the
The alternative to American predominance in the region is not balance and peace. It is
Palestinians nor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq would change.
further competition. The region and the states within it remain relatively weak. A diminution of American influence would not be
followed by a diminution of other external influences. One could expect deeper involvement by both China and Russia, if only to secure their interests. And one could also expect the 18
more powerful states of the region, particularly Iran, to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American administration would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of power in the Middle East
The world hasn 't changed that much. An American withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to "normal" or
further toward Russia, China, or Iran.
to a new kind of stability in the region. It will produce a new instability, one likely to draw the United States back in again. The
alternative to American regional predominance in the Middle East and elsewhere is not a new regional stability. In an era of
burgeoning nationalism, the future is likely to be one of intensified competition among nations and nationalist movements. Difficult as
it may be to extend American predominance into the future, no one should imagine that a reduction of American power or a retraction
of American influence and global involvement will provide an easier path.
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There’s no offense in the status quo – attempts to secure oil supplies merely trigger blowback.
Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, 6/12/2008, Garrisoning
the Global Gas Station, Challenging the Militarization of U.S. Energy Policy,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174943/michael_klare_the_pentagon_as_energy_insecurity_inc_ [ND]
In reality, the use of military force to protect foreign oil supplies is likely to create anything but "security." It can, in fact, trigger
violent "blowback" against the United States. For example, the decision by the senior President Bush to maintain an enormous,
permanent U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia following Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait is now widely viewed as a major
source of virulent anti-Americanism in the Kingdom, and became a prime recruiting tool for Osama bin Laden in the months leading
up to the 9/11 terror attacks. "For over seven years," bin Laden proclaimed in 1998, "the United States has been occupying the lands of
Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its
neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight neighboring Muslim peoples." To repel this
assault on the Muslin world, he thundered, it was "an individual duty for every Muslim" to "kill the Americans" and drive their armies
"out of all the lands of Islam."
And, a terrorist attack would trigger a third world war.

Mohammed Sid-Ahmed, political analyst for the ‘Al-Ahram,’ August 26, 2004, Extinction!, Al-Ahram Weekly
On-Line, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm
Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used
only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached
a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify
anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation
that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded. What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even
if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies
would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and
religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a
different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This
could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side
triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be
losers.
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Contention Two is the Private Sector
U.S. competitiveness is on the brink now – economic troubles and reliance on financial sector.
AP 5/15/08, U.S. maintains top slot in competitiveness survey,
http://www.livemint.com/2008/05/15100644/US-maintains-top-slot-in-com.html [ND]
Geneva: The United States topped world competitiveness rankings for the 15th straight year, but its economy is showing the same
signs of weakness that sank booming Japan in the early 1990s, according to an annual survey released today.
Asian tigers Singapore and Hong Kong ranked just behind the U.S., as they did last year. Switzerland jumped two places to fourth,
while Luxembourg rounded out the top five most competitive national economies, said the Lausanne, Switzerland-based, IMD
business school, publisher of the World Competitiveness Yearbook.
U.S may slide from its No. 1 position next year
“The big question is whether the United States will be No. 1 after this year,” project director Stephane Garelli said, adding that the
report was based on 2007 data that don’t not fully reflect all of the problems in U.S. financial markets. “Everyone is catching up very
quickly, but so far the U.S. economy is showing a lot of resilience.”
The study lists 55 economies according to 331 criteria that measure how the nations create and maintain conditions favourable to
businesses.
The U.S. position was cemented by its domestic economy, which is the world’s strongest, topping all others in its amount of
investments, stock purchases and commercial service exports. It also ranks as the easiest place to secure venture capital for business
development and dominates all other economies in key technology criteria such as computers in use, according to the report.
But Garelli warned that U.S. economic health is vulnerable because of its heavy reliance on the financial sector for corporate profits.
In particular, the airline industry is failing now – rising fuel bills mean 6 billion in losses.
m-Travel 7/15/2008, US airline industry's fuel bill to touch $61 billion this year, http://www.m-
travel.com/news/2008/07/us-airline-indu.html [ND]
The Air Transport Association has indicated that the US airline industry's fuel bill this year will touch at least $61 billion mark,
compared with 2007's $41 billion and 2006's $32 billion.
A year ago, US airlines were enjoying welcome profits after a half-decade of big losses. The 10 largest carriers together earned $3.7
billion in the second quarter of 2007, the industry's best second quarter since 2000, highlighted The Dallas Morning News. However,
going forward, the consensus among industry analysts is that the same 10 carriers will lose around $750 million in the quarter, on their
way to an estimated full-year 2008 loss approaching $6 billion.
And the airline industry is key to economic growth.

Kevin Mitchell, Business Travel Coalition, 6/12/2008, Oil Prices and the Looming U.S. Aviation
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Industry Catastrophe:A Hole In The Transport Grid,
http://businesstravelcoalition.com/campaigns/consolidation/airline_crisis_report.pdf [ND]
The U.S. airlines, and those who depend upon them, are watching with growing alarm as their cash reserves fall precipitously toward
zero as the price of oil, already at unsustainable levels, continuously spikes into uncharted territory. These airlines and their
stakeholders have never faced a darker future. With airlines gravely threatened, so is our economic well-being in the United States.
Airlines are the primary source for intercity transportation and are critical to national and local economic development, the flow of
human capital, the movement of just-in-time parts for manufacturing and the transport of perishable food and other goods our
economy depends upon.
1AC (10/14)
And a loss in innovation would bring down the U.S. – ensures economic and military decline.
Adam Segal, Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations,
12/2004, “Is America Losing its edge?” Foreign Affairs, Lexis
The United States' global primacy depends in large part on its ability to develop new technologies and industries faster than anyone
else. For the last five decades, U.S. scientific innovation and technological entrepreneurship have ensured the country's economic
prosperity and military power. It was Americans who invented and commercialized the semiconductor, the personal computer, and the Internet;
other countries merely followed the U.S. lead. Today, however, this technological edge-so long taken for granted-may be slipping, and the most
serious challenge is coming from Asia. Through competitive tax policies, increased investment in research and development (R&D), and preferential
policies for science and technology (S&T) personnel, Asian governments are improving the quality of their science and ensuring the exploitation of
future innovations. The percentage of patents issued to and science journal articles published by scientists in China, Singapore, South Korea, and
Taiwan is rising. Indian companies are quickly becoming the second-largest producers of application services in the world, developing, supplying,
and managing database and other types of software for clients around the world. South Korea has rapidly eaten away at the U.S. advantage in the
manufacture of computer chips and telecommunications software. And even China has made impressive gains in advanced technologies such as
lasers, biotechnology, and advanced materials used in semiconductors, aerospace, and many other types of manufacturing. Although the United
States' technical dominance remains solid, the globalization of research and development is exerting considerable pressures on the
American system. Indeed, as the United States is learning, globalization cuts both ways: it is both a potent catalyst of U.S.
technological innovation and a significant threat to it. The United States will never be able to prevent rivals from developing new
technologies; it can remain dominant only by continuing to innovate faster than everyone else. But this won't be easy; to keep its
privileged position in the world, the United States must get better at fostering technological entrepreneurship at home.
Economic decline leads to nuclear war.

Mead 1998 – Senior Fellow Council on Foreign Relations
LA Times, 8-23
Even with stock markets tottering around the world, the president and the Congress seem determined to spend the next six months
arguing about dress stains. Too bad. The United States and the world are facing what could grow into the greatest threat to world peace
in 60 years. Forget suicide car bombers and Afghan fanatics. It's the financial markets, not the terrorist training camps that pose the
biggest immediate threat to world peace. How can this be? Think about the mother of all global meltdowns: the Great Depression that
started in 1929. U.S. stocks began to collapse in October, staged a rally, then the market headed south big time. At the bottom, the
Dow Jones industrial average had lost 90% of its value. Wages plummeted, thousands of banks and brokerages went bankrupt,
millions of people lost their jobs. There were similar horror stories worldwide. But the biggest impact of the Depression on the United
States--and on world history--wasn't money. It was blood: World War II, to be exact. The Depression brought Adolf Hitler to power in
Germany, undermined the ability of moderates to oppose Joseph Stalin's power in Russia, and convinced the Japanese military that the
country had no choice but to build an Asian empire, even if that meant war with the United States and Britain. That's the thing about
depressions. They aren't just bad for your 401(k). Let the world economy crash far enough, and the rules change. We stop playing
"The Price is Right" and start up a new round of "Saving Private Ryan."
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1AC (11/14)
Thus the plan:
The United States federal government should fund United States Department of Defense research and
development for the procurement of algae biofuel.
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Contention Three is Solvency
Algal oil solves dependency and the private sector – military R&D would drive prices down.
Mark S. Danigole, Lt Col, USAF, December 2007, BIOFUELS: AN ALTERNATIVE TO U.S. AIR FORCE
PETROLEUM FUEL DEPENDENCY, http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-
bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA474843&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf [ND]
Algae Fuel Production Just like terrestrial plants, algae can be grown to produce oil. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has
extensive experience cultivating and manipulating microalgae to produce lipids or oils.80 According to the NREL, “The recipe for
getting microalgae to produce lipids sounds like a daydream for using underutilized resources: put them in salty water unfit for other
use, expose them to the sun in areas unsuitable for growing crops, feed them power plant or other exhaust gas that threatens the world
climate, and deny them certain vital nutrients.”81 Microalgae naturally store oil when denied nutrients used for growth and energy.
“By manipulating nutrients and other growth conditions and by selecting and genetically engineering algae strains to increase oil
production, NREL researchers were able to attain remarkably high lipid production levels.”82 An advantage of producing oil with
algae is that unlike terrestrial based plants, algae do not require precipitation or good soil, all they require is carbon dioxide, sunlight
and saline water in which to grow. Figure 9 illustrates the two-step process by which algae can be used to produce hydrocarbon jet
fuel. NREL is proposing to work with U.S. petroleum refiners and the USAF to: 1) genetically engineer strains that can achieve the
required lipid yields to meet DoD’s needs, and 2) develop the downstream processing technology for converting the lipids to energy
dense hydrocarbon jet fuel in a conventional petroleum refinery. It is also possible to refine the lipids to diesel and gasoline for use in
other military or civilian vehicles.83 These refined finished products would contain near-zero oxygen, and would have a chemical
composition more like a petroleum product than a biomass-derived product. While it is technically possible to carry out the second
step (lipid refining) with plant-based lipids, e.g. soybean oil or rapeseed oil, the quantity of oil feedstocks required to meet DoD’s need
exceeds the available supply of these plant-based oils. Algae oil offers a solution since they can produce oil under conditions that are
unsuitable for traditional agriculture. Although areas like the desert Southwest or seashore are unsuitable for typical crop growth, by
making use of man-made cultivation ponds, algae can flourish in these otherwise sparse environments.85 It was originally believed
that inexpensive shallow ponds provided the most cost-effective way to grow algae. Table 3 shows a comparison of oil production
from traditional biological sources. With the research NREL is proposing, it may be possible to achieve lipid productivities per acre
that far exceed terrestrial plants. Algae oil production of more than 50 times that per acre of traditional oilseed crops may be
achievable, yielding as much as 15,000 gallons of oil per year.86 In addition to closed ponds, the low cost of plastic containers offers
the possibility of growing algae in closed systems such as transparent tubes with even greater yield rates possible.87 carbon dioxide.
One potential solution is placing algae pools next to coal burning power plants. According to Isaac Berzin, founder of Greenfuel, “just
one 1,000 megawatt power plant using this system could produce more than 40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons of
ethanol a year. That would require a 2,000-acre “farm” of algae-filled tubes near the power plant. There are nearly 1,000 power plants
nationwide with enough space nearby for a few hundred to a few thousand acres to grow algae and make a good profit.”89 In addition
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to thriving under conditions unsuitable for other crops, and thereby preserving arable land for food production, the properties of algae
produced oil are superior to oil produced by terrestrial means. According to NREL, using hydroprocessing technologies already used
by oil refineries to remove impurities, “algae oils could be made into a kerosene-like fuel very similar to petroleum-derived…
commercial and military jet fuels.”90 With algae fuel production capacity using existing refineries, the logical question is what it
would require to produce 5 billion gallons of jet fuel. According to Dr. Michael Pacheco, Director of the National Bioenergy Center,
current technology is capable of producing 1,000 to 1,200 gallons of algae oil per acre suitable for jet fuel refining. Therefore, a pond
capable of producing 5 billion gallons of jet fuel would consume 6,500 square miles.91 Although currently capable of producing as
much as 15,000 gallons of oil per acre, NREL scientists have yet to succeed in producing 15,000 gallons of oil suitable for jet fuel
refinement.92 Dr. Pacheco is convinced it will require two to three more years before production volumes of high-quality algae oil
suitable for jet fuel refinement increase to the 10 to 15 thousand gallon per acre goal. Once achieved, the current 6,500 square mile
requirement will be reduced to 830 square miles.93 Figure 10 illustrates the size of these ponds as they would relate to the state of
Arizona. Algae produced oil offers a solution to production concerns presented by terrestrial produced biodiesel. Algae have the
potential to out-produce all biofuels. With yields of 5,000 to 15,000 gallons per acre of algae, algae could produce 100 times the
volume of other biological fuels each year. As Isaac Berzin of Greenfuel stated, “just one 1,000 megawatt power plant using his
system could produce more than 40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year.” With nearly 1,000 power
plants nationwide algae has the potential to produce 10 times the amount of biodiesel required for USAF consumption.145 As with
biobutanol, the infrastructure does not exist for algae to produce jet fuel. In order for algae produced jet fuel to gain public acceptance,
the price must be reduced from its current price of four dollars per gallon to a more competitive two dollars per gallon.146 Once an
economic pathway is established, algae produced jet fuel production could meet USAF and National biofuel demand.
1AC (13/14)
Biofuels are better for military readiness, decrease emissions and could meet the needs of all world jets.
Tom Z. Collina and Patrick H. O’Neil. The News Tribune. Airplane biofuels even greener now that they’re
becoming cheaper. April 13th, 2008 http://www.thenewstribune.com/467/v-printerfriendly/story/333879.html
As a result, the industry is pursuing an option that can address both security and climate concerns: biofuels made from plants.
Boeing, Virgin Atlantic and Continental are leading the charge. In February, Virgin flew an unmodified Boeing 747 from London
to Amsterdam on biofuel made from babassu nuts and coconut oils (the biofuel was provided by Seattle-based Imperium
Renewables). Continental plans a similar effort next year. Richard Branson, Virgin’s president, said: “This pioneering flight will
enable those of us who are serious about reducing our carbon emissions to go on developing the fuels of the future.”
Biofuels have significant advantages over coal. They can be produced both domestically and, potentially, at the point of military
engagement, thus reducing oil demand overall and the need for long fuel convoys that are vulnerable to attack. And biofuels can be
produced in ways that create no net increase in carbon emissions.
Air Force energy development key to a viable aviation industry.

Michael W. Wynne, Secretary of the Air Force, SECAF discusses alternative energy initiatives at conference,
4/25/2008, http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123096037 [ND]
Responding to questions after the panel, Secretary Wynne emphasized how the private sector is an important partner for Air Force
alternative energy initiatives. He also noted that civil and commercial innovation often follows military sponsorship of technology
"mega-projects."
"Developing a process that will produce new clean synthetic fuels is an ambitious goal," Secretary Wynne said, "but we have a good
track record of succeeding at this sort of project. The military has a unique ability to overcome start up costs that commerce cannot.
"From the Manhattan Project that gave us nuclear energy, to the Atlas Rocket Project that led to commercial space, to ARPAnet that
paved the way for the Internet, the military has often played an important role in moving the technological ball forward," the secretary
said.
"What the Air Force is doing today is paving the way for the aviation industry to become less dependent on an expensive and unstable
energy sources and implement more environmentally sound practices," he said.
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DoD investment would restore tech leadership and international competitiveness.
Michael J. Hornitschek, Lt Col, USAF, 2/17/2006, WAR WITHOUT OIL: A CATALYST FOR TRUE
TRANSFORMATION,
http://www.nps.edu/cebrowski/Docs/sustainability/other%20articles/War%20Without%20Oil.pdf [ND]
Energy research & development – The final required element in the DoD’s quest for foreign oil independence is the recreation of R&D
accomplishments on the scale that allowed America’s aerospace engineers to send Neil Armstrong to the moon. After decades of
successful innovation since Apollo, President Bush and others have stated that today America’s global innovation leadership position
is under attack by the effects of globalization. On the positive side, U.S. companies can significantly reduce costs by outsourcing both
menial and intellectual work for pennies on the dollar in a globalized world. On the negative side, the growing lack of interest (and
ability) on the part of American students to pursue engineering and science degrees, coupled with a reverse brain-drain of R&D talent
back to new renaissance countries like India and China, has left the U.S. with a quickly aging science and engineering community and
the prospect of losing its position of science and technology leadership in the world. To illustrate, last year in Germany 36 percent of
undergraduate students earned degrees in math and science, in China 59 percent, and in Japan 66 percent–in the US the figure was
only 32 percent124. In 2004, China graduated over 600,000 engineers, India 350,000, and America only about 70,000.125
Underscoring the President’s acknowledgement of this problem in his 31 January 2006 State of the Union Address126, the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century best articulates the alarm in their
2005 report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, in which they state: It is easy to be complacent about the US competitiveness and pre-
eminence in S&T. We have led the world for decades, and we continue to do so in many research fields today. But the world is
changing rapidly, and our advantages are no longer unique. Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness,
we can expect to lose our privileged position. For the first time in generations, the nation’s children could face poorer prospects than
their parents and grandparents did.” The report continues, “The US faces enormous challenges because of the disadvantage it faces in
labor costs. S&T provides the opportunity to overcome this disadvantage by creating scientists and engineers with the ability to create
entirely new industries (emphasis added)—much as has been done in the past.127 In response to their alarm, the committee identified
two challenges tightly coupled to scientific and engineering prowess: creating high quality jobs for Americans and responding to the
nation’s need for clean, affordable, and reliable energy.128 The NAS identifies a nexus of opportunity that simultaneously strengthens
the economy and national security while simultaneously solving America’s looming energy crisis—the intense application of an R&D
commitment that promises intellectual and financial reward for those Americans already inspired, and those yet to be inspired in the
sciences. With a DoD commitment to lead its own energy revolution, the U.S could create an entirely new, leading-edge, commercial
sector for the global market; a sector that could propel the U.S. economy for decades and turn this nation into a new energy or energy
technology exporter, much like the U.S. achieved in the 1940’s and 50’s when it dominated the export of petroleum development
technology.
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1AC (14/14)
Air Force procurement key – largest fuel demand uniquely influences policy implementation.
Michael W. Wynne is the 21st secretary of the Air Force, 1/27/2007, Michael Wynne: Flying out in front
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-
wynne_27edi.ART.State.Edition1.29d4e93.html [ND]
If "war is politics by other means," as Carl von Clausewitz said, then the Air Force has an indirect role in these politics. Our mission to
provide sovereign options for the president means the Air Force must constantly work toward a future in which the politics of energy
has as limited effect as possible on the United States. The Air Force is by far the federal government's largest user of fuel and has more
than a passing interest in ensuring that those who wish to do harm to this country cannot do so by choking off the flow of crude.
Energy independence – or at the least an acceptable level of self-sufficiency – is not a pipe dream. To those who say the United States
cannot or will not kick the habit of imported oil, America need look no further than its own military for inspiration and a possible way
ahead.
Twice in the last century, in the grip of severe fuel shortages, the military opted for developing coal-based fuel using a process known
as Fischer-Tropsch, developed by German scientists in the 1920s.
The fuel used on the recent B-52 flight was derived from natural gas purchased from an Oklahoma company that sells alternative fuel.
The opportunity to encourage a new synthetic fuel industry, using the nation's abundant supplies of coal and natural gas, is something
that my service and the other military branches are actively exploring. Our strategy is to maximize demand-side energy efficiency of
our aircraft and installations and seek domestic sources of alternative energy.
Only new funding stimulates the market fast enough to solve Air Force goals.
Gordon Lubold, staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor, 12/28/2007, Air Force to fly on synthetic fuel?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1228/p03s05-usgn.html?page=1 [ND]
The Air Force would like to increase the amount of synthetic fuel it uses by that time, but recognizes that the private sector's push to
get there will largely determine how fast the Air Force can move towards its goal or accelerate beyond it.
"[T]he market isn't moving fast enough yet for us to move any quicker," says William Anderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force
for installations, environment and logistics.
The Air Force hopes to stimulate the private sector to embrace the move toward synthetic fuels, which will help private firms as much
as it does the Air Force, says Mr. Anderson.
"We believe that we need domestic sources of aviation fuel to assure the American taxpayer long term that we can fight tonight and
fight tomorrow," said Anderson during a recent roundtable for defense reporters. "And that requires that a domestic synthetic or
alternative aviation fuel market grow in this country."
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Inherency – Current DoD Strategy

Current DoD efforts to reduce reliance are insufficient – lack of mobile renewables is hampering energy
strategy.
Gregory J. Lengyel, U.S. Air Force Colonel, August 2007, Department of Defense Energy Strategy
Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks, The Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Studies,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2007/08defense_lengyel/lengyel20070815.pdf [ND]
The DOD’s Current Energy Strategy Despite these trends there is no existing formal Department of Defense Energy Strategy and no
single individual or organization responsible for energy issues within the Department. The DOD Annual Energy Management Report
for FY 2006 lists the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) as the DOD Senior
Energy Official responsible for meeting the goals of Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005) and Executive Order (EO) 13123,
Greening the Government through Efficient Energy Management.22 However, this position has been vacant for several years and does
not satisfy the need for a comprehensive Senior Energy Official for the Department. This is not to say the DOD is unconcerned with
energy issues. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Services have recently conducted or sponsored numerous studies
focusing on energy, many of which have been invaluable information sources for this paper: MITRE Corporation JASON Project,
Reducing DOD Fossil Fuel Dependence (2006); Defense Science Board, More Capable Warfighting Through Reduced Fuel Burden
(2001), and soon to be released Energy Strategy (2006-2007); OSD Energy Security Integrated Product Team (2006); Air Force
Scientific Advisory Board, Technology Options for Improved Air Vehicle Fuel Efficiency (2006); Navy Research Advisory Council,
Study on Future Fuels (2005); Army Corps of Engineers, Energy Trends and Their Implications for US Army Installations (2005); and
Defense Advanced Research Projects, Petroleum-Free Military Workshop (2005), to name a few. Common recommendations include
making fuel efficiency a more significant factor in determining new mobility platforms (e.g. miles per gallon for ground vehicles,
nautical miles/pound (lb.) fuel/lb. payload for aircraft and ships) and creating incentives for energy efficiency throughout the DOD.
However, none of the studies offered anything other than liquid hydrocarbons as the best fuel for DOD mobility platforms for at least
the next 25 years. Impressive groups of energy experts have produced many of these studies, but they are all either Service specific or
temporary in nature, meaning the group of experts dispersed after writing the study’s final report. The lack of a full-time energy
advocate within the DOD leaves a void in follow-up actions to study recommendations, or creation of directive guidance on energy
issues within the Department. The good news that is most of the energy expertise already exists in various functional areas of OSD and the Services, and parts of
a comprehensive Energy Strategy are already in place. The Air Force recently published an Energy Strategy, focused on optimizing energy use, reducing demand, and
expanding supply options. These issues will be targeted primarily through initiatives in aviation, and infrastructure and vehicles.23 The DOD already has an outstanding
installations and facility energy management program led by the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment that in many ways is a model for
the federal government. Facility Energy Management Policy Statement: The Department of Defense (DOD) occupies over 620,000 buildings and structures worth $600
billion comprising more than 400 installations on 25 million acres in the United States and spent over $3.5 billion on facility energy consumption in Fiscal Year (FY)
2006. DOD is the largest single energy consumer in the Nation representing approximately 78% of the federal sector, and a significant
(and sometimes the largest) energy user in many local metropolitan areas. Conserving energy and investing in energy reduction
measures makes good business sense and allows limited resources to be applied to readiness and modernization. The Department
has already reduced its facility energy consumption significantly; by FY 2005 the Department had already achieved a reduction in
energy consumption by 28.3 percent as compared to a FY 1985 baseline. Due to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 in FY 2006 the
baseline was reset to FY 2003. DOD achieved a 5.5% reduction in goal facilities for FY 2006. Despite this success, the Department
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must make greater strides in energy efficiency and consumption reduction in order to meet the Departmental vision of providing
reliable and cost effective utility services to the Warfighter. Dramatic fluctuations in the cost of energy significantly impact already
constrained operating budgets, providing even greater incentives to conserve and seek ways to lower energy consumption. These include
investments in cost-effective renewable energy sources, energy efficient construction designs, and aggregating bargaining power among regions and Services to get
better energy deals.24 In November 2005, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Installations and Environment), Mr. Phil Grone, published a memo to the Services
and Directors of Defense Agencies to provide facility energy management goals consistent with current legislation, Executive Orders, and DOD direction. “The
Department of Defense will strive to modernize infrastructure, increase utility and energy conservation and demand reduction, and improve energy flexibility, thereby
saving taxpayer dollars and reducing emissions that contribute to air pollution and global climate change.”25 Applicable goals from Mr. Grone’s memo to the Services:
• Greenhouse Gases (GHG) Reduction: Through life-cycle cost-effective measures, each Defense component shall reduce its greenhouse gas emissions attributed to
facility energy use by 30% by 2010 (compared to 1990 levels). [Note: Kyoto Protocol GHG reduction goals for the United States was 7%] • Reduce Energy: Through
life-cycle cost-effective measures, each Defense component shall reduce energy consumption per gross square foot of its facilities. o All facilities: Reduce consumption
by 2 percent/year relative to 2003 baseline. o Facility Energy Audits: Conduct energy and water audits at 10% of facilities each year. • Renewable Energy Procurement:
Each Defense component shall strive to expand the use of renewable energy within its facilities and in its activities by implementing renewable energy projects and by
purchasing electricity from renewable sources. Renewable Goals (when life-cycle cost-effective): o 3% of their total electricity demand in FY 2007-2009 o 5% in FY
2010-2012 o 7.5% in 2013 o 25% by 2025 19 • Petroleum Use: Through life-cycle cost-effective measures, each Defense Component shall reduce the use of petroleum
within its facilities. Components may accomplish this reduction by switching to a less GHG-intensive, non-petroleum energy source, such a natural gas or renewable
energy sources; by eliminating unnecessary fuel use; or by other appropriate methods. The $3.5 billion the DOD spent on facilities and infrastructure
energy does have an oversight structure in place. By contrast, the $10 billion spent on fuel, countless billions spent on force structure,
fuel logistics and research and acquisition lacks such a structure. This must be corrected with a comprehensive strategy, oversight, and
energy advocate in the department.
Inherency – Current DoD Strategy

The DoD has no long-term energy strategy – no resource commitment.
Kristine E. Blackwell, National Defense Fellow – Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, 6/15/2007, The
Department of Defense: Reducing Its Reliance on Fossil-Based Aviation Fuel – Issues for Congress,
http://ftp.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL34062.pdf [ND]
DOD has publically expressed its intention to devote resources to this issue; Air Force leadership has stated a goal of using
domestically produced synthetic fuel for half of its domestic aviation fuel by 2016. At the present time, however, DOD does not seem
to have a comprehensive long-term energy strategy or centralized leadership focused on energy issues for the department. This may
affect the department’s ability to achieve its long-term energy goals. This report will not be updated.
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Inherency – Dependent Now

The DoD is hugely dependent on oil now – reliance on mobility fuels ensures increasing operating costs.
Energy not come cheap. The DOD spent approximately $13.55 billion on energy as a commodity in FY 2006. Of that, DOD spent
roughly $10 billion on mobility fuels and $3.5 billion on facilities and infrastructure. A $10 per barrel increase in the cost of fuel
increases DOD operating costs by roughly $1.3 billion per year, which roughly equates to the entire 2007 procurement budget for the
United States Marine Corps.10
Those numbers alone are staggering, and as illustrated in Figure 3, are clearly trending upward. The DOD bill for jet fuel in FY 2006
was $7.9 billion. This represents a 73% increase from the FY 2000 cost of $2.2 billion, even though consumption only rose 12%,
largely attributable to the Global War on Terror. However, fuel costs for budgeting and resource planning have traditionally been based
on the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) standard price, which does not reflect the cost of the fuel logistics system required to
deliver fuel to the war fighter. The standard price of fuel represents only a fraction of the true cost.
DoD consumption massive now.

And the deployments DoD has “rushed its forces” to in recent years – in Afghanistan and Iraq – have sucked up massive quantities of
oil. According to Fuel Line, the official newsletter of the Pentagon’s fuel-buying component, the Defense Energy Support Center
(DESC), from October 1, 2001, to August 9, 2004, the DESC supplied 1,897,272,714 gallons of jet fuel, alone, for military operations
in Afghanistan. Similarly, in less than a year and a half, from March 19, 2003, to August 9, 2004, the DESC provided U.S. forces with
1,109,795,046 gallons of jet fuel for operations in Iraq. In 2005, Lana Hampton of the DoD’s Defense Logistics Agency revealed that
the military’s aircraft, ships, and ground vehicles were guzzling 10 to 11 million barrels of fuel each month in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
elsewhere. Yet, while the Pentagon reportedly burns through an astounding 365,000 barrels of oil every day (the equivalent of the
entire nation of Sweden’s daily consumption), Sohbet Karbuz, an expert on global oil markets, estimates that the number is really
closer to 500,000 barrels.
With such unconstrained consumption, recent U.S. wars have been a boon for big oil and have seen the Pentagon rise from the rank of
hopeless addict to superjunkie. Prior to George Bush’s Global War on Terror, the U.S. military admitted to guzzling 4.62 billion
gallons of oil per year. With the Pentagon’s post-9/11 wars and occupations, annual oil consumption has grown to an almost
unfathomable 5.46 billion gallons, according to the Pentagon’s possibly low-ball statistics.
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DoD’s the biggest U.S. energy consumer.

The Department of Defense is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States. In 2006, it spent $13.6 billion to buy 110
million barrels of petroleum fuel (about 300,000 barrels of oil each day), and 3.8 billion kWh of electricity. This represents about 0.8%
of total U.S. energy consumption and 78% of energy consumption by the Federal government. Buildings and facilities account for
about 25% of the Department’s total energy use. DoD occupies over 577,000 buildings and structures worth $712 billion comprising
more than 5,300 sites. In 2006, the Department spent over $3.5 billion for energy to power fixed installations, and just over $10 billion
on fuel for combat and combat related systems. These figures exclude energy used by some contractors that performed “outsourced”
DoD functions, but are as accurate as current accounting systems permit.
Inherency – Jet Fuel Demand

Jet fuel demand will outstrip supply – ensures competition over reserves and threatens U.S. supplies.
David Esler, editor of Business & Commercial Aviation, 9/17/2007, Alternative Fuels for Jet Engines,
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=bca&id=news/bca0907p3.xml [ND]
The debatable issues of peak oil and global warming aside, it's become obvious that with the economies of China and India in the
ascendancy, competition for remaining crude oil reserves will be keen for the foreseeable future. According to the International Energy
Agency, China will lead the world in "demand growth" for jet fuel through 2012, reaching 5.6 percent, thanks to the communist
nation's burgeoning wealth, which in turn is stimulating demand for more air travel.
Meanwhile, total worldwide demand for Jet-A is forecasted to reach 7.6 million barrels per day during the same period, compared to
6.8 million barrels in 2007, a demand-growth rate of 2.3 percent. In North America, demand growth is expected to remain relatively
flat at 0.6 percent; however, the IEA predicts that the Jet-A supply will remain tight through 2010 without additional refining
capacity, which could strain U.S. supplies. (Refineries knocked offline by Hurricane Katrina are still being rebuilt.)
Looking further out, the National Petroleum Council study concludes that global demand for energy -- all of it, including jet fuel --
will grow by as much as 60 percent by 2030. (Coincidentally, the same week in July the report was released the price of crude oil shot
up to $76 a barrel.)
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Inherency – Renewables Cut Now

Status quo ensures fossil fuel reliance – renewable efforts are being cut.
Couple this with the fact that, on Rumsfeld’s watch, the Environmental Protection Agency granted the DoD a “national security
exemption” on trucks that failed to meet current emissions standards; that the army canceled plans to introduce “hybrid-diesel
humvees” (the current military model gets just four miles per gallon in city driving and an equally dismal eight miles per gallon on the
highway); and that it similarly dropped plans to retrofit the fuel-guzzling Abrams tank with a more efficient diesel engine (the current
model, in service in Iraq, gets less than a mile per gallon), while the air force deep-sixed plans for the possible replacement of aging
“surveillance, cargo and tanker aircraft engines” – and you’re looking at a Pentagon patently incapable of altering its addiction-addled
ways in any near future.
Since then, it’s been more of the same. In March 2007, the Pentagon, now under Rumsfeld’s replacement, Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates, went on a two-day bender of epic proportions. On March 22 and 23, the DoD announced that it had struck “fixed price with
economic price adjustment” deals, to be fulfilled by April 30, 2008, with ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Valero, Refinery
Associates of Texas, and ten other petrogiants to the tune of $4 billion. Another petro-binge occurred around the 2007 Labor Day
holiday. Over the course of three days, the DoD acknowledged fuel contracts with BP, Chevron, Tesoro, and four others worth more
than $1.4 billion.
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Inherency – Synfuel Now

The Air Force is going to begin switching to synfuels now.
Air Force Link, the official World Wide Web site of the United States Air Force “Former Air Force official
joins leading coal-liquids developer” 01/23/2008 <http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=23571>
Ron Sega, up until last year the Air Force's chief energy executive, has joined the board of directors of coal-to-liquids (CTL)
fuel developer Rentech, Inc., on Dec. 18, according to a statement issued by the company. Rentech develops synthetic fuels for
the Air Force alternative fuels program, using coal and other feedstocks.
Sega resigned as Air Force under secretary in August 2007, after in part leading an effort within the Air Force to develop
alternative fuels not based on petroleum and thereby reduce dependence on imported energy supplies.
"As the Air Force's chief energy executive, Dr. Sega led the creation of a new energy strategy for the Air Force," a strategy that
addressed "demand-side energy efficiencies, supply-side energy assurance options and the establishment of a culture of
conservation," according to the Rentech statement.
The statement cites Sega as saying: "I am exited to be joining Rentech, a company that is committed to using a wide array of
domestic resources to produce environmentally sound fuels that will help ensure our nation's energy security."
The Air Force aims to act as a catalyst for the synthetic fuels industry by using its huge buying power to guarantee demand,
service officials have said.
Air Force will turn to synthetic blends now, but the timeframe is far off.
Breanne Wagner, NDIA staff writer, 5/1/2007, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6551003/Fuel-crunch-
Air-Force-energy.html, National Defense [ND]
In a separate effort to reduce reliance on foreign fuel, the Air Force will seek within the next decade to substitute 50 percent of its
aviation fuel consumption with a synthetic blend produced domestically, Wynne said.
"To provide an assured source of fuel ... we are particularly interested in making synthetic aviation fuel," he added. Right now the
market for these fuels is relatively immature. There are no commercial companies in the nation working on synthetic fuels, Anderson
said. "Companies such as Syntroleum, Rentech and Baard Energy are all in the alternative energy business, but none of them has an
operating commercial synthetic fuel plant in the United States," said Paul Bollinger, an Air Force spokesman.
"We are watching the market, listening to commercial producers" who come up with new technology, Anderson said.
Air Force testing 50-50 blend now – determines the direction of the market.
Drake Bennett, Boston Globe staff writer, 5/27/2007, Environmental Defense,
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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/05/27/environmental_defense/?page=2 [ND]
Ernest Moniz, a professor of physics at MIT and a former undersecretary of energy, points to so-called synthetic fuels, made from
natural gas, coal, biomass or oil shale, as an example of a field where the military might nurture a technology that the market has so
far rejected. "The market certainly has not produced any significant amount of those fuels because, frankly, they cost too much," he
says. By providing a market for these alternatives, he said, the military could encourage the technology to develop and, eventually,
help drive down the costs as the effort matures.
Already, the Air Force has shown interest in "synfuels," testing B-52 bombers on a 50-50 blend of natural-gas-based synfuel and
traditional jet fuel. By 2010, the Air Force plans for its entire air fleet to be modified to run on such blends. The Department of Defense,
meanwhile, has been trying to procure forklifts powered by fuel cells, according to Funk of LMI. Thanks to its massive warehousing and distribution network, the
military is one of the world's leading purchasers of such equipment, and Funk argues that this one decision could help spur the adoption of fuel cell technology.
But Representative Steve Israel, a New York Democrat and cofounder of the Congressional Defense Energy Working Group, said he would like to see the Pentagon be
far more aggressive in its pursuit of new energy technologies. The Department of Defense, he argues, could afford to spend far more than the $535 million it spent on
energy research programs last year. And it still doesn't have an official whose job it is to head its disparate energy initiatives.
"There's been a change in thinking, but an inadequate change in action," he said. However, he said, even the change in thinking is
bound to have a positive impact.
The broader question for the future, many analysts say, is whether the military's various initiatives will turn out to be a true
environmental effort. Because the Pentagon's mission is to win wars, not fight global warming, it will pursue energy sources that
environmentalists abhor.

Synfuel will prevent procurement of algae fuels which can solve CO2 emissions now.
While the Air Force is committed to powering its fleet with a 50-percent blend of synfuel and petroleum within three years, DARPA is
looking further down the line by sponsoring research in biofuels and in June contracted with Honeywell subsidiary UOP to develop
technology for converting vegetable and algae oils to military-spec jet fuel. UOP was founded in 1910 as Universal Oil Products to
develop processing catalysts and refining technology, licensing the latter to oil and chemical industries. It claims to be the largest in its
field, with 80 percent of the world's biodegradable detergents and 60 percent of gasoline produced using its processes.
DARPA's interest in UOP was sparked by a hydrogenating process the Chicago firm has designed for creating ersatz diesel fuel that
has potential for the production of military JP-8. According to Jennifer Holmgren, the firm's director for renewable energy and
chemicals, conventional biodiesel is made by combining vegetable oil and methanol, formulating an ester -- an oxygenated product --
used as an additive. "You can't use it in an aircraft because it doesn't have the necessary BTU content and other properties that you
need," she told B&CA. "What we have done is to add hydrogen to the vegetable oil, and that results in a fuel like diesel that is not an
additive. Thus, it has broader properties than diesel." The process has been dubbed "Ecofining."
The Right Stuff
"We believe we can extend that technology to make an aviation fuel to meet all the necessary characteristics of Jet-A," Holmgren
continued. "The key ones are the freeze point and the boiling range. [Like Jet-A, JP-8 goes solid at -47oC.] In other words, we are
trying to make the real thing without modifications to the engines . . . [and] there are a lot of specs you have to meet to make the real
thing. As an industry, we're adding ethanol and biodiesel to [fuel supplies for] our surface vehicles, and what we're saying is that, if
you're a good chemist, why not make the real thing, that is, convert biomass to the right stuff? Another advantage you'd gain is that the
infrastructure for handling it would be exactly the same."
The first phase of the project is to explore both edible and inedible vegetable oils, beginning with soy and palm, then moving to
inedible feedstocks. Two of the latter include the plants jatropha curcas and camelina sativa, which are attractive because cultivating
them won't compete with food supplies. The beauty of jatropha and camelina is that they thrive on arid land, requiring very little
water. Thus they can be easily grown in places like India -- where jatropha is already being cultivated for the manufacture of biodiesel
-- and the American Southwest. The oil is extracted from the plants' seeds, as with linseed, from which vegetable oil has been pressed
for hundreds of years.
In the second phase of the DARPA work, UOP will experiment with algae, which as Boeing's Daggett pointed out offers an even
higher level of productivity per acre. "Some species can produce 50 to 60 percent oil by weight, while soy produces only 15 to 18
percent," Holmgren said. "This is a little further out from the jatropha and camelina extraction that's possible now. Algae is also a
great way to capture and sequester CO2, as you can grow it on ponds near powerplants to absorb the CO2. After it grows, you harvest
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it and extract the oil. We have found that these oils work in our Ecofining process for making biodiesel. All of these feedstocks can be
used, and the jet fuel is an extension of that process. If you can do it with this process to make diesel, you can do it for jet fuel."
Synfuel’s coming now – committed to testing and certification by 2010.

In 2006 the Secretary of the Air Force directed a project to procure synthetic jet fuel for ground testing and, if ground tests were
successful, flight testing.37 In December 2006, a B-52 conducted a flight-test mission using a 50/50 blend of manufactured synthetic
fuel and petroleum based JP-8, or synfuel-blend, on all eight engines, and recently finished cold-weather testing at Minot AFB, ND,
the last step in the testing and certification process. Test data is being analyzed, and the final test report is scheduled to be released in
June 2007. Thus far, results have been positive. The Air Force is committed to completing testing and certification of synfuels for its
aircraft by 2010, and aims to acquire 50% of CONUS fuel from a synfuel-blend produced domestically by 2016. At current
consumption rates this equals approximately 325 million gallons of synfuel-blend.38

Synfuel would soon the be the common fuel for the entire military
Tom Shanker, New York Times. 5-6-06,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14fuel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>
Air Force and industry officials say that oil prices above $40 to $45 per barrel make a blend with synthetic fuels a cost-
effective alternative to oil-based jet fuel.
Fuel costs have doubled since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and crude oil prices since Hurricane Katrina have remained above
$60 a barrel.
The Air Force effort falls under a directive from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to explore alternative fuel sources.
Under the plan, the Air Force has been authorized to buy 100,000 gallons of synthetic fuel.
Ground experiments are scheduled to begin in coming weeks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, followed by test
flights at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Although the Air Force is leading the project, it is working with the Automotive Tank Command of the Army, in Detroit, and
the Naval Fuels Laboratory, at Patuxent River, Md.
The research and tests on synthetic fuel would ultimately produce a common fuel for the entire military, Air Force officials
said.
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Inherency – Algae Not Coming

Inadequate investment now won’t solve algae now.
Jerry W Kram, Biodiesel Magazine staff, 5/30/2008, Algae has potential, but more research needs to be done,
http://www.algaeatwork.com/news/algae-has-potential-but-more-research-needs-to-be-done [ND]
According to one source there may be as many as 200 companies developing algae as a biofuel feedstock, Sears said. By his own
estimate, there may be as many as 35 viable companies working in the field. Despite all the investments and excitement in the
industry, commercial production of algae oil is still a dream. “With all those companies chasing this, no one has successfully
commercialized algae,” he continued. “No one yet knows how to do this in a way that makes sense in the long term. However, there
are some very large companies working on this so I am confident that we will be there.”
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Air Power – Key to Heg

Airpower is key to U.S. leadership – makes power projection credible.
RICHARD J. HAZDRA, Major, USAF, August 2001, AIR MOBILITY The Key to the United States National
Security Strategy, Fairchild Paper, l/n
In shaping the international environment, the United States must possess a credible military force where military activities include
overseas presence and peacetime engagement and the will to use military force.2 According to the NDP, overseas presence is the key
to a stable international environment.3 Peacetime engagement includes rotational deployments that help sustain regional stability by
deterring aggression and exercises with foreign nations that solidify relations with those nations.4 Deployments and exercises both
require air mobility in the form of both airlift and air refueling in order to transport the necessary troops and equipment. Peacetime
engagement also includes other programs such as the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program where the United States
assists members of the Commonwealth of Independent States in dismantling and storing WMD.5 Here, air mobility is the lead
component by transporting nuclear weapons to the United States from compliant nations. Airlift also plays a crucial role in responding
to threats and crises by enhancing our war-fighting capability.6 The United States may move some forces nearer to a theater in crisis
and rapidly deploy other forces into that theater. Depending on the crisis, forces from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or any
combination of military personnel and equipment could comprise the force structure required. Consequently, the United States must
airlift these forces along with the needed logistics support. In addition, the focused logistics concept of Joint Vision 2010 requires the
transportation of supplies and materials to support these forces within hours or days rather than weeks, a mission solely suited to air
mobility. In responding to crises, forces may deploy in support of smaller-scale contingencies which include humanitarian assistance,
peace operations, enforcing NFZs, evacuating US citizens, reinforcing key allies, limited strikes, and interventions. 7 Today, US forces
find themselves globally engaged in responding to these contingencies more frequently and maintain longer-term commitments to
support these contingencies. In these situations, many deployments occur in the absence of forward basing.8 The loss of forward
basing has reduced AMC’s worldwide infrastructure from 39 locations in 1992 to 12 in 1999.9 Thus, the United States must again use
air mobility to deploy forces overseas in a minimum amount of time for an operation to be successful.
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Air Power – Deterrence

Only air power can deter and solve conflicts – threat of bombardment destroys enemy military capacity.
JOHN W. BELLFLOWER, USAF CAPT., 1/2007, Armed Fources Journal, The indirect approach,
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/09/2009013
Although the Air Force strives to position itself to control the skies over a hostile nation, air superiority is not the end state sought by
air power. Air superiority is simply a means to an end. It does not, standing alone, constitute the sovereign options that the Air Force
seeks to deliver on behalf of the U.S.
Strategic attack is a method of attacking an enemy’s centers of gravity to produce a level of destruction and disintegration of an
enemy’s military capacity to a point where the enemy is no longer capable of carrying out aggressive activity. In common vernacular,
this means that air power is about putting bombs on target. From the very beginning, air power theorists saw the need for projecting
lethal air power onto an enemy’s soil.
Throughout air power’s history, its focus has been on bombing the targets necessary to bring about a successful conclusion to war.
Theorists from Giulio Douhet to Warden have agreed that long-range bombardment, or what we today would call strategic attack, is
the primary mission of an air force. This idea has been carried forward to current Air Force doctrine. In discussing the changing
character of war, Air Force Basic Doctrine concludes that a “prompt, continued, aggressive application of air and space power in the
opening phase [of a war] may actually constitute the conflict’s decisive phase.”
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Air Power – Chinese Deterrence

Specifically, air power ensures deterrence in the Asia-Pacific region and solves Chinese aggression.
Zalmay Khalilzad and Ian Lesser, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and Senior Transatlantic Fellow at GMF, 2001
Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century, p.164-5
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR897/MR897.chap3.pdf
This subsection attempts to synthesize some of the key operational implications distilled from the analyses relating to the rise of Asia
and the potential for conflict in each of its constituent regions. The first key implication derived from the analysis of trends in Asia
suggests that American air and space power will continue to remain critical for conventional and unconventional deterrence in Asia.
This argument is justified by the fact that several subregions of the continent still harbor the potential for full-scale conventional war.
This potential is most conspicuous on the Korean peninsula and, to a lesser degree, in South Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the South
China Sea. In some of these areas, such as Korea and the Persian Gulf, the United States has clear treaty obligations and, therefore, has
preplanned the use of air power should contingencies arise. U.S. Air Force assets could also be called upon for operations in some of
these other areas. In almost all these cases, U.S. air power would be at the forefront of an American politico-military response because
(a) of the vast distances on the Asian continent; (b) the diverse range of operational platforms available to the U.S. Air Force, a
capability unmatched by any other country or service; (c) the possible unavailability of naval assets in close proximity, particularly in
the context of surprise contingencies; and (d) the heavy payload that can be carried by U.S. Air Force platforms. These platforms can
exploit speed, reach, and high operating tempos to sustain continual operations until the political objectives are secured. The entire
range of warfighting capability—fighters, bombers, electronic warfare (EW), suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD), combat
support platforms such as AWACS and J-STARS, and tankers—are relevant in the Asia-Pacific region, because many of the regional
contingencies will involve armed operations against large, fairly modern, conventional forces, most of which are built around large
land armies, as is the case in Korea, China-Taiwan, India-Pakistan, and the Persian Gulf.
U.S.-China war destroys civilization.
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Straits Times 2K [June 25, Lexis]
THE DOOMSDAY SCENARIO -THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the
US and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war
becomes unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -horror of horrors -raise the possibility
of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and logistics
support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the
Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not
end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to
redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south
Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and dangerous phase: Will a
full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US Eighth Army which
fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US
from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its
implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened
war, which could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the
latter acquired a similar capability, there is little hope of winning a war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons.
The US estimates that China possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared
to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use"
principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies,
told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by
that principle, there were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons
mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that should that come to pass,
we would see the destruction of civilization. There would be no victors in such a war. While the prospect of a nuclear Armageddon
over Taiwan might seem inconceivable, it cannot be ruled out entirely, for China puts sovereignty above everything else. Gen
Ridgeway recalled that the biggest mistake the US made during the Korean War was to assess Chinese actions according to the
American way of thinking. "Just when everyone believed that no sensible commander would march south of the Yalu, the Chinese
troops suddenly appeared, " he recalled. (The Yalu is the river which borders China and North Korea, and the crossing of the river
marked China's entry into the war against the Americans). "I feel uneasy if now somebody were to tell me that they bet China would
not do this or that," he said in a recent interview given to the Chinese press.
Air Power – Key to Ground Power

Air power’s the key internal to ground success – key support operations.
Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service, 10/20/2006, Air Power Supports Ground Forces in Terror War,
Civilians Learn, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1733 [ND]
SOUTHWEST ASIA, Oct. 20, 2006 – U.S. civilian leaders visiting here today got a taste of how U.S. military air power supports
troops on the ground — from delivering troops, beans and bullets to the battle to providing life-saving intelligence to taking out targets
that threaten U.S. and coalition forces.
“We are the guardian angels overhead,” Brig. Gen. Charles Shugg, commander of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing based here, told
participants in the Joint Civilian Orientation Course. Officials requested that the base’s exact location not be disclosed.
“We’re always there to support that soldier, sailor, airman and Marine on the ground,” Shugg said.
With a takeoff and landing every nine minutes around the clock, the 379th AEW supports troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of
Africa, Shugg told the JCOC members. “We go three different directions, as needed, to support our forces,” he said.
Lt. Gen. Gary North, commander of U.S. Central Command Air Forces, described the magnitude of the Air Force mission in
Southwest Asia in support of warfighters.
The Air Force provides airlift, taking troops, their gear and the logistics needed to sustain them. It provides intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance support, serving as the troops’ eyes and ears in the sky. And when called on by ground troops, the Air Force
delivers close-air support quickly and with precise accuracy, North explained. After getting called, the Air Force delivers this “kinetic”
support within 10 minutes in Iraq and within 25 minutes in Afghanistan, he said.
“All the focus is on supporting the ground force,” North told the group.
While responding quickly to calls from ground troops, the Air Force goes out of its way to prevent collateral damage and avoid
attacking the wrong target, he emphasized. “We are very deliberate in our business,” North told the group, adding that he’d rather see
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an insurgent get away than risk killing “a good guy in error.” Similarly, he said, too much firepower can be worse than too little,
especially if it kills innocent civilians or destroys homes and infrastructure on the ground.
“Collateral damage prevention is Job One,” he said.
In addition to providing close-air support, Air Force assets increase ground troops' situational awareness so they're better able to stay a
step ahead of the enemy, North told the civilian leaders.
The RC-135 Rivet Joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, for example, collects and passes signals intelligence to
ground forces. The E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, more commonly known as "JSTARS," provides a real-time
picture of what’s happening on the ground. Its crews report anything suspicious — from a vehicle moving after curfew to someone
digging ground on a roadside as they might when emplacing an improvised explosive device — to ground forces, explained said Lt.
Col. Tim Manning, a JSTARS mission crew commander.
North called the RC-135 and JSTARS “vacuum cleaners in the sky that are sucking up every bit of intelligence,” transmitting it for
processing, and “telling us who to look for and what to look for.”
F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets also provide intelligence by reporting anything suspicious or unusual they identify to ground troops
during their patrols, Shugg said.
Often, pilots spot a patch of roadway that's been disturbed by insurgents planting a roadside bomb, and warn troops on the ground.
They also watch convoys from above, alerting them to what's ahead. “We’re countering attacks and saving lives,” Shugg said.
Air Power – Urban Warfare

Air power’s key to small war success – airlift, intel, and psychological warfare are key to ground troops
having success.
JOHN W. BELLFLOWER, USAF CAPT., 1/2007, Armed Fources Journal, The indirect approach,
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/09/2009013
The lessons of past small wars teach that air power’s indirect use is much more valuable than its lethal application. The three
categories of nonlethal air power that have proven most useful in small wars are: airlift; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
(ISR); and psychological warfare. Against modern insurgencies, these indirect applications of air power will continue to prove more
beneficial than simply putting steel on target. This is especially true since lethal air power often results in unintended casualties that
result in an erosion of popular support.
Airlift, a means by which personnel and supplies can be moved in support of ground operations, can be crucial to mission success.
Callwell, an eminent scholar in the field of small wars, once said that the intertwined problems of mobility and supply place the
counterinsurgent at a distinct disadvantage. He argued that the “all-important question of supply is in fact at the root of most of the
difficulties, and has been the cause of some of the disasters, to which regular troops engaged in small wars seem ever to be prone.”
Airlift evens the odds and permits the counterinsurgent force to attain the mobility and sustainability normally only enjoyed by the
insurgent. Indirect air power gives counterinsurgency forces an opportunity to force the insurgent to fight where the regular force’s
tactical advantages of firepower and discipline will prevail.
In insurgencies ranging from Malaya to Rhodesia to Lebanon, counterinsurgent forces used airlift to support the movement of small,
deep-penetration units designed to seek out and kill insurgents. This use of air power permitted a freedom of movement not normally
enjoyed by the counterinsurgent force. The ability to rapidly supply a patrol deep in insurgent territory allows the counterinsurgent
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force to maintain pressure by attacking vigorously and doggedly pursuing the insurgents. As America continues to face insurgents who
move about a country with near impunity, airlift will be increasingly necessary to seize the initiative by taking the fight to the
insurgent.
The indirect application of air power through ISR is another crucial role for air power in future small wars. Traditionally, insurgent
forces have been able to adapt to aerial ISR through the use of improved camouflage techniques and night movement. But when
insurgents massed to attack, air power proved vital by identifying the threat and employing its lethal capabilities. Although modern
insurgents will sometimes engage in positional warfare so U.S. air power can identify and employ firepower in a ground support role,
the urban nature of the conflict will often preclude major air strikes. In that case, ISR can still prove useful to the infantryman.
As we know from the OIF battle of Ramadi, there are often telltale signs of an impending fight, e.g. local residents tend to restrict
movement and streets often become bare. Since this may be limited to particular neighborhoods rather than an entire city, ISR assets
can identify these signs and relay the information to ground troops. Modern technology even allows ISR to accomplish this role at
night. This is nothing new. Marines employed this tactic, called infantry missions or air escort, in Nicaragua in the late 1920s. Thus,
while technology is not the sole answer, an old-school solution matched with modern technology can assist with the problems of
today’s modern insurgencies.
Modern technology can also assist in another area of indirect air power: psychological operations. Although such operations in the past
were typically confined to the local area through the distribution of leaflets to the enemy and the populace, today’s insurgencies
require a much broader scope. In addition to engaging in psychological warfare against insurgents during battle, air power must be
used to engage the enemy through the media. Islamic insurgents have identified the media as a key battleground and have become
adept at presenting a unified version of their story to the Western media. That this message has had some success in achieving its goal
of influencing U.S. policy-makers is not questioned.
Aside from the possibility of jamming communications in the battle area, air power can assist in this propaganda war by recording the
truth. In most areas in which the enemy is engaged, Western reporters are not welcome. Often reporters from Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based
news organization known for its anti-American bias, are the only ones permitted in the area, because insurgents will likely target
Western journalists. This results in an inaccurate portrayal of events. For example, in the battle of Fallujah, Al Jazeera focused solely
on the destruction and broadcast images of civilian deaths, emphasizing a perceived overuse of American firepower. No effort was
made to show how insurgent tactics were the direct cause of these deaths or how the insurgents violated the laws of war. Had
American officials wanted to challenge this false reporting, they could have done so by using imagery from unmanned aerial vehicles
and the data accompanying every air strike. However, this victory was conceded to the insurgents and public opinion forced an initial
American withdrawal from Fallujah when victory was within grasp.
Looking at the nature of warfare through the blinders of strategic air power leads one to focus on past warfare rather than the strategy
and tactics of the warfare we currently face and are likely to face in the future. While air power in its strategic context will certainly
prove extremely valuable in combating a modern, conventional army as it did in the initial stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom, its
lethal utility is dramatically reduced when warfare becomes desultory. When that occurs, the indirect use of air power proves more
valuable to the overall goal of defeating an insurgency. Since insurgencies of the type America is currently fighting appear to be the
Air Power – Urban Warfare

wave of the future, perhaps the time has come to develop an alternative air power targeting strategy, one that is more suitable for small
wars.
EMPLOYING PSYCHOLOGY
Since small wars are fought across the full spectrum of society, we must develop a full-spectrum theory for employing air power. An
effective targeting diagram must look toward all facets of society that are implicated in a small war and couple them with all aspects of
air power rather than solely its lethal application. Indeed, the lethality of air power does not make it unique. It is the delivery of that
lethality by air that makes it unique. Therefore, the air delivery of such traditional support functions as civil engineering to create
effects where and when needed would constitute a form of offensive air power. Rather than rely on air power in its destructive form, a
constructive form of air power could assist in “achiev[ing] our national security objectives by affecting an adversary’s leadership,
conflict-sustaining resources, and/or strategy.” How, then, can an effective targeting diagram that uses traditional support functions in
an offensive role be crafted to defeat a small-wars enemy?
Air Force is crucial to 21st century urban warfighting – strike and support capabilities maximize joint
force effectiveness.
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Brian M. Newberry, USAF Lt. Col., 9/2006, The Air Force in the urban fight, Armed Forces Journal,
http://www.afji.com/2006/09/1984760/ [ND]
As the world grows ever more urbanized, it is imperative that the Air Force prepare airmen to fight in cities. Cities are complex
domains where military operations are constrained by congested terrain and, more significantly, by the danger of collateral damage
and the risk to noncombatants. With the increasing urbanization of the world straining city infrastructures, it is quite probable crises
will ensue, particularly in less-developed countries. As such, military operations in urban settings will become more likely, including
disaster relief efforts, as was experienced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Additionally, future adversaries likely will use cities for sanctuary as they realize the danger they face in open terrain, where the U.S.
military is clearly superior. Although urban terrain hinders all types of forces during conventional military operations, high-density
population areas and urban canyons are commonly believed to restrict air and space power’s role in the urban fight. On the contrary,
air and space power’s ability to see over the next hill — its inherent capability to offer unobstructed vertical access — is a critical
contributor to the joint force.
the vertical dimension
Air Force capabilities in the urban arena mirror those in other arenas and support the joint force to accomplish tactical, operational and
strategic objectives. Urban is an environment much like any other. The crucial difference in urban environments is the presence of a
large number of noncombatants and their properties. Hence, force application and discrimination of targets is one of many obstacles
that air and space power must contend with. But this factor is a restraint on all the joint forces. Ultimately, the ability of the Air Force
to overcome target discrimination and collateral damage concerns will be integral to increasing its value in any future joint urban
operation.
It is important to note that the Air Force is not just the supporting force for urban operations. Its ability to provide strategic attack
against critical urban targets — such as F-117 or B-1 strikes against suspected Saddam Hussein locations — to interdict logistical lines
of operations and even its ability to provide presence over unpatrolled urban areas are vitally important.
Beyond its independent capabilities, the Air Force also supports the joint force in the urban fight by providing valuable airspace
control; command and control; communications and psychological operations support; close-air support; terminal attack control;
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and combat search and rescue. These are familiar missions for the Air Force. The urban
landscape of dense concrete jungles and large numbers of noncombatants are variables that require close attention but of themselves
do not render air and space power irrelevant. In fact, the three core strategic capabilities of the Air Force — rapid strike, persistent
C4ISR and global mobility — maximize the joint force’s effectiveness in the urban arena. In a sense, the Air Force’s urban fight is
analogous to a joint force prizefighter — the Air Force is the right hook able to strike from afar while keeping the enemy at a distance,
and is also the fighter’s eyes, giving him the vision to deliver a precise blow at the exact time and place it’s required.
Air Force Dependence – Readiness

Foreign dependency jacks the Air Force – budget and volatility.
The USAF’s interest in curbing petroleum-based fuel dependency is three-fold. First, just as dependency on foreign fuel threatens
America’s economic security, it also threatens USAF mission accomplishment. Second, by reducing petroleum-based fuel needs the
AF supports the Presidents vision of reducing America’s oil addiction. Finally, rising fuel costs consume a large portion of the Air
Force budget with increased costs adding no value to mission accomplishment. In fact, petroleum price volatility forces the movement
of USAF funds in order to cover unbudgeted fuel costs.12 These three concerns drive current USAF alternative fuel research and
provide a compelling argument for continued efforts. The U.S. and USAF Vulnerability The Air Force mission is truly powered by
petroleum. The Air Force mission is, “to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global
interests…to fly and fight in air, space, and cyberspace.”13 In order for the Air Force to provide global power projection in the form of
global strike and rapid global mobility capabilities, the Air Force relies on unrestricted access to worldwide oil supplies.14 In order to
provide “sovereign options” in defense of U.S. interests, the USAF must insure uninterrupted access to global petroleum reserves.
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Air Force anticipates fronting the bill – means they’ll reduce operations.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBO/is_3_30/ai_n27099563/print?tag=artBody;col1
Air Force leaders anticipated they would have to absorb the entire $800M shortfall, in addition to the plus-up from FY05, and braced
for a budget crisis. Historically, the Air Force funds unexpected expenses with an undistributed reduction across all programs,
delaying the development and production of critical warfighting systems. (5) The unexpected FY06 fuel bill was particularly
crippling since the Air Force already had $3.7B in unfunded requirements. Major General Stephen Lorenz, then director of the Air
Force's budget, admitted, "It's an interesting dynamic. I do not know how it will play out." (6)
The Air Force faced a similar fiscal challenge in FY05 and was forced to "slow operations [and] throttle back." (7) To make it to the
end of 2005, the Air Force reduced readiness and pushed over $1B in operations and maintenance bills into FY06.
Eleventh-hour budget cuts, resulting from Program Budget Directive (PBD) 723, allowed the Air Force to escape much of the
financial burden from unfunded FY06 fuel costs, but the other Services were not as lucky. The Pentagon's comptroller allocated $1.1B
in new Air Force funding, mostly to cover fuel costs, but slashed $4B in nonfuel programs from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps
budgets. Although PBD 723 was favorable from an Air Force perspective, it was far from ideal. It delayed the Airborne Laser Program
and cut $100M from the Joint Strike Fighter engine account.
The Air Force suffered less than the other Services in the budget fight to determine offsets for higher fuel costs, but it was not a budget
victory. (8) The Air Force receives no added value for paying more at the pump. Moreover, the Air Force did not escape from the fire.
In other words, the Air Force continues to suffer ill effects from the rising cost of jet fuel.
Currently, the Air Force pays $2.53 per gallon of jet fuel--a 31 percent increase from the previous year. (9) The Air Force's FY07
budget programs fuel costs vastly below current market prices. To put this in perspective, consider the fact that the FY05 crisis
unfolded when the Air Force was paying a relatively cheap $1.74 per gallon. The Air Force will likely face another budget crisis in
FY07 due to high fuel costs.
Air Force Readiness – On the Brink

DoD consumption will ensure training cuts – Air Force is on the block.
Marc V. Schanz, Associate Editor of Air Force Magazine, 6/2007, The Fuel War,
http://www.afa.org/magazine/june2007/0607fuel.pdf [ND]
All recognize, however, that the Air Force has to do something to cut back on its use of petroleum. “Reducing DOD Fossil-Fuel
Dependence,” a September 2006 report prepared for the Offi ce of the Secretary of Defense, says that energy costs comprise about
three percent of the military’s annual spending. That, however, is the average for all DOD activities: The share for mobility and
combat aircraft is signifi cantly higher. Even in peacetime, the Air Force’s mobility fl eet is fl ying every day, moving people and
supplies across the globe, racking up 42 percent of the service’s energy costs. Offi cials at Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill.,
report that the mobility fl eet used about $1.3 billion worth of jet fuel in Fiscal 2005 and $1.8 billion for 2006. Expenditures in the fi
rst quarter of Fiscal 2007—$530 million—put AMC on pace to surpass the $2 billion mark. Just behind AMC’s use is that of Air
Combat Command, the service’s main operator of combat aircraft. ACC’s fi ghter fl eet each year accounts for about 22 percent of the
Air Force’s energy bill. ACC’s long-range bomber operations account for another six percent of the total. Indeed, a whopping 80
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percent of the Air Force’s fuel costs are attributable to aviation operations—training, exercises, and deployments. Traditionally, this
area has been off-limits to budget cutters. Aimone said, “For most of my 37- year career in the Air Force, when we approached the
subject of energy conservation, it was around facilities operations and vehicle operations.” In short, no one wanted to touch fl ying.
First Lt. Katherine R. Kebisek, a public affairs offi cer at AMC, noted that fl uctuations in fuel prices make it diffi cult to reliably
predict costs. Each day, she said, AMC missions consume about 2.5 million gallons of JP-8. Planning for surge contingencies such as a
Katrina-like situation must be done above the command level. With oil prices lingering at high levels, though, the Air Force has
slowly begun moving to manage operational consumption, too. Usage of JP-8 fuel, particularly in training operations, is under
scrutiny.
Air Force Dependence – Readiness – Flying Hours

Fuel costs deck flying-hours – any reductions uniquely limits combat capabilities.
Recently, the rising cost of fuel forced one major command--Air Combat Command (ACC)--"to make significant changes just to
operate." (10) To pay for unanticipated fuel costs, ACC had to reduce its flying-hour program. (11) The flying-hour program is based
on the minimum requirements to train aircrew, so any reductions translate into a loss of combat capability and readiness. Budget
analysts predict the entire Air Force flying-hour budget will need to be reduced by 10 percent each year from FY08 to FY13.
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Air Force Dependence – Readiness - Comptrollers

Rising fuel prices force bad comptroller forcecasts – destroys Air Force budget and modernization.
Comptroller forecasts consistently prove inaccurate because oil futures are wildly inaccurate predictors of future spot prices. (18)
Additionally, the stabilized annual fuel prices used in the Services' budget requests to Congress do not reflect the full cost of fuel
because of cash movements and inaccurate surcharges. Over $4B was moved into and out of the working capital fund from FY93 to
FY02. Congress, and to a lesser extent DoD, used much of this money to meet other priorities. (19) A Government Accountability
Office (GAO) report examining fuel pricing concluded, "DoD has been trying to successfully implement the working capital fund
concept for over 50 years. However, Congress has repeatedly noted weaknesses in DoD's ability to use this mechanism to effectively
control costs and operate in a business-like fashion." (20)
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Because the Services estimate their budgets using inaccurate forecasts, budget decisions are based on distorted prices. As a result,
funds for other readiness needs are adversely affected. (21) Underestimating oil prices results in cash outflows from the DWCF. If the
forecasts grossly underestimate market prices and the DWCF is not sufficiently capitalized, the Services must scramble to obtain
additional funding or take money from other programs to pay for oil price shocks. (22) Overestimating oil prices means less money is
available for investment. To summarize, the current approach does not "enable customers to plan and budget more confidently," in
accordance with the DWCF's mandate.
Air Force – Readiness – Recapitalization

Recapitalization key to the Air Force – only modernization can maintain our asymmetric advantage.
GENERAL MICHAEL MOSELEY, AIR FORCE CHIEF OF STAFF; CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE
IKE SKELTON (D-MO); 10/24/2007, HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE;
SUBJECT: AIR FORCE STRATEGIC INITIATIVES, D.C. Federal News Service, L/N
Our nation's existing and emerging competitors know that the combined power of America's joint military team, first and foremost,
depends on air, space and cyber dominance. Potential opponents understand this awesome asymmetric advantage that the United
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States Air Force gives this country. So it's not surprising that many of them are developing and buying weapons that will put the air
and space dominance we enjoy today at risk.
Yet the air and space inventory America relies on today is largely what Congress appropriated 20 or 25 years ago. We won't choose
when the next fight will start. We won't know for certain how far off this distant horizon is. What we do know is that the next fight
will depend on the long arm of America's Air Force and that that long arm is becoming increasingly less capable over time. Ours is a
tired and aging inventory that must be recapitalized and modernized to prepare for an uncertain, complex and threatening future.
Tomorrow's successes depend on our ability to defend the American homeland, to shape and influence events around the world, and to
deter, dissuade and defeat our country's enemies. The time lines associated with fielding such new capabilities preclude us from
waiting until tomorrow to think about tomorrow.
At the rate at which we get to the distant horizon, certain strategic surprises such as successful antisatellite test shots, escalating
nuclear efforts, continually outpace our estimates. We must therefore accelerate our efforts to build a 21st century force with the
required range, payload, speed, survivability, lethality and precision. We must begin that today.
This critical piece of the joint team won't change over the future. To ensure our ability to fulfill what we see as our roles and missions
and ensure our ability to dominate air, space and cyberspace, we've embarked on the biggest and most important recapitalization and
modernization effort ever. This effort includes retiring old and obsolete aircraft such as C-5A, KC-135E, C-130E, U-2, B-52, and
replacing them with fewer numbers of more capable systems.
Our top five procurement priorities are in step in the right direction toward fielding these systems. We have also programmed for C-
130Js and joint cargo aircraft, now the C-27, more unmanned aerial vehicles (in ?) the F-22 fighters and F-35 fighters to fulfill our
nation's combatant commanders' requirements and to flesh out the full spectrum capabilities we expect for tomorrow.
Air Force Dependence – Indirect Dependency

Indirect dependency magnifies the impact – oil is used in every aspect of DoD operations.
TRANSFORMATION,
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DoD Energy Dependencies In addition to the direct consumption of petroleum to power combat systems, there are four under-
recognized DoD petroleum dependencies: 1) military industrial supply, 2) contractor support, 3) commercial logistics, and 4)
installation requirements. While most policy makers and analysts will focus on the 1.5 percent of national petroleum consumption
directly used by the DoD when studying DoD petroleum dependency (94 percent of which is for mobility/transportation),47 this
approach ignores the indirect dependencies of a highly intertwined military/industrial complex necessary for modern high-technology
warfare. While it may be virtually impossible to quantify and categorize the amount of petroleum specifically required to
create/support every activity or procured end item within DoD, the fact that DoD relies upon an industrial base for medical syringes,
M-16s, and C-17 parts serves to illustrate that the DoD is just as reliant upon petroleum-fueled civilian and governmental institutions
as the rest of American society. Recognizing the fact that fueling national defense goes beyond just the direct use of petroleum by
armed forces and into a much deeper supply chain dependency is fundamental to understanding the vulnerability of America’s security
to strategic petroleum supply disruptions or declines. This military/industrial dependency necessarily links civilian and military future
energy solutions.
Air Force Readiness – Key to All Readiness

Air Force would be affected the most by a supply crunch – it’s uniquely constrained and key to full
spectrum dominance.
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TRANSFORMATION,
A review of the last 60 years of American military doctrine reveals a heavy emphasis on airpower as either a stand-alone strategic
instrument or as a complement to ground forces that can gain, achieve, and then exploit air superiority to maximize terrestrial
opportunities. Airpower leverages inherent surprise, maneuverability, mobility, and the ability to mass firepower to overwhelm an
enemy and reduce risk to one’s own forces. This Americanperfected and synergistic air-land dominance comes at great energy cost,
and by studying the DESC FY04 Fact Book one can identify some force structure vulnerabilities that would quickly manifest
themselves should the U.S. military ever find itself in a strategically or operationally constrained petroleum environment. The first
clue can be found in the breakdown of total fuels used in DoD. Accounting for $5B of the Department’s $437B FY04 budget, DESC
procured 134M barrels of liquid fuel (370,000 barrels/day), of which 75 percent or 101M barrels were some form of aviation fuel (JP-
4, JP-5, JP-8, or Jet A).51 By combining the Air Force’s $2,841M bill with the $722M JP-5 portion of the Navy’s $1,627M bill53, and
other smaller Army and USMC amounts, Table 3 reveals that in fact 75 percent of DoD’s petroleum purchases went to fuel aircraft and
some ships, with the Air Force accounting for 57 percent of the total DoD bill in FY04.54 Deeper analysis reveals that of the Air
Force’s $2.8B aviation fuel bill, 54 percent went to mobility air forces, 38 percent went to combat air forces, and the remaining 8
percent was consumed by aircrew training and other aviation operations.55 The fact that 8 of 10 entries on DESC’s list of Top Ten
Customers for FY04 are air mobility bases56 seemingly confirms that air mobility (airlift and air refueling) is the single most
petroleum-intense activity within DoD, making focused logistics and dominant maneuver the most energy-vulnerable dimensions
within DoD’s vision of full spectrum dominance for Joint Vision 2025.
Oil Dependence – Economy

Hostile governments and terrorists ensure oil shocks – they’ll use supply to ruin the economy.
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“Our nation’s dependence on imported oil leaves it dangerously vulnerable to attack. A single well-designed attack on the petroleum
infrastructure in the Middle East could send oil to well over $100 per barrel and devastate the world’s economy.”1
A recent Congressional Research Service report to Congress highlighted terrorists emphasis on exploiting oil vulnerabilities:
Al Qaeda leaders’ statements reveal sophisticated consideration of the economic and military vulnerabilities of the United States and
its allies, particularly with regard to the role of Middle Eastern oil as “the basis of industry” in the global economy. Statements by Bin
Laden and Al Zawahiri urging attacks on oil infrastructure and military supply lines could indicate a shift in Al Qaeda’s strategic and
tactical planning in favor of a more protracted attritional conflict characterized by disruptive attacks on economic and critical energy
production infrastructure. For example, in an interview reportedly conducted on or around the fourth anniversary of the September 11
terrorist attacks, Al Zawahiri urged “mujahidin to concentrate their campaigns on the Muslims’ stolen oil” and to “not allow the
thieves ruling [Muslim] countries to control this oil.” Bin Laden has called for Muslim societies to become more self-sufficient
economically and has urged Arab governments to preserve oil as “a great and important economic power for the coming Islamic
state.” Bin Laden also has described economic boycotts as “extremely effective” weapons.
Instability and hostility towards the United States characterizes most of the oil-producing world, and terrorist organizations have
called for attacks on oil infrastructure and military supply lines.2 An oil supply crisis can no longer be dismissed as a low-probability
event. Hostile governments and terrorist organizations could use oil supply as a strategic weapon to attack the United States. Oil
supply disruptions to the United States could be caused by several events: natural disaster, politically motivated embargoes, terrorist
attacks on production and transmission infrastructure, or closure of world oil transit chokepoints. Any long-term disruption in oil
supply to the United States is a National Security risk unacceptable to the US government. However, most of these scenarios assume a
major world-wide upheaval or political and other major changes in the primary oil production regions of the world and go beyond the
scope of this paper.
Dependency makes U.S. economic decline inevitable – capital outflows and demand disruptions.
Dr. John Scire, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at UNR, 2/10/2008, Oil dependency, national security,
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20080210/OPINION/227691244 [ND]
The Economic Costs

The economic costs include net capital outflows, loss of competitiveness in world markets and the costs of supply and demand
disruptions. In 2007, estimated net capital outflows from the U.S. to oil exporters exceeded $150 billion. The money used to purchase
oil today is not repatriated in purchases of U.S. goods and services by oil exporting states as it was in the 1970s. As a result, the
American economy loses $150 billion every year and that money only increases other countries' competitiveness.
Supply disruptions are another economic cost of dependency. In a 2003 report, the National Defense Council Foundation (NDCF)
estimated total costs to the American economy from supply disruptions in 1973, 1979, and 1990 at $2.3 to $2.5 trillion.
A new term, demand disruption, has recently emerged in the financial press to explain the current high price of oil. Demand
disruptions occur when demand exceeds supply. While supply disruptions tend to be short-term and fairly easily resolved, demand
disruptions are longer-term and much more difficult to resolve. Other than paying up for oil and suffering the economic consequences,
our only solution during extended demand disruptions would be to be capable of rapidly switching to alternative motor fuels or other
means of transportation.
Oil Dependence – Laundry List

Oil dependence spurs terrorism, kills soldiers, and ensures Middle East instability.
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Eva Sohlman, 3/17/2008, Green Hawks in the Pentagon: the American Army Is on a Green Mission,
http://www.thewip.net/contributors/2008/03/green_hawks_in_the_pentagon_th.html
”The United States’ dependence on oil makes us very vulnerable from a security and environmental perspective. Why buy oil from
Islamic theocracies, which sponsor terrorism against us? We are fighting a war against terror, but are paying for both sides. How smart
is that?” asks the sprightly 66-year-old Woolsey.
Woolsey is one of the Green Hawks in the Pentagon – a new movement of tree-huggers, activists, researchers, inventors, army people
and neoconservative hawks – who are leading the way toward alternative energy and energy conservation in America. Their
motivation is the security of the nation, since they see terrorism and climate change as the greatest threats against the US as a
superpower.
“The goal is to become energy independent, but to get there we have to shift to green energy,” says Woolsey who has been engaged in
this question since the oil crises in the 1970s.
But according to estimates, the US, the world’s biggest consumer of oil, will continue to increase its oil consumption. Unless
something is done to counter this trend it will probably mean that the country, which already imports around 60% of its oil, will
become even more dependent on the oil-rich Middle East.
In order to stop this scenario and find new solutions, the Green Hawks hold open meetings in the Pentagon. These meetings, which
have already acquired legendary status, attract people from the Pentagon, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Department for Homeland
Security, the State Department, Congress, embassies, think tanks, environmental organizations, security firms and the weapons
industry, all seeking to make new connections and exchange information, knowledge and experiences.
A senior European security analyst who attended one of these meetings described it as “bustling with people from all kinds of groups
and interests. Very dynamic.”
Ironically, it was the Iraq war – which many believe was a US attempt to secure its access to oil – which made the Pentagon realize the
advantages alternative energy would offer. Hundreds, if not thousands, of American soldiers have been killed in attacks during
transports of fuel and water.
Dan Nolan, who oversees energy projects for the US Army's Rapid Equipping Force, explains it was not until the cost of fuel was
measured in blood (American blood) that the commanders started to understand.
“Our transports have never been as vulnerable and exposed as they are in Iraq. More oil is not the solution, it is the problem.” As a
consequence the Army now tries to generate what is needed on site; it uses fuel cells which produce water as a byproduct. It uses tents
that need 40 percent less air-conditioning, which in turn is now increasingly run on green energy instead of diesel. The diesel
generators emit heat, which is easily spotted with infrared detection.
The record high price of oil is another reason the American Army – the world’s biggest consumer of energy – is shifting to green
energy. The price of oil is expected to remain high in the near future since oil production is estimated to have already peaked, while
the situation in the oil-rich Middle East looks likely to remain unstable.
Oil Dependence – Peak Oil

Continued oil reliance ensures readiness collapse – peak oil is inevitable.
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Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, 6/6/2007, The Pentagon v.
Peak Oil, http://www.countercurrents.org/klare160607.htm
And this is likely to be the least of the Pentagon’s worries. The Department of Defense is, after all, the world’s richest military
organization, and so can be expected to tap into hidden accounts of one sort or another in order to pay its oil bills and finance its many
pet weapons projects. However, this assumes that sufficient petroleum will be available on world markets to meet the Pentagon’s ever-
growing needs — by no means a foregone conclusion. Like every other large consumer, the DoD must now confront the looming —
but hard to assess — reality of “Peak Oil”; the very real possibility that global oil production is at or near its maximum sustainable
(”peak”) output and will soon commence an irreversible decline.
That global oil output will eventually reach a peak and then decline is no longer a matter of debate; all major energy organizations
have now embraced this view. What remains open for argument is precisely when this moment will arrive. Some experts place it
comfortably in the future — meaning two or three decades down the pike — while others put it in this very decade. If there is a
consensus emerging, it is that peak-oil output will occur somewhere around 2015. Whatever the timing of this momentous event, it is
apparent that the world faces a profound shift in the global availability of energy, as we move from a situation of relative abundance to
one of relative scarcity. It should be noted, moreover, that this shift will apply, above all, to the form of energy most in demand by the
Pentagon: the petroleum liquids used to power planes, ships, and armored vehicles.
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Oil Dependence – Readiness
DoD dependency decimates readiness, increases competition, and strains security alliances.
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20080210/OPINION/227691244Military Costs [ND]
DoD's dependency on oil as a primary motor fuel makes military operations much more costly than if it had alternative fuels. Oil
dependency also requires that we dedicate military forces to the Persian Gulf area, reducing our ability to use those forces in other
places. Furthermore, the U.S. military presence in the Middle East raises the potential for military conflicts with other importing
nations as world demand increases and supplies decrease. Our oil dependency also strains military alliances, such as NATO, as
members compete for oil. Witness the French and Germans working with the Iranians to increase oil production and Pakistan building
a port to import Iranian natural gas while we are trying to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Their need for oil and gas trumps our need
to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The last and perhaps most serious impact on national security of our oil dependency is
that the chronic weakening of the U.S. economic base will inevitably weaken our military; we cannot sustain a strong military with a
weak economy.
Military’s entirely reliant now – without oil power projection’s impossible.

Nick Turse, contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, is the associate editor and research director of
Tomdispatch.com, 3/24/2008, Foreign Policy In Focus, The Military-Petroleum Complex,
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5097
The American military relies more than that of any other nation on oil-powered ships, planes, helicopters, and armored vehicles to
transport troops into battle and rain down weapons on its foes. Although the Pentagon may boast of its ever-advancing use of
computers and other high-tech devices, the fighting machines that form the backbone of the U.S. military are entirely dependent on
petroleum. Without an abundant and reliable supply of oil, the Department of Defense could neither rush its forces to distant
battlefields nor keep them supplied once deployed there.
Oil’s key to power projection – vehicle transportation.

Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, Portrait of an Oil-
Addicted Former Superpower, http://verbena19.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/tomgram-michael-klare-america-
out-of-gas/
No less important was the role of abundant petroleum in fueling the global reach of U.S. military power. For all the talk of America's
growing reliance on computers, advanced sensors, and stealth technology to prevail in warfare, it has been oil above all that gave the
U.S. military its capacity to "project power" onto distant battlefields like Iraq and Afghanistan. Every Humvee, tank, helicopter, and
jet fighter requires its daily ration of petroleum, without which America's technology-driven military would be forced to abandon the
battlefield. No surprise, then, that the U.S. Department of Defense is the world's single biggest consumer of petroleum, using more of
it every day than the entire nation of Sweden.
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Oil Dependence - Readiness
Fuel’s uniquely key to mission success – helicopter’s prove.
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2007/08defense_lengyel/lengyel20070815.pdf
Lastly, dependence on fuel carries a high cost in combat capability which is impossible to quantify in dollars. In the early stages of
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), USAF MH-53M “Pave Low” special operations helicopters originally planned to base in Southern
Turkey were forced, after Turkey denied US basing rights, to leap-frog from Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean Sea across Turkey to
an airstrip in Northern Iraq. The MH-53s were tasked to support Army Special Forces (SF) flown in via MC-130s from Romania, and
to stand alert for Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) until dedicated CSAR assets would arrive weeks later. The helicopters air
refueled before entering Iraq to “top off” their fuel tanks. For several days during the most intense fighting of OIF, the fuel in their
tanks was the only fuel available to conduct missions until the nightly MC-130P “Combat Shadow” passed overhead to conduct an air
refueling resupply allowing the Pave Lows to “top off” for the next 24-hour period. An Army special operations support battalion
impressively established fuel logistics support in only a few days, and the MC-130P tankers eventually co-located with the helicopters,
but fuel was clearly the operational limitation early on.15
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Oil Dependence – Readiness – Convoys
Fuel protection kills readiness – renewables uniquely reduce burden and solve mission effectiveness.
2.2.3.4 Benefits of Better Fuel Management

The Task Force found that combat and combat related systems generally are inefficient in their use of fuel. This represents a major
constraint on the operational effectiveness of U.S. forces and translates directly into poor endurance and persistence in the battlespace.
Platforms are forced to use time transiting to fuel sources instead of residing on station, and more of them are needed to maintain a
continuous presence. Improvements in the efficiency of platforms therefore would enable U.S. forces to increase their in-theater
effectiveness by spending more time on station relative to transit, and by allocating fewer of their assets to sustain a given number at
that station.
Platform inefficiency affects operational effectiveness in other ways as well. Moving and protecting fuel through a battlespace requires
significant resources. It constrains freedom of movement by combat forces, makes them more vulnerable to attack, and compels them
to redirect assets from combat operations to protection of supply lines. Thus, the need to move and protect fuel detracts from combat
effectiveness in two ways; by adding to sustainment costs and by diverting and endangering in-theater force capability.
The payoff to DoD from reduced fuel demand in terms of mission effectiveness and human lives is probably greater than for any other
energy user in the world. More efficient platforms would enhance range, persistence and endurance. They also would reduce the
burden of owning, employing, operating and protecting the people and equipment needed to move and protect fuel from the point of
commercial purchase to the point of use. An important implication is that increased energy efficiency of deployed equipment and
systems will have a large multiplier effect. Not only will there be direct savings in fuel cost, but combat effectiveness will be increased
and resources otherwise needed for resupply and protection redirected. Truck drivers and convoyprotectors can become combat
soldiers, increasing combat capability while reducing vulnerabilities caused by extensive convoys. In short, more efficient platforms
increase warfighting capability.
Oil dependency externalities jack readiness – transport fees and convoy protection.
Task Force on DoD Energy Strategy, http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2008-02-ESTF.pdf
Figure 2.1 shows who is responsible for specific fuel delivery costs. The costs incurred from Points A to D are included in the
“standard” price DESC charges its customers for the commodity. Costs incurred beyond Point D are typically paid by the military
services through the support force structure they maintain, operate and sustain. These costs are borne by budgets not attributed to fuel.
They are the total ownership costs of assets such as tanker aircraft, fuel trucks and oiler ships; and personnel, parts, training and fuel
needed to keep them operational. They also include protection required to assure delivery of the fuel from Point D to the point of use.
The costs of protection are difficult to measure and are often not monetary costs. They include reduced combat effectiveness, risk to
mission, and casualties. In Iraq and Afghanistan, combat forces are dedicated to supply line protection rather than combat operations.
As of November 2007, approximately 80 convoys travel continuously between Kuwait and Iraq destinations, all protected by
uniformed forces. This degrades combat capability, resulting in real costs, even if not attributed to the supplies themselves.
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Oil Dependence – Readiness – Tech
Oil reliance decks military transformation and pre-emption – addressing energy is key to addressing war-
fighting.
Peak Oil, http://www.countercurrents.org/klare160607.htm
LMI arrived at this conclusion from a careful analysis of current U.S. military doctrine. At the heart of the national military strategy
imposed by the Bush administration — the Bush Doctrine — are two core principles: transformation, or the conversion of America’s
stodgy, tank-heavy Cold War military apparatus into an agile, continent-hopping high-tech, futuristic war machine; and pre-emption,
or the initiation of hostilities against “rogue states” like Iraq and Iran, thought to be pursuing weapons of mass destruction. What both
principles entail is a substantial increase in the Pentagon’s consumption of petroleum products — either because such plans rely, to an
increased extent, on air and sea-power or because they imply an accelerated tempo of military operations.
As summarized by LMI, implementation of the Bush Doctrine requires that “our forces must expand geographically and be more
mobile and expeditionary so that they can be engaged in more theaters and prepared for expedient deployment anywhere in the
world”; at the same time, they “must transition from a reactive to a proactive force posture to deter enemy forces from organizing for
and conducting potentially catastrophic attacks.” It follows that, “to carry out these activities, the U.S. military will have to be even
more energy intense…. Considering the trend in operational fuel consumption and future capability needs, this ‘new’ force
employment construct will likely demand more energy/fuel in the deployed setting.”
The resulting increase in petroleum consumption is likely to prove dramatic. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the average
American soldier consumed only four gallons of oil per day; as a result of George W. Bush’s initiatives, a U.S. soldier in Iraq is now
using four times as much. If this rate of increase continues unabated, the next major war could entail an expenditure of 64 gallons per
soldier per day.
It was the unassailable logic of this situation that led LMI to conclude that there is a severe “operational disconnect” between the
Bush administration’s principles for future war-fighting and the global energy situation. The administration has, the company notes,
“tethered operational capability to high-technology solutions that require continued growth in energy sources” — and done so at the
worst possible moment historically. After all, the likelihood is that the global energy supply is about to begin diminishing rather than
expanding. Clearly, writes LMI in its April 2007 report, “it may not be possible to execute operational concepts and capabilities to
achieve our security strategy if the energy implications are not considered.” And when those energy implications are considered, the
strategy appears “unsustainable.”
Greater energy requirements for new tech magnify our scenarios – ensures heg decline absent fuel.
Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, 5/8/2008, Portrait of an
Oil-Addicted Former Superpower, http://verbena19.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/tomgram-michael-klare-
america-out-of-gas/
Think of this as a strikingly clear-eyed assessment of American power. As far as they're concerned, we're now just another of those
hopeless oil addicts driving a monster gas-guzzler up to the pump -- and they're perfectly happy to collect our cash which they can
then use to cherry-pick our prime assets. So expect no summer tax holidays for the Pentagon, not in the Middle East, anyway.
Worse yet, the U.S. military will need even more oil for the future wars on which the Pentagon is now doing the planning. In this way,
the U.S. experience in Iraq has especially worrisome implications. Under the military "transformation" initiated by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, the future U.S. war machine will rely less on "boots on the ground" and ever more on technology.
But technology entails an ever-greater requirement for oil, as the newer weapons sought by Rumsfeld (and now Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates) all consume many times more fuel than those they will replace. To put this in perspective: The average G.I in Iraq
now uses about seven times as much oil per day as G.I.s did in the first Gulf War less than two decades ago. And every sign indicates
that the same ratio of increase will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will skyrocket; and that the Pentagon's
capacity to shoulder multiple foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone.
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Oil Dependence – Terrorism
Oil dependency ensures terrorism and troop casualties – only energy independence solves.
Ron Bengtson, founder and editor of americanenergyindependence.com, Energy Independence and National
Security, 5/8/2008, http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/nationalsecurity.html [ND]
Whatever noble reasons given for the war in Iraq and the war against terrorism, without oil at the center of the conflict there would be
no U.S. Military operations in the Middle East, and there would be no oil wealth to finance terrorist organizations. Islamic terrorism
feeds off of America’s addiction to oil.
Oil wealth in the hands of dictators and ideological extremists is financing terrorism. America trades its wealth for Middle East oil
enriching the sponsors of terrorism. For these reasons, the war against terrorism cannot be won without American energy
independence.
The cost of the U.S. Military operations in the Middle East should be included with any statement about the competitive price of
foreign oil. What price is America willing to pay? In addition to the monetary cost of the U.S. Military operations in the Middle East,
there is the human cost. How many American soldiers will die before the American people decide that the price of imported oil is too
high?
For less than the cost of the military operations in the Middle East, the United States could build local synthetic fuel refineries,
renewable energy farms, and safe nuclear power reactors across America. The combination of renewable energy, synthetic petroleum
for transportation fuels, and safe nuclear power can free America from dependence on foreign sources of energy.
Oil adventurism bad.

Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, 10/07/2004, Tomgram:
Michael Klare on oil wars and the American military, L/N [ND]
Meanwhile in Iraq, the administration's great oil adventure is aflame. According to Youssef Ibrahim, formerly of the New York Times
and the Wall Street Journal, despite official administration dreams of drastically raising Iraq's oil output and then using it to float our
occupation, we've essentially "lost" Iraqi oil -- as has the rest of the planet. "The reason oil prices have been hovering around $50 a
barrel now," he writes, "is that most of these Iraqi exports disappeared just as oil consumption began to skyrocket around the world."
The Iraqis themselves, situated on one of the globe's great oil reservoirs, are at present forced to import gasoline and other petroleum
products from elsewhere over ever more dangerous supply lines. The sabotaging of the Iraqi oil infrastructure by insurgents is now
widespread. According to Ibrahim, "At last count, the northern pipeline that carries oil to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan
has been blown up 37 times in 12 months."
Worse yet, neocon black-gold dreams of geopolitical domination, now translated into nightmarish reality, are fuelling oil vulnerability
elsewhere, especially in Saudi Arabia. As the Washington Post's Justin Blum recently reported (Terrorists Have Oil Industry in Cross
Hairs):
"Terrorists and insurgents are stepping up attacks on oil and gas operations overseas in an effort to disrupt jittery energy markets,
destabilize governments and scare off foreign workers, analysts said. The attacks have been most intense in Iraq, but also have
occurred in recent months in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Russia and Nigeria."
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Oil Dependence – Terrorism
Alternate jet fuel key – petrol dollars ensure terrorism.
Breanne Wagner, NDIA staff, May 2008, Market for Synthetic Aviation Fuels Off to a Shaky Start,
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2008/May/Market.htm [ND]
Algae, wood chips or garbage could in the future help fuel airplanes.
So say U.S. manufacturers of alternative aviation fuel, who are beginning to develop novel ways to power aircraft.
Makers of synthetic fuel are eager to offer their wares to the military as a lower cost and nationally produced alternative to petroleum-
based products.
Chief among the potential buyers of synthetic fuel is the Air Force, which has trumpeted an ambitious plan to power its aircraft with
alternative propellants.
The service plans to certify its aircraft fleet with synthetics by 2011 and aims to meet half of its fuel needs with such products by
2016.
But Air Force officials face roadblocks that are hampering efforts to stimulate the growth of a fledging synthetic jet fuel market. While
the development of alternative energy technology in the United States has exploded in recent years, for synthetic aviation fuels,
progress has been much slower.
“The industry is just beginning to grow in the United States,” says William Anderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for
installations, environment and logistics.
Rentech and Baard Energy were two of the first companies to announce plans to build synthetic aviation fuel plants. But their sites
won’t be ready until 2011 and 2012, respectively.
Other countries are far ahead in this area, including South Africa, Malaysia and Qatar. “There are at least a dozen [plants] operating
around the world today and another couple of dozen under construction or in the final planning stages,” Anderson says at an Air Force
energy forum in Arlington, Va.
Additionally, the development of alternative fuel is considered a national security priority. At the energy forum, Mississippi Gov.
Haley Barbour, a staunch alternative energy advocate, claims that the United States is hurting its anti-terrorism campaign by importing
foreign oil.
“The United States is financing both sides of the war on terror. We’re financing our own military and our own economy, and then a lot
of our petrol dollars find their way into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists,” says Barbour.
Dependency spurs terrorism – funds Islamic charities.

http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20080210/OPINION/227691244 [ND]
Political Impacts
Oil dependency forces the U.S. to support oil regimes that oppress their citizens. As a result, other states and the citizens of oppressive
oil regimes see the U.S. as their real enemy. It isn't surprising that Osama bin Laden's first Fatwah was against the U.S. for stationing
troops in Saudi Arabia to protect the oppressive Saudi Royal Family. U.S. oil dependency also strengthens worldwide Islamist terror
campaigns as funding for these groups comes primarily from Middle Eastern Islamic charities, located primarily in Saudi Arabia.
Because of oil dependency, we both motivate the terrorists and provide the money to fund their attacks on us.
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Oil Shocks – U.S. Vulnerable
Lack of DoD energy strategy leaves the U.S. vulnerable to any shocks – budget’s stretched now.
First, the DOD needs to recognize the problem from a military perspective: energy is the key enabler of US military combat power.
With that comes huge consumption of mostly imported petroleum based fuels, a command, control, communications, computers,
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) structure dependent on the civilian electrical grid, and rising costs to support the
military’s energy needs. Despite those key elements, DOD has no comprehensive strategy for energy or organizational structure
to implement an energy strategy.
Second, the DOD must recognize that energy security makes the military vulnerable in several ways. DOD operations require assured
access to large amounts of fuel for combat platforms and electricity for DOD installations from a vulnerable electrical grid. Recent
cost increases and higher projected costs for energy take defense dollars away from other key budget areas. Energy requirements are
directly related to combat effectiveness, and the infrastructure required to transport and distribute energy to the battlefield is extremely
expensive and diverts resources away from combat. Combat forces are limited by a “tether of fuel” that needs to be lengthened.
Third, energy must be managed like other combat enablers, such as intelligence, acquisition, and logistics. Present DOD fuel costs
represent only a 2.5 – 3% fraction of the national defense budget. That may seem small, but in a fiscally constrained wartime
environment where DOD and Service budgets have been cut again and again – every dollar is already committed. The forecast is for
more of the same. An already huge national debt, federal budget deficits, a looming fiscal storm of rising national health care costs and
a potential Social Security crisis make fiscally constrained times appear permanent for the US Government.
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Oil Shocks – Readiness
And oil shocks deck DoD readiness – causes cutbacks on new tech and infrastructure.
Peak Oil, http://www.countercurrents.org/klare160607.htm [ND]
A price rise of this magnitude, when translated into the cost of gasoline, aviation fuel, diesel fuel, home-heating oil, and
petrochemicals will play havoc with the budgets of families, farms, businesses, and local governments. Sooner or later, it will force
people to make profound changes in their daily lives — as benign as purchasing a hybrid vehicle in place of an SUV or as painful as
cutting back on home heating or health care simply to make an unavoidable drive to work. It will have an equally severe affect on the
Pentagon budget. As the world’s number one consumer of petroleum products, the DoD will obviously be disproportionately affected
by a doubling in the price of crude oil. If it can’t turn to Congress for redress, it will have to reduce its profligate consumption of oil
and/or cut back on other expenses, including weapons purchases.
The rising price of oil is producing what Pentagon contractor LMI calls a “fiscal disconnect” between the military’s long-range
objectives and the realities of the energy marketplace. “The need to recapitalize obsolete and damaged equipment [from the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan] and to develop high-technology systems to implement future operational concepts is growing,” it explained in
an April 2007 report. However, an inability “to control increased energy costs from fuel and supporting infrastructure diverts
resources that would otherwise be available to procure new capabilities.”
Price shocks jack heg – homefront economy and military response.

In 2005, Hurricanes off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana damaged oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the price of oil to
rise over $70 per barrel. What would another Arab oil embargo do? Or, God forbid, what would happen if Iran makes a nuclear bomb
and gives it to Islamic militants who then detonate the bomb in the Saudi oil fields, destroying Saudi oil production? The price of
Iran's oil, and all oil on the world market, would then skyrocket to over $200 per barrel. The price of gasoline and diesel would
increase to over $5 per gallon in the USA and could go as high as $6-$10. Shortages would create gasoline rationing. What would that
do to the U.S. economy? What would that cost the American people in real dollars? Jobs lost, retail sales falling, housing market
collapsing...
And, given the fact that a large percentage of the fuel that powers U.S. military vehicles and aircraft is made from foreign oil, U.S. oil
dependence undermines the U.S. military’s ability to respond to a national security emergency.
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DoD – Heg/Energy Transition
DoD access is key to energy transition – only adequate fuel can deter aggressors and ensure transition.
TRANSFORMATION,
Although the DoD uses only approximately 1.5 percent of the 20 million barrels of oil consumed each day in the U.S., it is the largest
single institutional energy customer in the United States and likely the world.5 Subscribing to a National Defense Strategy that values
effectiveness over efficiency, the DoD relies upon petroleum to deliver the energy-intense global power projection, agile logistics, and
operational maneuver capabilities essential to waging a dominant and uniquely high-technology “American way of war.” As the
nation’s primary security provider, the DoD has a vested interest in ensuring that it possesses the uninterrupted energy resources
needed to deter all would-be aggressors and decisively engage in the full spectrum of conflict, particularly as it prepares for a decades-
long global war on terrorism. The question then becomes, how can the Department of Defense contribute toward the President’s goal
of creating a petroleum-free society while simultaneously ensuring it has the energy and capabilities to complete its mission?
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Airlines – Brink
Absent a new energy policy, the airline industry and U.S. economy will decline.
As the price of fuel skyrockets, the U.S. airline industry stands on a ledge, staring into an abyss. Before time runs out on the nation’s
air carriers, policymakers must adopt new energy policy priorities with great purpose and haste. The trend lines cannot be ignored.
Fuel has become the number one expense for U.S. carriers, siphoning off 40 cents or more of every dollar of revenue, and rising. The
price of oil has nearly doubled in the last several months to over $130/barrel, and carriers are unlikely to be able to raise airfares or cut
capacity sufficiently to adapt their operations to this reality. Instead, as AirlineForecasts’ analysis shows, the U.S. airline industry, as
we know it, cannot survive at existing fuel price levels, and certainly not at the higher levels some analysts are predicting for this
summer and beyond. Brand name legacy carriers that we and American communities from coast-to-coast have depended upon for
decades to provide us with affordable, frequent air service are running out of cash, and therefore, toward a date with bankruptcy, and
even liquidation. The consequences of the hole this will leave in our nation’s transportation grid will be extremely profound for our
economy, society and culture. A catastrophic result for U.S. airlines can be averted if policymakers, particularly in the White House
and Congress, step up purposefully to address this monumental challenge. There is still time to make a difference. This is important
not only for airlines and their passengers, but also for every business that uses oil products. In the weeks ahead, BTC will work with
its allies to bring forward to Congress and the Administration some specific proposals that will help address the near and long-term
implications of the aviation fuel crisis. We urgently need a new energy policy that will give the airlines a fighting chance to survive
and recover -- and serve all members of the traveling public for many years to come.
Now is key – all airlines will collapse by next year without new fuel sources.
AirlineForecasts concludes that if oil prices stay anywhere near $130/barrel, all major legacy airlines will be in default on various debt
covenants by the end of 2008 or early 2009. The implication is that several large and small airlines will ultimately end up in
bankruptcy, and of those, some will be forced to liquidate. While economic theory suggests higher and unsustainable fuels costs will
lead to a smaller industry, it does not necessarily follow that the industry will reach its smaller size before collapsing along the way
under the weight of higher fuel prices.
Airline’s are on the brink – industry’s melting before our eyes.

KSWO 7/17/2008, Airline industry sinking, testifies before congress,
http://www.kswo.com/Global/story.asp?S=8687597
The airline industry is the latest to report that its finances are in a tailspin, and on Tuesday, representatives plead for help from
Washington. The industry backed up its fears on Wednesday with figures reporting that more airlines are cutting back, and some are
closing all together.
Airlines are now spending so much money on fuel that they are losing money with each flight that departs, and these costs are passed
to passengers. But, it still isn't enough to help stem the bleeding. Newly released numbers for the airline industry's second quarter
predict more turbulent times for the industry - and the sky-high price of fuel is where they place primary blame. "We are literally
seeing the industry melting down before our eyes," said Air Transport Association representative John Meenan.
Air travel industry reps sounded the alarm at a congressional hearing on Tuesday, presenting sobering facts and an urgent call to end
oil speculation. Their testimony swayed both sides of the aisle. "The administration's got its head in the sand on speculation. We
must do something to control it," said Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK). "I believe that our commercial aviation system is teetering,
frankly, on the brink of collapse," said Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV).
Eight carriers have gone out of business, two have declared bankruptcy, and an additional two are on the brink of the same.
Desperate times are producing desperate measures. Airlines are laying off workers, cutting flights, forgoing in-flight movies, and
charging an additional fee for checked baggage in order to cut costs and make a profit. Airlines are even adding fees for the privilege
of using frequent-flier miles along with allowing advertisements on their boarding passes.
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Airlines – Want Algae
Airlines wants algae – there’s no suitable fuel alternative now.
Clayton B. Cornell, Greenoptions biofuels expert, Honors B.S. in Biology and a minor in Chemistry from the
University of Utah. He has also studied graduate level Toxicology and Oregon State University, and most
recently left a position there in the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology.6/8/2007, Algae
Biofuel May Be Future For Aviation, http://claytonbodiecornell.greenoptions.com/2007/06/08/algae-biofuel-
may-be-future-for-aviation/
The aviation industry may one day be powered by algae. Manufacturing giant Boeing says that a biodiesel alternative made from algae
could be the aircraft biofuel of the future.
Last month, in an 8-page document plainly titled “Alternative Fuels for Commercial Aircraft”, Boeing presented their estimation of
the alternative fuel sources that could ‘relieve worldwide pressure on crude-oil derived fuels’ and drive air travel to carbon neutrality.
The biofuel debate has largely glossed over the ‘friendly skies’ while high fuel prices continue to take their toll on the industry. No
biofuel we have yet can step up to the plate. Ethanol collects water and corrodes the engine and lines while biodiesel freezes up in cold
weather (ie: cruising altitude). Don’t forget pilots’ general resistance to change and a life and death dependency on reliable fuel, and
aviation biofuels don’t have a leg to stand on.
“There are a lot of questions to be answered and one of them, frankly, that has been answered so far is that ethanol is probably not
suitable for airplanes,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes environmental strategy managing director Bill Glover said during a Star
Alliance conference in Copenhagen.
“That would require changes to the airplane - (ethanol) doesn’t have the energy content and it has some other properties that are
incompatible with the systems in the airplane.
“But we can, it looks like, develop something that is more like a biodiesel that has some promise.”
This isn’t going to happen right away though, and Boeing sees possibilities for 3 different time tables: near, mid-range, and long-term.
In the near term, a ‘drop-in’ fuel is needed - something to replace regular fuel as quickly as possible. Boeing thinks this might be a
blend of kerosene and synthetic diesel produced via Fischer-Tropsch process (I had to look it up too). Though this could alleviate
some dependence on crude, synthetic diesel is still nonrenewable and without CO2 sequestration (mentioned as a possibility in the
report) it can actually double net CO2 emissions (being typically manufactured from coal or natural gas) .
In the mid-term (10-50 years), Boeing suggests biofuels will make up a much larger percentage of jet fuel in blends with synthetic
diesel or Jet-A (standard Jet fuel). The significant barriers to this are well-known: lack of farmland for contemporaryfeedstocks
(soybeans, etc) and competition for food, fuel gelling problems, poorer heat stability in the engine, and questionable suitability for
storage.
But the long term is where things get really exciting, and Boeing is extremely optimistic about the potential of algae:
With the potential for algae of providing 10,000 gal/acre/year, some 85 billion gallons of bio-jet could be produced on a landmass
equivalent to the size of the US state of Maryland. Moreover, if these bio-jet fuels were fully compatible with legacy aircraft, it would
be sufficient to supply the present world’s fleet with 100 percent of their fuel needs (fig. 13) as well into the future.”
Yes, Boeing actually said that: 100% of world aviation fuel needs. Details are sparse at this point, and it’s unclear what this algae bio-
jetfuel will be, but Boeing seems satisfied by the prospect and appears sincerely concerned about global warming. The take home
message was that:
Long-term solutions will need to dramatically reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Therefore, alternate fuels with low to zero
carbon content, such as liquid hydrogen or liquid methane, might be used.
Liquid fuels like these could be the next step, potentially produced by nuclear or preferably, solar power.
It’s good to hear some noise coming from the aviation industry, and perhaps algae won’t take 50 years to become the fuel source of the
future.
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Airlines Want Algae
The industry wants algae fuel – investment is all that’s key.
Elisabeth Rosenthal, International Herald Tribune staff, July 8, 2008, International Herald Tribune
Fuel prices force airlines into action, http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=14325203
"If there ever was an incentive to create alternative fuels, $140-a-barrel oil is it," said Paul Charles, communications director of Virgin
Atlantic, though he added that the "environmental issue is still the primary incentive."
Charles predicted that given the fast pace of current research, "it is likely that within five years you'll have commercial jets flying on
algae - it will be as quick and dramatic as the shift to digital TV."
A number of airlines and aircraft makers are furiously exploring alternative fuels. Virgin led the pack, flying a jumbo jet from London
to Amsterdam this year with one of its four tanks using biofuel, in this case made of a blend of coconut oil and nuts. Other airlines
have followed.
This month, Rob Fyfe, the chief executive of Air New Zealand, committed to running its fleet on 10 percent biofuels by 2013. He
further vowed to use only biofuels made from nonfood plants, focusing on importing fuel from jatropha plantations in Africa and
India. Jatropha is a plant that grows in semiarid regions, and its oil can be converted into jet fuel.
Biofuels "present particularly exciting opportunities when placed against a backdrop of jet fuel prices that have recently been as high
as $174 a barrel," Fyfe said.
Japan Airlines says it will run a flight partly on biofuel by next spring.
Sébastien Remy, who is in charge of Airbus's alternative fuel program, predicts that 25 percent of jet fuel will be derived from
nonpetroleum sources by 2025. In the past few years, research has shown that jet engines today can run on properly refined biofuels,
so no mechanical modifications are essential.
Industry experts are pinning their hope on oil from algae, because it is cheap and easily convertible into a fuel that can be used in a
plane. Companies like Boeing and Chevron, as well as the U.S. military, are working on the technology.
A couple of years ago most airlines were combating climate change with public relations. And public relations is certainly still a
problem. This past week, the British Advertising Standards Agency criticized EasyJet for claiming that its flights generated 22 percent
less emissions than traditional airlines.
But sky-high fuel prices are moving polluters to genuine action. Fuel prices are the best friend the environment has these days. Are the
airlines' efforts science fiction?
Electric cars and planes powered by algae fuel are technically possible if the research, money and will are there. So now with oil
prices high and carbon taxes on the horizon, the industry should be able to find alternatives that will insure its survival, and spare the
environment as well.
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Algae Solves Airlines
Only algae solves airline viability – standards mean they need cheap AND environmentally good fuel.
Sarah Marsh, Reuters, 7/17/2008, Airline crisis boosts biofuel drive,
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2008-07-17-airlines-biofuel_N.htm?csp=34 [ND]
FARNBOROUGH, England — Algae and nuts are among the alternative sources of fuel being considered by an increasingly skittish
aviation industry as an alternative to petroleum, whose price rises threaten airlines with bankruptcy.
With oil prices possibly poised to break through the $150 a barrel barrier, biofuels based on sources of energy like these no longer
seem far-fetched — but they will take years to develop and no-one will be flying in a farm-fueled jet any time soon.
Discussion about potential alternatives to help airlines cope with high fuel prices and meet environmental requirements buzzed round
the chalets at the Farnborough air show this week, as aerospace firms vied to show off their green credentials.
Environmentalists, however, said it was empty talk.
"At $70 a barrel, people were saying 'it is never going to happen'. At $150 a barrel, it starts to look interesting," said Ric Parker, Rolls-
Royce's research and technology head.
The British engine maker said this week it was starting a scientific test program with British Airways to investigate alternative aviation
fuels.
"There is some realization that the industry needs to be proactive .. and if they aren't then we'll be forced by governments to
be proactive," said Paul Adams, senior vice president of engineering at U.S. rival Pratt & Whitney.
European Union lawmakers recently approved a deal to include aviation, which they say generates 3% of carbon dioxide emissions,
from 2012 in the EU's Emission Trading Scheme. The airline industry has criticized the move as a costly burden.
"(For) the people who figure out how to make (alternative fuels) work, it will be a very profitable thing for them in the long term,"
Adams said.
Grand schemes for alternative fuels have been in incubation for years, with research progressing slowly as the aviation industry
requires a fuel with greater specifications than the rest of the transport sector — including low freezing points.
But high oil prices and concerns over pollution have forced the industry to step up their efforts towards finding a sustainable and
economically viable alternative to oil-based kerosene, which has doubled in price over the past year.
Another factor driving research is the strategic desire for fuel independence, especially in the United States.
The U.S. Air Force aims to have at least a 50/50 blend of jet fuel and synthetic fuel on all aircraft by 2017, spokesman Gary Strasburg
said in an emailed statement.
So far synthetic fuels based on non-renewable sources such as gas and coal have the edge over plant-based biofuels.
European planemaker Airbus this year flew one of its A380 superjumbos using synthetic fuel from natural gas, known as gas-to-liquid,
which is almost free of sulfur, can be used with current engines and could be available soon.
Food competition
Biofuels, currently mainly produced from crops such as grain, vegetable oils and sugar, are seen by advocates as a better alternative
fuel since they could cut emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
Nuts from Amazon rainforests helped fuel the world's first commercial airline flight partly powered by renewable energy earlier this
year.
Critics say an expansion in the area of crops grown for energy has helped drive up food prices, and some scientists have questioned
the environmental benefits of so-called first-generation biofuels.
"The real environmental improvement will come with bio-to-liquid, but the difficulty is not to compete with the food chain," said Axel
Krein, Airbus' senior vice president for research and technology.
Using algae is an option because it would not compete with human food needs, contains a lot of energy and uses less area than crops,
he said. Still, "significant and meaningful" quantities of biofuels would not be available before 2015-2020.
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Competitiveness – Market Spillover
Investment in military R&D is key to the private sector – only it can catalyze needed innovation.
Jeffrey W. Eggers, CMDR., The fuel gauge of national security, http://www.afji.com/2008/05/3434573/ [ND]
None of this has gone unnoticed by the Pentagon. In 2006, before the prodding by Congress, the Defense Department sponsored
several symposiums to look at reducing the dependence. The Energy Conversation, a nonprofit consortium of private and public sector
entities, was born out of close collaboration with the Pentagon to connect the “best ideas, innovations, resources and people — all of
which will be needed to create a sustainable energy future.” Attempting to lead from the front, the Pentagon has begun to reduce its
consumption of oil, now down to about 300,000 barrels a day. The bad news is that costs are clearly skyrocketing. At current prices,
the Pentagon will spend more than $8 billion this year on oil. But cost savings and incremental reductions in military consumption are
not the real opportunity here. Rather, a renewed and expanded investment in military energy research and development will catalyze
methods and improvements that would become diffused throughout industry. This pattern has played out many times before.
There have been many tangible benefits to society from a long history of technological exploration and innovation by the military.
Now taken for granted for their civilian uses, radar, microwaves, the Internet and GPS were initially sponsored and funded by military
research. Most relevant here, military requirements have also been key drivers of energy innovation. Perhaps the most significant and
widely underreported example of military requirements forcing energy innovation was the Navy’s pioneering research in the use of nuclear power
before the advent of the Manhattan Project. In 1937, Rear Adm. Stanford Hooper, as director of the Navy’s Technical Division, explored the concept
of nuclear energy at Johns Hopkins University’s physics department, ultimately resulting in a Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) meeting with
physicist Enrico Fermi in 1939 and the launching of the Navy’s nuclear energy research, not to build a bomb, but to power a submarine. The NRL
made considerable progress in the key challenge of uranium isotope separation, and the Navy’s methods were ultimately adopted by the Manhattan
Project. After World War II, Capt. Hyman Rickover, a Navy electrical engineer, realized the importance of uranium to harness the atom to drive
submarines, culminating in the first nuclear-powered vehicle, the Nautilus, launched in 1955. Today, retired Navy nuclear power officers now operate
a good majority of the 103 operating nuclear power plants in the U.S.
The most famous arm of military R&D is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. This small group of scientists
brought the country stealth technology and the Internet. Congress passed a bill in fall 2007 to create a new energy research agency in
DARPA’s image called the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E), with the goal of reducing foreign oil imports,
improving efficiency and reducing emissions. The concept of ARPA-E is a well-intended step forward, but implementation has been
stalled by debates over structure and funding. In the interim, a parallel strategy for improved innovation toward energy security is not only to
pursue R&D through “DARPA-like” agencies but through DARPA itself, particularly given the military’s own intractable addiction to oil. Federal
funding for classic military research entities, to include others such as NRL, the home of nuclear power, should be significantly expanded and re-
prioritized around high-risk basic science and applied energy research. President Eisenhower created DARPA 51 years ago after U.S. R&D failures
were illuminated by the Sputnik debacle. He sought to create a “unifying force” for military R&D that would eliminate stovepipes and improve
collaboration. The success and efficacy of his vision has also derived from the fact that the military’s implementation arm is attached to the same
body as the R&D arm, so that the research feeds a ready and waiting industry in an efficient model. Commercialization challenges can be resolved
under the pressures of military requirements, thereby reducing the eventual barriers to market.
Given the rhetoric about energy security today, the energy research budget of the U.S. government is still modest, about $3.5 billion annually
compared with $8.8 billion for missile-defense research in fiscal 2009. And by any normalized metric, by gross domestic product or per capita, the
U.S. spends less on energy research than either Japan or the European Union. The administration’s continued expansion of the budget for the
Office of Science Research at the Energy Department should be applauded, yet the defense research agencies should see a similar
first-tier priority of investment, specifically targeted at energy innovation for the supply and demand sides of the energy consumption
equation. Additionally, the Pentagon must streamline programs that offer grants to private innovators for the development of
demonstration prototypes. The barriers to entry for small and enterprising energy-related scientists need to be reduced.
Not only is it in the financial and tactical interest of the U.S. to shift the military away from a majority reliance on oil, it is now in the
greater strategic interest of the country that the military’s extensive technological research enterprises focus on the development of
alternatives. Our instruments of national power that safeguard the flow of energy resources should not themselves be powered by
those same resources. The strategic risk of doing so is now rising with the fiscal expense. And as with other enterprises and initiatives,
the military’s investment in energy innovation will result in more than military hardware advances — such innovation will accelerate
invaluable development and commercialization by the private sector. Given the current political environmental consensus growing with
regard to climate change, viable replacements for transportation power will require the dual C’s: low cost and low carbon.
The country’s reliance on oil is troubling simply from the economics of diminishing growth in supply and increasing demand.
Introducing the aggravating reliance on belligerent states and the threat of a disruption in global supply raises the issue to a critical
status. Contemplation of the tactical and strategic national security implications of an oil-based military further escalates the
imperative to a crisis level. Funding for military R&D has always been an investment in national security just as investment and
dedication in innovation has always been a mainstay of global power. With energy security and national security now so inextricably
entwined, investment in military energy R&D must be redoubled, with the reasonable expectation that the immediate and tactical
public benefits of such a flanking maneuver against our oil dependence will be followed by a strategic shift to tangible and lasting
energy security.
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Competitiveness – Market Spillover
Spin-offs spill over into private sector.
3.6 National Spinoff Benefits

Finally, there are spin-off benefits addressed in the TOR - the national benefits. OSD (PA&E) estimated it is worth $42 to avoid
delivering a gallon of fuel through aerial refueling and at least $15 to avoid delivering a gallon of fuel to the forward edge of a
battlefield. If the cost of force protection for fuel convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq were used, the $15 figure likely would be far higher
since it is based on minimal force protection. It is unlikely that energy efficiency has a higher value to any other organization in the
country, possibly the world. If DoD were to invest in technologies that improved efficiency at a level commensurate with the value of
those technologies to its forces and warfighting capability, it would probably become a technology incubator and provide mature
technologies to the market place for industry to adopt for commercial purposes. The overall national outcome of changing DoD
business processes to accurately value efficiency is difficult to predict but doing so would be consistent with best business practices
used by the world’s most successful companies and likely would develop multiple technologies for use in the civilian sector as well as
by DoD itself.
Alternatives in the military spill over – key to innovation.

These "low-speed vehicles" are just one part of a broad effort by the American military to drastically reduce its use of traditional fossil
fuels at a time when global oil markets are unstable, gas prices are approaching historic highs, and climate change is increasingly a
matter of bipartisan political concern. In scale and coordination the effort is not the Manhattan Project some critics say is needed. But
as a loose collection of initiatives, it is impressive in its breadth, encompassing the everyday and the exotic: from energy efficient
windows and light bulbs and geothermal plants to research into jet fuel that can be made from weeds, portable generators that run on
plastic waste, and even a fleet of satellites to harvest solar power from space.
It also, some analysts say, could have a dramatic impact on the broader effort to move society away from fossil fuels. The American
military has a storied record as a technological innovator: the computer, the commercial jetliner, and the Internet originated from
military research and transformed modern life. And with billions to spend it can provide a major proving ground for new energy
technologies developed in the private sector.
"In terms of alternative energy, the Department of Defense is big enough, in certain sectors, to be the tipping point," says Stuart Funk,
an energy specialist at LMI who was once the Pentagon official responsible for fuel operations.
Green Army solves private sector – ensures tech acceptance.

For now however, the greatest challenge is to make Americans – who consume twice as much energy and generate more than twice as
much garbage as the average European – understand the vital importance of environment conservation and energy efficiency.
“Energy and the environment are big and multi-faceted issues and therefore very difficult to grasp on an immediate level.” Therefore
Wertheim’s next plan is to produce "ABC books on energy," she explains in her cozy but slightly cold living room. She explains that
she keeps the heating down during the day to save energy, while hospitably offering a cup of tea and a warm poncho.
The Green Hawks, scientists and inventors dedicated to new, non-conventional energy technologies have long been dismissed as
fervent evangelical environment loonies who nurse paranoid and utopian ideas. But now that the Army is shifting to green energy, the
“environment loonies” are expected to come in from the cold, and as a consequence, their technologies will become more accepted.
New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman is of this belief. In his article “The Power of Green” he writes: “Pay attention: When
the U.S. Army desegregated, the country really desegregated; when the Army goes green, the country could really go green.”
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Competitiveness – Military Defines Market
Military demand spurs private sector – they’ll adapt the market.
Adam Sarvana, InsideDefense.com staff, 6/8/2006, Pentagon Plans Major Alternative Fuel Buys
“No domestic infrastructure can [currently] handle that much” demand, the official said, adding that the purchase would likely be
from a combination of coal-based Fischer-Tropsch fuel and fuel derived from tar sands and oil shale, which have been eyed by
government and industry planners as potential sources of synthetic petroleum. There currently is no widespread market in the United
States for such petroleum alternatives, although the source says “hopefully this will be an impetus for private industry to use synthetic
fuels as well.
"Because the private sector doesn't have the research and development budget we do, they're waiting to see how our projects go so
they can adopt whatever we develop," the official continued.
An official at Sasol Chevron, a joint venture between California-based Chevron Corp. and South Africa's Sasol Limited, which already
uses Fischer-Tropsch extensively, says “it is too early to know what our response will be” to the request. But the official notes that “it's
the start of a dialog."
"Now people in the private sector can start talking about how to provide this and when. It makes sense to get their infrastructure going
now and [later] have a seamless transition into [long-term] domestic sources when we get them," the Sasol Chevron official said.
In an effort to spur further growth of such a market, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee member Craig Thomas (R-WY)
on May 5 introduced the so-called "Energy PRICE Act," S.2755, which includes a provision that would allow DOD to enter into fuel
purchasing contracts for up to 25 years, an increase over the current five-year limit.
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Competiveness – Airlines
Alternative military jet fuel solves airlines – reliable funding ensures innovations.
Cheaper, more reliable jet fuel would no doubt be a boon in the private sector, especially the airline industry, for whom fuel costs are a
leading headache. And the same technologies may have applications for other fuels as well.
The first small samples of jet biofuels will be available in six to nine months, according to Doug Kirkpatrick, the DARPA technologist
in charge of the solar cell and jet fuel projects. He also predicted "fairly dramatic progress" on the solar cells in the coming months.
But independent energy analysts say the military's primary contribution to clean energy is more likely to be as a customer than an
inventor. One of the difficulties for new energy technologies is the volatility of oil prices: an energy alternative that makes good
economic sense when oil is $60 a barrel becomes a financial disaster if oil drops to $30 a barrel, and this makes companies reluctant to
invest in such innovations. But the military remains the country's single largest energy consumer, and it is willing to pay extra for
reliability.
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Algae Solvency – General
Algae’s sweet – cleans up waste and produces cost-competitive oil.
Kevin Bullis, 2/5/2007, Algae-Based Fuels Set to Bloom
Oil from microorganisms could help ease the nation's energy woes,
http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=18138&channel=energy&section= [ND]
The theoretical potential is clear. Algae can be grown in open ponds or sealed in clear tubes, and it can produce far more oil per acre
than soybeans, a source of oil for biodiesel. Algae can also clean up waste by processing nitrogen from wastewater and carbon dioxide
from power plants. What's more, it can be grown on marginal lands useless for ordinary crops, and it can use water from salt aquifers
that is not useful for drinking or agriculture. "Algae have the potential to produce a huge amount of oil," says Kathe Andrews-Cramer,
the technical lead researcher for biofuels and bioenergy programs at Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, NM. "We could
replace certainly all of our diesel fuel with algal-derived oils, and possibly replace a lot more than that."
To be sure, the use of algae for liquid fuels has been studied extensively in the past, including through a program at the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that ran for nearly a decade. At the time, the results were not encouraging. The NREL program
was terminated in 1996, largely because at the time crude-oil prices were far too low for algae to compete.
But Eric Jarvis, an NREL scientist, says that enough has changed that NREL researchers expect to restart the program within the next
six months to a year. When the program was cancelled in 1996, oil prices were relatively low. Today's higher oil prices will make it
easier for algae to compete. Still, Jarvis cautions that "you have to be careful because there's a lot of hype out there right now."
Biotech advances in the past decade could help. New genomic and proteomic technologies make it much easier to understand the
mechanisms involved in algae-oil production. One of the challenges researchers have faced is that while some types of algae can
produce large amounts of oil--as much as 60 percent of their weight--they only do this when they're starved for nutrients. But when
they're starved for nutrients, they lose another of their attractive features: their ability to quickly grow and reproduce. Researchers
hope to understand the molecular switches that cause increased oil production, with the added hope of triggering it without starving
the algae. This could dramatically increase oil production and drive down prices.
A better understanding of biology may help researchers address another problem. The cheapest way to grow algae is in open ponds.
But open ponds full of nutrients invite other species to take over, competing with the algae and cutting down production. LiveFuels,
which is funding and coordinating research at its own lab and at those at both Sandia and the NREL, hopes to create algal ecosystems
that resist such invaders by ensuring that all the nutrients are converted to forms the algae can easily use, says David Kingsbury, the
chair of the company's scientific advisory board.
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Algae Solvency – General
Algae’s sweet – avoids disads to other biofuels.
Jerry W Kram, Biodiesel Magazine staff, 5/30/2008, Algae has potential, but more research needs to be done,
http://www.algaeatwork.com/news/algae-has-potential-but-more-research-needs-to-be-done [ND]
If it can be brought down, algae's advantages include growing much faster and in less space than conventional energy crops. An acre
of corn can produce about 20 gallons of oil per year, Ruan said, compared with a possible 15,000 gallons of oil per acre of algae.
An algae farm could be located almost anywhere. It wouldn't require converting cropland from food production to energy production.
It could use sea water. And algae can gobble up pollutants from sewage and power plants.
Algae solves – fits current infrastructure.

Biodiesel offers additional storage challenges. First, biodiesel “ages,” that is to say viscosity increases with time. Already a highly
viscous fuel, biodiesel becomes unusable in as little as six months. According to the National Biodiesel Board biodiesel must be used
within six months of manufacture to guarantee fuel quality.150 The second challenge already discussed is microbial growth. Biodiesel
must be continuously monitored to ensure fuel purity. Algae produced jet fuel can take advantage of the existing USAF fuel
distribution and storage system. Once the oil is refined at existing petroleum refineries, it can make use of the existing delivery
infrastructure and storage capacity.151 Determining each alternative fuel’s compatibility with the established USAF fuel delivery and
distribution system is crucial to meet USAF fuel needs. Although most transportation and storage problems can be overcome, the cost
involved with solving these problems may cause adoption of a specific biofuel alternative to be economically infeasible.
Algae works anywhere – thrives in harsh environments.

Joan Melcher, freelance writer whose work ranges from travel articles to breaking research, 2/8/2008, From
Petri Dish to Gas Pump, Science & Environment, http://www.miller-mccune.com/main/article/162
Microalgae (to distinguish it from such macroalgae species as seaweed) have many desirable attributes for energy producers. Their oil
content, in the form of molecules known as lipids, can be as high as 80 percent in dry weight, although 40 percent is more the average
— still easily higher than any other biomass feedstock being considered today. Algae reproduce exponentially and can grow about
anywhere. In fact, algae prefer salty and sunny conditions, opening up the possibility of using desert and marginal agricultural land for
production of algal feedstock. They can even grow in wastewater, and they thrive on carbon dioxide from gas- and coal-fired power
plants.
Algae yields over 500 times more gallons per acre than corn and can be grown anywhere and harvested in
days.
Chris Miller. Chris Miller has worked in publishing for almost 10 years with a number of newspapers and
magazines. Senior Editor of ABRN. Jul 16, 2008. Algae may grow into the next big biofuel.
http://www.search-autoparts.com/searchautoparts/Industry+News/Algae-may-grow-into-the-next-big-
biofuel/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/529680?contextCategoryId=41884
Even better, its environmental impact is non-existent at best, and, with the proper science behind it, algae can pretty
much be grown anywhere and harvested in just a few days’ time.
Algae has an oil content of up to 50 percent, a number unheard of in cellulose-based fuel derivatives like corn, soybeans and
sugar cane. When looking at gallons per acre per year, corn’s yield is 18 and soybeans have the potential to create 48; algae, however,
can yield up to 10,000 gallons per acre annually, according to a presentation at the Environmental Finance’s Bioenergy
North America, which took place in Chicago in March.
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Algae Solves Dependency
Greater algae oil production solves dependency – makes it cost-competitive for the private sector.
Algae produced oil offers a solution to terrestrial-based biodiesel production limitations. Algae oil production is theoretically capable
of producing enough fuel to eliminate USAF foreign oil dependency, and can dramatically reduce, if not eliminate U.S. foreign oil
dependency as well. Unlike ethanol and terrestrial biodiesel, which have been around for over 100 years, and biobutanol, which was
used by the British over 60 years ago during World War II, algae produced oil is a relatively new science. Between 1978 and 1996, the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory conducted research into using algae to produce oil. In conjunction with this study, scientists
collected and screened over 3,000 strains of micro-algae and now have a solid understanding of algae oil production. According to the
NREL, “NREL is now looking to reestablish its microalgal oil research in partnership with oil refiners, with a particular view towards
jet fuel production. The program was discontinued at a time when diesel was less than $0.60 per gallon. Both diesel and jet fuel now
cost far more. Military jet fuel also carries a very high added cost and logistic difficulty of transport around the world. To mitigate this,
there is considerable refining capacity strategically located around the world that could be used for hydroprocessing microalgal oil into
jet fuel, with both offshore and onshore locations highly suitable for microalgae growth nearby.”153 Added to NREL’s renewed
interest in algae produced jet fuel, genetic engineering and screening technologies have advanced dramatically since 1996 when the
original research program was closed out.154 Current algae oil facilities produce only 1,000 to 1,200 gallons of oil per acre suitable
for jet fuel refinement. Now that scientists understand the science involved with modifying algae to produce higher volumes of oil, it
may require as little as another two to three years to achieve 10,000 gallon per acre production rates. Increased production will allow
scientists to solve a primary obstacle that must be overcome: the current price-per-gallon. At over four dollars per gallon, algae-
produced jet fuel is currently economically unattractive. In order to become competitive with current and projected petroleum fuels,
the price of algae-produced fuel must be reduced to around a two dollar per gallon threshold. Once this is achieved, algae produced
fuel will likely gain acceptance in the civilian sector and offers a cost effective alternative for USAF fuel needs.
Algae solves the air force – will be viable for jets.

Christine Lambrakis, ASU research assistants, 11/23/2007, News Release: ASU researchers partner with UOP
to make biofuel for military jets a reality, http://www.oilgae.com/blog/2007/11/asu-partners-with-uop-to-make-
algae.html
“Moreover, since algae can use carbon dioxide from waste or flue gases as a nutrient for growth, an added value of algae feedstock
production is environmental carbon sequestration.”
While algal oil is very similar to other vegetable oils in terms of fatty acid composition, the oil yield of algae is projected to be at least
100 times that of soybean per acre of land on an annual basis.
ASU, UOP LLC, Honeywell Aerospace, Southwest Research Institute and Sandia National Laboratories researchers will be working
to help develop and commercialize a process to produce jet fuel that is vegetable and/or algal oil based rather than petroleum based.
“We are confident that we have assembled a strong team of experts that will be successful in proving the viability of biofeedstock
technologies for JP-8 and other jet fuels, while offering the U.S. military another option for sustainable liquid fuels critical to their
programs,” said Jennifer Holmgren, director of UOP’s Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit.
Fuel produced by the new process will have to meet stringent military specifications and is expected to achieve 90 percent energy
efficiency for maximum conversion of feed to fuel, to reduce waste and to reduce production costs. UOP expects the technology will
be viable for future use in the production of fuel for commercial jets.
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Algae – Solves Dependency

Algae fuel can replace traditional fossil fuels.
Johnny Hartsfield. Johnny received a Bachelors of Environmental Science from Western Washington
University and a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the University of Washington. After working as an
Engineering Technician for Snohomish County Surface Water Management and as a sustainable project
designer for Mithun and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd., he realized that developers, not designers, control our
built infrastructure. April 23rd, 2008 Vertigro Produces Biofuel From Algae Oil Extractshttp://green-
fab.com/blog/2008/04/23/vertigro-produces-biofuel-from-algae-oil-extracts/
Once the algae has been produced, an oil is extracted and refined into a cost-effective, non-polluting diesel biofuel. This algae
derived fuel can be an energy efficient replacement for fossil fuels and can be used in any diesel powered vehicle or machinery.
Although using algae as an alternative fuel source is not a new idea, there is still a lot to be learned about this technology.
According to Valcent research scientist Aga Pinowska, there are about 65,000 known algae species, with perhaps hundreds of
thousands still to be identified. A major part of their research is focused on determining what type of algae produces what type
of fuel. “One species may be best suited for jet fuel, while the oil content of another may be more efficient for truck diesel.”
Algae consumes co2 and produces oxygen as well as fertilizer. It could replace
all petroleum in the US using only 95 million acres.
How Algae Biodiesel Works. Stefani Newman. How things work. HowStuffWorks, a wholly owned subsidiary
of Discovery Communications, is the award-winning source of credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand
explanations of how the world actually works. Founded by North Carolina State University Professor Marshall
Brain in 1998, the site is now an online resource for millions of people of all ages. 2008.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/algae-biodiesel.htm
During the biodiesel production process, algae consume carbon dioxide. In other words, through photosynthesis, algae pull
carbon dioxide from the air, replacing it with oxygen. For this reason, algae biodiesel manufacturers are building biodiesel
plants close to energy manufacturing plants that produce lots of carbon dioxide. Recycling carbon dioxide reduces pollution.
How about some leftovers? Pressing algae creates a few more useful byproducts -- fertilizer and feedstock -- without depleting
other food sources.
The most exciting part of algae biodiesel is the numbers game. Biodiesel makers claim they'll be able to produce more than
100,000 gallons of algae oil per acre per year depending on:
The type of algae being used
The way the algae is grown
The method of oil extraction
Algae production has the potential to outperform other potential biodiesel products such as palm or corn. For example, a 100-
acre algae biodiesel plant could potentially produce 10 million gallons of biodiesel in a single year. Experts estimate it will take
140 billion gallons of algae biodiesel to replace petroleum-based products each year. To reach this goal, algae biodiesel
companies will only need about 95 million acres of land to build biodiesel plants, compared to billions of acres for other
biodiesel products. Since algae can be grown anywhere indoors, it's a promising element in the race to produce a new fuel.
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Algae – Replaces FF
Algae replaces fossil fuels, can be used to fly planes and creates great
products.
NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI) acts in partnership with industry and other public sector
organisations to foster profitable and sustainable development of primary industries in New South Wales. Algae
is a potential renewable fuel source. 27 Sep 2007 http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/research/updates/previous-stories-
by-topic/energy/algae-fuel-in-tank
Sugar cane and palm oil plantations geared to the production of ethanol and biodiesel are examples of biofuel industries;
however these require large amounts of land, consume significant resources and possibly compete with food crop production.
One environmentally-friendly alternative may be the use of algae to produce biocrude.
A co-operative project involving the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Macquarie and Newcastle Universities and a
private company, the Crucible Group, is currently investigating the potential of algal biocrude as a product which offers more
than just being a liquid fuel substitute.
Careful harvesting and processing of the algal biomass could significantly displace petro-chemicals, reduce overall greenhouse
gas production and recycle organic nutrients.
This resource is also capable of creating next-generation plastics, fertilisers, pesticides and other consumer products, as well as
processing for high-grade applications such as aviation grade fuel.
Preference is being given to algal species that can grow in saline or brackish waters or wastewater streams, given the scarcity
of fresh water in Australia.
Through a process known as pyrolysis, in which the algae is rapidly heated to 450 - 500 degrees in absence of air, the biomass
is converted into gases, charcoal and oil.
The gases can be used to fuel the pyrolysis process, while the charcoal or "biochar" can be applied to soils to significantly
improve soil productivity.
The oil can be substituted for fossil fuels.
Algal oil can replace petroleum large scale – the only question is adequate funding.
Eviana Hartman, Washington Post staff, 1/6/2008, A Promising Oil Alternative: Algae Energy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303907_pf.html
With petroleum reserves dwindling, the search is on to replace gasoline with a cleaner, greener alternative. Though much eco-talk has
centered on ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans, the biofuel that looks more likely to replace petroleum on a large scale
comes from a most unlikely place: pond scum.
Algae, like corn, soybeans, sugar cane and other crops, grows via photosynthesis (meaning it absorbs carbon dioxide) and can be
processed into fuel oil. However, the slimy aquatic organisms yield 30 times more energy per acre than land crops such as soybeans,
according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The reason: They have a simple cellular structure, a lipid-rich composition and a rapid
reproduction rate. Many algae species also can grow in saltwater and other harsh conditions -- whereas soy and corn require arable
land and fresh water that will be in short supply as the world's population balloons.
"If you replaced all the diesel in the U.S. with soy biodiesel, it would take half the land mass of the U.S. to grow those soybeans," says
Matt Caspari, chief executive of Aurora Biofuels, a Berkeley, Calif.-based private firm that specializes in algae oil technology. On the
other hand, the Energy Department estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require
15,000 square miles, which is a few thousand miles larger than Maryland.
Another bonus: Because algae can be grown just about anywhere in an enclosed space, it's being tested at several power plants across
the nation as a carbon absorber. Smokestack emissions can be diverted directly into the ponds, feeding the algae while keeping
greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
Although processing technology for algae fuel -- a.k.a. "oilgae" in some environmentalist circles -- is improving, it's still years away
from reaching your local gas pump. "It's feasible; it's just a question of cost, because no large-scale facilities have been built yet,"
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Caspari says. Boeing and Air New Zealand recently announced a joint project with a New Zealand company to develop an algae-based
jet fuel, while Virgin Atlantic is looking into the technology as part of a biofuels initiative. Watch this space for updates.
Algae Solvency – Warming/Pollution

Algae solves warming and pollution.
One factor currently holding back proliferation of biofuels is how much can be refined from a given amount of stock. "You have to
grow a lot of soy beans, for example, to make fuel [from that source], and in that process, you can't compete with food products. So
we're looking at other feedstocks that are more sustainable, won't compete with stocks used for food, and which, in fact, can produce
more fuel. One good example is oil derived from algae. In the end, though, the type of fuel you're using in terms of what it's derived
from may depend on what region of the world you're operating in."
B&CA asked Daggett to describe some bio-sources offering potential for jet fuel:
-Palm oil. "Palm is looking very good," Daggett observed. One of the most promising sources is a variety called babassu [Rhymes
with Ricki Ricardo's "babaloo!" -- Ed.] native to Brazil, which offers a high yield of oil per acre compared to foodstocks like soybeans
or sugar cane. The plant grows wild in the interior of Brazil -- some there consider it a weed -- and also has potential for reforestation
in those regions of the Amazon that have been clear-cut for timber recovery.
The babassu's oil is harvested from the white meat inside the tree's nuts, which resemble coconuts but are inedible, so the trees
themselves don't have to be cut down to obtain the oil. Significantly, each tree produces large clusters of nuts. "In Brazil there are 100
million hectares of deforested land on which you could produce 20 percent of the world's jet fuel if you planted it with the babassu
palms," Daggett said.
-Algae, or common pond scum. Yes, you read that right, that green slime you see floating on the surface of ponds and, well, waste-
collection pools. "This is an energy source that can also solve some environmental problems, since as you grow algae on polluted
water, you purify the water and absorb CO2 and methane, the latter an even larger contributor to global warming," Daggett explained.
"Theoretically, you can get 10,000 gallons per acre from an 'algae reactor.' So with algae, you're cleaning the water, getting rid of
greenhouse gasses and making oil. One of the sources could be from the waste water discharged from sewage plants."
Algae solves emissions.

Recent tests of an algae-based system developed by GreenFuel, which, unlike LiveFuels, is developing closed bioreactors, showed
that it could capture about 80 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted from a power plant during the day when sunlight is available.
Although this carbon dioxide will later be released when the fuel is burned in vehicles, the carbon dioxide would have entered the
atmosphere anyway. Reusing it in renewable liquid fuels makes it possible to prevent the release of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels,
thereby decreasing total emissions.
Algae Biofuel is great for the environment and uses very little water
Barry, Jennifer.The Market Oracle is a Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. We
present in-depth analysis from over 150 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of
the financial markets. Thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction.
“Algae a Greener Biofuel Than Ethanol?” Jul 03, 2008
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This start-up emphasizes that their product is not biodiesel or ethanol, as it can be used safely in gasoline engines
without need for modifications. This “green crude” can be processed in our current oil refineries, without the need to
build a new infrastructure.
Sapphire claims that their fuel is very environmentally friendly. When burned, it has virtually no emissions since it
doesn't contain nitrogen or sulfur compounds. Production requires very little water unlike ethanol. In fact, the algae can be grown
in brackish or salty water, even wastewater. Another advantage of this “green crude” is that the algae absorbs carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere.
Algae Solves Now

Algae would solve immediately – a blend could be used immediately without other biofuel risks.
JAMES WALLACE, P-I REPORTER, 8/28/2007, Aerospace Notebook: Boeing sees a future with biofuel,
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/329382_air29.html
But a future supply of biofuel presents another significant challenge.
In a report on biofuel in October, NASA concluded that to supply only U.S. airlines with a 15 percent blend of bio-jet fuel -- using a
biofuel made from soybeans -- would require about as much land as the entire state of Florida.
Glover said one possibility that is being closely studied is a biofuel made from algae.
"You don't need much in the way of land area," he said. "And it does not compete with food."
Last year, the Air Force began testing a 50-50 blend of synthetic fuel and conventional JP8 jet fuel on a B-52. The tests went so well
that the Air Force intends to certify its entire airplane fleet to run on a synthetic-fuel blend by 2011.
But that synthetic fuel was produced from natural gas using what's known as the Fischer-Tropsch process, which was invented by
German scientists during World War II because of a fuel shortage. The process was later modernized in South Africa during the
embargo, when fuel was in short supply.
Turning coal or natural gas into a synthetic fuel for jetliners, however, will not address the issue of global warming.
Finding a suitable biofuel could.
The answer likely will be a blend of biofuel with more conventional fuel.
"What we are aiming for is a fuel blend that will be so close to a conventional fuel that to the operator (of the airplane), it will make no
difference," Glover said.
"It means that if you go to the pump and get a biofuel blend one day and the next day you get a more traditional petroleum-blend from
another pump, you don't know the difference in terms of how the plane flies or engine maintenance," Glover said.
The industry term for this is a "drop in" replacement fuel.
"It's the key to why we are so enamored with this (biofuel)," Glover said. "It can be used on all planes that are in service today. It does
not require modified engines, or new airplane designs. As soon as the fuel is available and commercialized, the uptick can be right
away."
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Solvency – Shifts from FT

Shift to other fuels solves CTF tech – government support drives it.
JAMES MacPHERSON, AP writer, 10/7/07, Air Force likes synthetic fuel from coal - but can it be made?
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/10/07/news/state/140507.txt
The Air Force wants to power half its in-country flights with a synthetic fuel made from domestic coal by 2016. It has yet to figure out
how to get that fuel.
No commercial plants exist in this country to make it - and industry officials say the government has not offered enough incentives to
build a plant. The idea also faces environmental questions.
"The bottom line is if the government doesn't choose to support the creation of this industry financially, then the government won't
have enough domestically produced fuel in the time frame they've set," said John Ward, a vice president with Headwaters Energy
Services, a division of Headwaters Inc., of South Jordan, Utah, which has been considering a North Dakota plant to convert coal to jet
fuel.
"The industry will still develop, but not fast enough for the military to meet its goals," Ward said.
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Solvency – Military Key

DoD will have to act first because of peak constrainsts, and only it can spur societal change.
TRANSFORMATION,
If the U.S. were ever forced to rely upon domestic petroleum supplies exclusively, it only possesses enough indigenous reserves to
meet 2005-level demand for 4-5 years (equal to 2 percent of global reserves which includes Alaska National Wildlife Refuge
supplies).11 The President is correct in proclaiming that technology will be necessary to break America’s addiction to oil. Another
strong proponent of technology is the DoD, which has embraced its benefits as a key enabler for strategic, operational, and tactical
success—a concept validated by the swift combat victories in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bosnia over the last 15 years. However,
the demand for increasingly more complex high-technology systems has placed the DoD at the end of increasingly long acquisition
cycles, of which the 20+ year development of the F-22A Raptor is a perfect example. It is precisely the long acquisition lead times of
these petroleum-fueled weapon systems, in conjunction with their decades-long life cycles (reference the 45-year-old B-52 fleet), that
will uniquely force the DoD to be the first government agency to address an approaching global oil peak. The Department has already
felt the impacts of a tight oil supply within the past two years. Increased global demand and Hurricane Katrina-induced shortages have
doubled the price of a barrel of oil from $36 in 2003 to $73 by 2005, forcing the DoD to redirect nearly $3B of its FY05 budget to the
detriment of other programs to cover the cost of fuel.12 This budgetary “pain” has caused every Service to sit up and take action by
forming senior-level focus groups aimed at exploring and implementing various approaches to reduce the Department’s fuel burden.
Proposals range from promoting conservation efforts, expanding the use of renewable energy for base support, intensifying turbine
engine efficiency research, and even establishing an independent DoD oil shale-to-synthetic fuel industry. While actionable, these
various strategies appear to be occurring relatively independently within DoD, absent an official grand vision or long-term,
overarching strategy to move the DoD beyond petroleum as the President has asked America to do. This condition also appears
representative of the competition among future energy strategies vying for dominance in American society at large. An uncertain
world energy prospect, a vital national defense mission, and the unique organizational capacity and situation of the Department of
Defense invites one to ask if an opportunity exists for the DoD to serve as an example for a national transformation toward a new
energy future. Based upon the first three elements of Dr. John P. Kotter’s popular eight-step model for organizational transformation,
this paper presents a methodology for determining if the DoD can lead an immediate, coherent, and viable long-term strategy toward a
vision of replacing petroleum as its primary energy source in order to maintain all necessary strategic and operational capability for
U.S. security to 2050 and beyond. The three-part approach begins in Chapter 1 by scoping the dimensions of the American energy
security problem to create a sense of urgency. It continues in Chapter 2 by examining the method in which an assured energy guiding
coalition and a DoD grand energy vision can be formulated within the context of the specific security responsibilities and desired
capabilities of the DoD, as well as responsibilities of the Department of Energy (DOE). The methodology finishes in Chapter 3 by
highlighting the process in which a grand strategy can be developed that supports a DoD new energy vision. While there are a
multitude of possible and competing DoD energy visions suitable of separate debate, the analysis in this paper is accomplished under
the structure of a conceptual three-phase hydrogen/electric-based military transformation strategy that supports a 2050 post-petroleum
vision aligned with President Bush’s State of the Union goals. If the above methodology demonstrates a feasible approach for guiding
DoD energy transformation to serve the Department’s own requirements, it can then be argued that the lessons learned and knowledge
gained from such an endeavor could be applied toward a larger national energy transformation. The DoD-to-civilian transition model
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has been successfully applied in other major societal changes to include racial integration, sexual equality, and the benefits of
networked-based information sharing (i.e., Arpanet/internet) to highlight a few. The creation of a broadly supported post-petroleum
DoD vision and transformation strategy could not only preserve a relevant military force, but also lead a positive, bi-partisan,
interagency, and economic demonstration for preserving American security overall.
Algae – Solves Ethanol

Algae’s good – solves issues with current biofuels.
Business Week, 12/3/2007, Here Comes Pond Scum Power,
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_49/b4061075.htm
In a world spooked by global warming and thirsty for nonpolluting fuel, lowly algae hold a potent appeal. The plants sop up large
quantities of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and produce tiny globules of fat that can be collected and turned into biodiesel fuel for
trucks, cars, and trains. The oils might even be processed into aircraft fuel.
One of algae's great virtues is that the plant has so little in common with other sources of fuel. Unlike cornfields that are harvested to
produce ethanol, algae farms don't require huge volumes of freshwater, nor do they tie up land that could be used for food crops. Algae
flourish in saltwater or even wastewater and grow up to 40 times faster than other plants. Compared with current energy crops, algae
have "the potential to deliver 10 or 100 times more energy per acre," says Ron C. Pate, a technical expert at Sandia National Labs.
That's why industrial giants ranging from Chevron (CVX ) to Honeywell (HON ) to Boeing (BA ) are starting up algae business units.
"In the past two years, we have changed from algae skeptics to proponents," says Dave Daggett, Boeing's technology leader for energy
and emissions.
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Solvency – Air Force Key

Air Force procurement key – largest fuel demand uniquely influences policy implementation.
Michael W. Wynne is the 21st secretary of the Air Force, 1/27/2007, Michael Wynne: Flying out in front
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-
wynne_27edi.ART.State.Edition1.29d4e93.html [ND]
If "war is politics by other means," as Carl von Clausewitz said, then the Air Force has an indirect role in these politics. Our mission to
provide sovereign options for the president means the Air Force must constantly work toward a future in which the politics of energy
has as limited effect as possible on the United States. The Air Force is by far the federal government's largest user of fuel and has more
than a passing interest in ensuring that those who wish to do harm to this country cannot do so by choking off the flow of crude.
Energy independence – or at the least an acceptable level of self-sufficiency – is not a pipe dream. To those who say the United States
cannot or will not kick the habit of imported oil, America need look no further than its own military for inspiration and a possible way
ahead.
Twice in the last century, in the grip of severe fuel shortages, the military opted for developing coal-based fuel using a process known
as Fischer-Tropsch, developed by German scientists in the 1920s.
The fuel used on the recent B-52 flight was derived from natural gas purchased from an Oklahoma company that sells alternative fuel.
The opportunity to encourage a new synthetic fuel industry, using the nation's abundant supplies of coal and natural gas, is something
that my service and the other military branches are actively exploring. Our strategy is to maximize demand-side energy efficiency of
our aircraft and installations and seek domestic sources of alternative energy.
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Solvency – Fed Key

Federal action key – only way to incentivize shift to alternatives.
True culture change of any large organization must start at the top. Edgar H. Schein is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management
Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his book,
Organizational Culture and Leadership, he tackles the complex question of how an existing culture can be changed – one of the
toughest challenges of leadership. According to Schein, as an organization matures, it develops a positive ideology and a set of myths
about how it operates. The organization continues to operate by the shared tacit assumptions that have worked in practice, “and it is
not unlikely that the espoused theories, the announced values of the organization come to be, to varying degrees, out of line with the
actual assumptions that govern daily practice.”3 In the case of DOD energy use, this assumption would be the assumption that energy
is cheap, plentiful, and for someone else to worry about. Where these differences exist, scandal and myth explosion become relevant
as mechanisms of culture change. Left to themselves, change will not occur “until the consequences of the actual operating
assumptions create a public and visible scandal that cannot be hidden, avoided, or denied.”4 Recent examples include changes in
NASA’s safety culture following the Challenger and Columbia disasters or the Army’s recent health care shakeup following the
exposure of substandard administrative handling of wounded soldiers and conditions at certain Walter Reed Army Medical Center
facilities. The DOD cannot afford to wait for an energy related scandal before initiating change. Schein proposes that leaders can
systematically set out to change how a large, mature organization operates recognizing such change may involve varying degrees of
culture change. In short, it involves unlearning old behaviors and relearning new behaviors, and cannot be done unless some sense of
threat, crisis, or dissatisfaction is present to create the motivation to start the process of unlearning and relearning.5 “The change goal
must be defined concretely in terms of the specific problem you are trying to fix, not as a ‘culture change’…Culture change is always
transformative change that requires a period of unlearning that is psychologically painful.”6 President Bush has addressed dependence
on foreign oil as a National Security issue in his 2006 and 2007 State of the Union addresses. Unfortunately, every President since
Richard Nixon has had some initiative to improve energy security without much success. Any perceived threat was either not
threatening enough or not enduring enough to induce an American culture change with regard to energy. Perhaps the current threat to
energy security is different. The United States is more dependent than ever on foreign oil. US relations with the Middle East are
strained, and China and India are booming economically with a corresponding need for energy. An excellent way to demonstrate a
DOD need for change is for the Secretary of Defense to deliver a high-profile speech on Energy security at a public venue, such as a
Service academy graduation, supporting the President’s energy initiatives, highlighting the importance of DOD energy security, and
announcing the goals of a new comprehensive DOD Energy Strategy and the establishment of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Energy Security. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the leadership at the highest levels is behind the transformation
towards energy security. The Secretary should challenge leaders at all levels in the department to create incentives, remove
disincentives, and seek out bold and innovative ways to reduce energy consumption, improve processes and efficiencies, and diversify
energy sources as a matter of National Security. The Secretary should also make it absolutely clear that showy, knee jerk solutions
such as lowering the thermostats in the winter and forcing people to wear jackets in their offices, will not be tolerated as acceptable
methods of reducing energy use. There is little current incentive for DOD personnel to reduce energy consumption. In fact, there are
disincentives in place. Most military leaders quickly learn that a ‘can do without’ attitude is a sure way to lose money or personnel.
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The Air Force Flying Hour Program serves as an example. A flying squadron commander who allocated 8,000 flying hours to conduct
his mission and keep his aircrews properly trained and manages to complete his task in 7,600 hours can expect a cut in his allocation
the next year. Instead of being rewarded for saving taxpayers dollars, units perceive the cuts as a punishment. The commonly
accepted solution is to find a way to fly the hours at the end of the fiscal year rather than falling short of the allocation. This is a “use it
or lose it” culture. It is difficult to save energy if you don’t know how much you are using. Most military bases today do not measure
energy consumption at each building. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, Section 103, directs federal agencies to meter electricity use in
all (to the maximum extent practical) federal buildings by 1 October 2012, using advanced meters or metering devices that provide
data at least daily. The DOD has a plan to meet this requirement, but under the “maximum extent practical” caveat many older
buildings will never be metered.7 Commanders should monitor energy consumed at their facilities and set goals for reduction. Energy
savings should be rewarded, and excessive consumption should be investigated and corrected. The first step towards culture change
occurs by educating personnel and providing incentives and rewards to commanders who find ways to conduct their mission,
properly train their personnel, and still save flight hours (read energy). The DOD will have affected a culture change when
commanders instinctively know they are accountable for energy consumption, they know efficiency is its own “effect” in increasing
combat capability, and they continually strive to improve efficiency because energy is a consideration in all military activities and
operations. Only then will energy efficiency be a defining characteristic of DOD operations and facilities.
Solvency – Contracts
Long-term contracts key – current standards hamper tech development.
Breanne Wagner, NDIA staff, May 2008, Market for Synthetic Aviation Fuels Off to a Shaky Start,
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2008/May/Market.htm [ND]
Despite industry claims of cleaner fuel, the Air Force is uncertain if companies can satisfy the new energy act requirement. Bollinger
points to a lack of standards as the main impediment.
“You heard industry representatives who are producing this fuel say that they can meet this standard,” Bollinger says. “But there is no
standard.”
Industry estimates are based on an antiquated EPA standard that doesn’t measure the life cycle, he explains.
Until those life cycle standards are developed, the Air Force simply can’t buy the fuel, Bollinger says. He believes the requirement is
hampering market development because it deters companies from building facilities.
The uncertainty associated with the new rule is viewed as a risk in the market, Bollinger says. Companies need financing to build
plants, but they can’t get money until the standard is defined.
The EPA estimated that it would take at least a year to write new standards.
Tom Sayles, Rentech vice president of government affairs and communications, says that besides the life cycle requirement, the
industry has bigger financial concerns. “Long-term contracts are needed to get this [industry] off the ground.”
Today, the military purchases fuel on an annual basis, Sayles says, while electricity is bought in 10-year contracts.
Additionally, Ramsbottom believes the industry won’t move forward in a timely manner without strong government support. The Air
Force wants to develop synthetic jet fuel as soon as possible, but is restricted by Congress. Lawmakers are showing greater interest in
alternative energy, but many caution against moving too quickly.
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Solvency – Cost
Cost is the only hurdle – it can be done.
The growing interest in regulating carbon-dioxide emissions could also be a boon to algal fuels. "If there is a carbon tax, or another
way to basically make money by capturing carbon dioxide, that could definitely impact the economics," Jarvis says. But GreenFuel's
John Lewnard, vice president of process development, says the company thinks it can reach competitive prices without carbon taxes.
But for now, lowering costs will mean overcoming many technical hurdles. "Clearly, [producing fuel from algae] can be done," says
Lissa Morgenthaler Jones, LiveFuels's CEO. "The only question is whether we can do it cheaply. And the only way we're going to find
that out is if we do it--if we actually go out, crank it through, spend some millions on it, and make it happen."
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Food Prices Advantage (1/3)

Current US biofuels are fueling a global food crisis/high prices/shortage.
Kevin A. Hassett, Ph.D., Director of Economic Policy Studies and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, 4-21-
2008. [Bloomberg, Food Crisis Shows How Bad Policies Can Be Deadly, p.
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=arSRWU0yDL7M]
Sometimes, bad economic policies create small annoyances. Sometimes, they lead to catastrophes.
For years, the U.S. has heavily subsidized the production of corn-based ethanol. The global impact of that policy is beginning to
lean toward the latter category.
There is no question that subsidies have had their desired effect: An enormous share of the grain crop is now devoted to energy
production. How much? A new World Bank report states that "almost all of the increase in global maize production from 2004 to
2007 (the period when grain prices rose sharply) went for biofuels production in the U.S." Go back and read that sentence a second
time. It is stunning.
With the world population growing, and incomes rising, increased food production is necessary to maintain an acceptable level of
basic human welfare. Since 2004, corn production available to individual consumers hasn't budged.
While corn isn't the only foodstuff out there, it is an important one, and a shortage has led to soaring prices for just about every
grain. Again according to the World Bank, from February 2005 to February 2008, overall global food prices increased 83
percent.
That's causing significant distress in the U.S., especially among seniors with relatively fixed incomes. In the developing world, the
risks are becoming extraordinary.
After all, in the classic economic study of the Bengal Famine, which stretched from 1942 to 1944, Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen found that food-
price increases were the fundamental cause of perhaps 3 million deaths. The higher prices led to starvation, because workers' wages didn't increase enough to allow
subsistence.
Signs of Strain
Back then, the famine began in earnest when the price of rice increased about 61 percent between December 1942 and March 1943.
One may hope and pray that labor markets and relief efforts have improved enough worldwide that another Bengal Famine won't occur even with food-price
increases of a similar scale. However, the signs of strain have become deeply disturbing.
On April 12, NBC Nightly News broadcast an interview with a Haitian man eating "hard discs made of butter, water, salt, and dirt." The man explained through an
interpreter, "If we don't eat this, we'll die because we don't have anything else."
"It's Too Little"
Two days later, Louisiana Shary, a vendor in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, explained in an interview with National Public Radio: "My children are hungry; things
are too expensive. I can't give them food even if I sell all my merchandise. With the profits I get, I can't feed them on it. It's too little."
In Haiti, the food riots led to seven reported deaths, including the killing of a Nigerian officer in the United Nations peacekeeping
force, and the ouster of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis.
The disorder was described by Haitian President Renè Prèval in a radio address on April 9, during which he pleaded for his people to stop the destruction: "People
of Haiti, you who are suffering, you who have taken to the streets because of the high cost of living; I am asking you to cool down. Those who are spreading chaos,
those who are destroying things, throwing rocks and burning people's property, the police will no longer be able to tolerate the disorder."
Only the Beginning
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If food prices fail to go down in the coming weeks and months, the experience in Haiti might only be the beginning.
Food riots have, by my count, now occurred in nine countries around the world. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said
in a recent report that Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal have also
seen food-related violence in recent weeks.
To what extent is ethanol to blame for the high prices? A new study by economist Thomas E. Elam of the consulting firm
FarmEcon LLC explored the question.
The study, to be sure, was commissioned by livestock farming interest groups, yet it appears to rely on widely accepted economic
models. Elam used his model to simulate what the price of corn today would be if the U.S. hadn't been subsidizing biofuels. He
found that prices are about 50 percent higher than they would have been in a world without subsidies.

Food shortages in Pakistan will destabilize the country.
Ikram Sehgal, publisher a nd managing editor of Defense Journal, 4-23-2008. [Pakistan containing impending crisis,
p. lexis]
Food shortages in Asia, particularly rice, has virtually dried up exports as countries scramble to feed their own population,
Africa will suffer greatly. Pakistans ability to withstand economic disaster has been unfortunately considerably weakened,
economic governance shortcomings contributing to multiplying multi-faceted domestic and political problems. We must
shuffle and re-allocate resources to contain the situation turning to anarchy. The world may be facing a multi-dimensional
Tsunami-like situation, Pakistan is facing a full-blown catastrophe. The elections rigging gameplan failed spectacularly
because the Army did not play ball, democracy with all its imperfections in glorious view is now in full flow. However some
very visible remnants of the old order remain, pull their teeth by putting them out to pasture. A major sword of Damocles is the
judges issue, political differences will force-multiply the impending economic and food crisis. We must put this behind us,
sooner rather than later. As stated a few months earlier, shortage of Roti, Bijli and Pani could be our undoing. Constant
provision of atta to the masses is a must, as the temporary shortage in Islamabad graphically illustrated. The govt has moved to
curb/eliminate smuggling to Afghanistan by empowering the Frontier Corps (FCs) in Balochistan and NWFP. Implement this fully
by enacting a law enhancing considerably the punishment to food smugglers, making public examples of the fatcats indulging in hoarding and/or smuggling.
The Philippines has recently promulgated a law declaring hoarding of rice economic sabotage. The only wheat allowed into Afghanistan should be that
imported by the Afghans on the Afghan Trade Transit Agreement (coincidentally the acronym spells ATTA). The priority must be to feed the people of
Pakistan, not excluding the 3 million Afghan refugees who still enjoy our hospitality, Hamid Karzai and companys ingratitude notwithstanding. Find me
another nation in the world having so many refugees, a heavenly tailor-made recruiting ground for the Talibaan. Unfortunately when they go across the Durand
Line these Afghans become Pakistanis. Per capita refugee Pakistan is the recipient of the least support in the world. Even at US$ 1 per day per head for food,
that is a cool US$ 3 million per day or US$ 1 billion approximately annually. Send the Afghan Refugees back to Karzai, with our love! With fuel prices
running astronomically, something must be done about electricity shortages, the summer months will generate more than heat. Our elected representatives must
be part of awareness campaign for energy conservation and a planned rotating load-shedding campaign, priority being given to hospitals and communication
centres followed by manufacturing units. Industries without electricity will create unemployment, with food shortages and rising food
prices, loss of jobs will cause even greater frustration and desperation, evil twins that need to be kept in control to prevent
anarchy. Small power generating units, including second-hand ones, should be sourced and set-up on a makeshift basis, speed
being of the essence.
That causes nuclear war

A. H. Nayyar, Professor of Physics @ Princeton and Quaid-i-Azam University, August 1998 “The Many
Significances of Pakistan's Nuclear Tests” http://www.gensuikin.org/english/53nayyar.html
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It is quite appropriate that the 1998 conference focuses its attention on the recent events in South Asia. The nuclear tests by India and Pakistan are very significant
developments. In my remarks, I will concentrate on Pakistan and try to address the dangers created by these tests, and explain the reasons why some countries are
so keen to have nuclear weapons. I will try to show how it was possible for these weapons to be built given the very limited resources available and what the
lessons are that we should all learn if we are to succeed in creating our dream of a nuclear weapons free world. 1. The first and most important significance of the
nuclear tests by India and Pakistan lies in the fact that nuclear arms have made a bad situation infinitely worse. South Asia is a hot bed of deep conflicts, ready to
explode at the smallest pretext. The half-century-old state of conflict between India and Pakistan has turned into war three times. Two of the wars were fought on
the dispute of Kashmir, and the third one resulted in the independence of Bangladesh when India took military advantage of a deep political crisis in Pakistan. In
addition, the two states have repeatedly waged covert wars against each other and have seldom missed an opportunity to inflict damage to each other. The
conflict now stands at the threshold of massive destruction of the two countries because of the nuclear weapons they have
acquired. The fact that India and Pakistan share a border makes the situation even more precarious. Very soon both of them will
have nuclear tipped missiles aimed at each other. The missiles will take no more than 3 to 5 minutes to reach their targets, leaving
little room for a rational response. Fearing a pre-emptive strike, the two adversaries will always be sitting with their fingers on the
trigger. Being the more vulnerable of the two, it is quite likely that Pakistan will launch all its weapons on the first warning it
receives. Therefore, in any future crisis even the smallest incident or miscalculation has the potential of initiating a nuclear war. 2.
There is another danger from the nuclear weapons in South Asia. For fifty years Pakistan has been involved in an arms race with
India. Whatever India has done, every new weapon India has developed, Pakistan has followed. But this arms race has cost
Pakistan far more than India, because Pakistan has a much smaller economy and fewer scientific and technical resources. Pakistan
has paid to stay in the arms race by accumulating a big foreign debt, almost 90% of its GDP, by concentrating a quarter of its
annual government spending on the military, and by neglecting the needs of the people for education, health, housing and jobs.
Consequently, a unique and unprecedented situation is evolving before us. Pakistan is the first nuclear weapon state which is on
the verge of economic collapse. It is also unsuccessfully struggling to cope with various kinds of violent internal conflicts and its
structure of governance is showing signs of collapse. The cost of keeping nuclear weapons may destroy Pakistan.

Extinction
Dr. Helen Caldicott, lecturer @ New School for Social Research, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Founder of
Physicians for Social Responsibility, Nuclear Policy Research Institute, Women’s Action for Nuclear
Disarmament, and Standing for Truth About Radiation, 2002, The New Nuclear Danger, p. xii
The use of Pakistani nuclear weapons could trigger a chain reaction. Nuclear-armed India, an ancient enemy, could respond in
kind. China, India's hated foe, could react if India used her nuclear weapons, triggering a nuclear holocaust on the subcontinent. If
any of either Russia or America's 2,250 strategic weapons on hair trigger alert were launched either accidentally or purposefully in
response, nuclear winter would ensue, meaning the end of most life on earth.
Algae development trades off with current biofuels – commercialization.

Rosalie Westenskow¸UPI correspondent, April 30, 2008, Analysis: Algae emerges as new fuel source,
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Analysis_Algae_emerges_as_new_fuel_source_999.html
As climate change and rising oil prices intensify the search for alternative energy sources, researchers are on the brink of
commercializing algae for fuel, experts say.
These small, plantlike organisms could be used as feedstocks for ethanol or other biofuels, replacing some of the traditional sources of
ethanol, such as corn or soybeans.
Algae possess several characteristics that could propel them to the forefront of the renewable fuels industry. Top among these qualities
is the ability to grow rapidly and with few inputs, such as fresh water or fertilizer, said Thomas Byrne of Byrne and Co. Ltd., a firm
that provides advice on renewable energy projects.
"Algae grow pretty much everywhere in the world ¿¿ (and) it doesn't draw from drinking water," Byrne said at discussion on algae at
the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing in Chicago this week. "One of the arguments against (traditional)
ethanol is that grain-based fuels use a fair amount of groundwater."
Water usage has become an increasing concern in energy production, as groundwater levels decrease and demand rises, according to a
recent Virginia Tech study that ranked corn ethanol at the bottom of the list for high-water usage. Algae also require water to grow, but
only brackish or polluted water, not drinking water.
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Other concerns about traditional ethanol have surfaced lately, including the land requirements associated with growing corn as a
feedstock. Algae avoid these problems, because cropland is not required to produce the organisms.
Algae can also act as a sink for carbon dioxide because they absorb it for photosynthesis.
Best of all, a number of companies say they can produce the alternative feedstock economically, including Ben Cloud of XL
Renewables.
Algae biofuel doesn’t impact food prices.

Bruce A. Babcock. Iowa Agriculture Review. Summer 2008, Vol. 14 No. 3. Breaking the Link between Food
and Biofuels http://www.card.iastate.edu/iowa_ag_review/summer_08/article1.aspx
A last example is to produce biomass without extensive use of land by producing algae in ponds. PetroSun has
evidently begun operation of an algae-producing facility in Rio Hondo, Texas. An estimated 4.4 million gallons of
algal oil will be produced on 1,100 acres of ponds. To put this into perspective, 1,100 acres of soybeans produce approximately
70,000 gallons of soybean oil. If the ponds are located on land that is not suitable for crops, then algae as a feedstock will
not affect food prices.
Food Prices – Ethanol Ups Them

Ethanol subsidies will cause a global food shortage and raise prices.
Thomas E. Elam, Ph.D., Associate Lecturer in Economics at Indiana University, President, FarmEcon LLC, 9-27-
2007. [BIPAC, Fuel Ethanol Subsidies: An Economic Perspective, p.
www.bipac.net/gma/Ethanol_Analysis_ELAM_FINAL%209_19_07.pdf]
In 2007 we are seeing the beginnings of the impact of the ethanol subsidy program on food and feed costs. In spite of near-
record corn plantings in 2007, corn prices are also near-record high. The effects of the subsidy are not limited to corn. All but
4.1 million acres of the increased corn plantings came from soybeans, cotton, rice and other minor crops (Table 1).
Prices of these crops are now starting to increase too (Table 2) as are prices of products made from grains and soybeans (Table
3)23. If the ethanol subsidy continues, corn acreage will continue to expand, taking more acres from other crops and causing
their prices to further increase, further increasing the cost of food production.
As can be seen in Table 1, in 2007 corn acres have expanded dramatically, and soybean acres have shrunk by almost as much.
After rising in 2007, prices for all major crops except sorghum are forecast to rise in 2007, and these cost increases are showing
up in the form of substantial price increases in products produced using these commodities.
Cost Increases are Not Limited to Corn
As has been shown the Federal ethanol subsidy raises the breakeven corn price for ethanol plants by about $1.42 per bushel. If
ethanol producers expand production until they bid corn prices up to their breakeven corn price point at today’s gasoline price
level it will take corn prices to near $4.75 per bushel, about double the average price of corn before the increase in gasoline
prices. At the current 12-13 billion bushels of annual corn production that amounts to an increased corn cost for all U.S. users
and our corn export customers of $17 billion per year. These costs are going up even as corn production increases. Included in
those paying higher corn costs are ethanol producers themselves! That is, the Federal subsidy program has the indirect
effect of increasing the cost of ethanol production and food as well!
But this is only the beginning of the effects. As increased corn acreage further reduces acreage of soybeans and other crops,
their prices will also further increase, further raising costs throughout the food system. Table 4 below contains estimates of
the long range impacts of the Federal ethanol subsidy on the costs of grains and cotton at today’s gasoline prices and ethanol
production costs27.
We are already seeing effects of the cost increases on consumer food prices outside of those caused by corn. On June 6, 2007
General Mills, citing higher grain prices, announced that they were raising prices of all boxed cereals by about 4%, and
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reducing box sizes28. Other cereal producers are also raising prices by the same amount. The effects of increased raw materials
costs on food prices will be pervasive throughout the U.S. food system.
The total cost of just the grain price increases alone is about $115 per person per year, or $460 for a family of four.
Given that the ethanol industry will soon have the capacity to produce 12.5 billion gallons per year the annual corn requirement
will increase to about 4.5 billion bushels per year. With the expansion the industry will be able to meet only 86% of potential
E10 demand and 0% of the potential E85 demand. To replace 10% of current gasoline use the ethanol industry will require over
50 million acres of corn every year and total corn acres will need to be over 120 million. Until 2007 total corn acres rarely
exceeded 80 million acres. Clearly, corn could further displace other crops, reducing their supply and raising their prices.
Looked at from a different perspective, if the ethanol industry is successful in achieving only 10% replacement of gasoline it
would take almost 200 millions tons of corn annually. This is equal to about a 9-10% reduction in the GLOBAL grain supply.
Such a reduction grain supply will have major impacts on global food costs and availability.
Ethanol Ups FF Use

Biofuels/RFS increases fossil fuel use.
Arnold W. Reitze, Professor of Environmental Law and Director of Environmental Law Program, George Washington
U. Law School, Aug. 2007. [George Washington University Law School Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper
No. 293, Should the Clean Air Act Be Used to Turn Petroleum Addicts into Alcoholics, p.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1000434]
The move to ethanol could even result in more fossil fuel use. Ethanol production facilities in the United States typically use
natural gas to run their plants. Most of the natural gas comes from Canada or the United States, so its use to produce liquid
fuels for vehicles would potentially reduce imports of oil. But since cars and trucks can run on natural gas, it would be far more
efficient to use the fuel directly.5 Because there is little if any energy gain from converting corn into ethanol, the profit can only
come when a given amount of energy from ethanol sells for more than the same amount from fossil fuel. Unfortunately, this
has been accomplished by having Congress distort the market — ethanol prices doubled in only one year following passage of
the 2005 energy act.6
Non-Algae second generation biofuels could devastate farms and the economy
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. New York Times. Published: May 21, 2008. New Trend in Biofuels Has New
Risks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/science/earth/21biofuels.html?_r=2&ref=environment&oref=slogin&oref=
slogin
In the past year, as the diversion of food crops like corn and palm to make biofuels has helped to drive up food prices, investors
and politicians have begun promoting newer, so-called second-generation biofuels as the next wave of green energy. These,
made from non-food crops like reeds and wild grasses, would offer fuel without the risk of taking food off the table, they said.
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But now, biologists and botanists are warning that they, too, may bring serious unintended consequences. Most of these newer
crops are what scientists label invasive species — that is, weeds — that have an extraordinarily high potential to escape biofuel
plantations, overrun adjacent farms and natural land, and create economic and ecological havoc in the process, they now say.
At a United Nations meeting in Bonn, Germany, on Tuesday, scientists from the Global Invasive Species Program, the Nature
Conservancy and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as well as other groups, presented a paper with a warning
about invasive species.
“Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive alien species,” the paper
says, adding that these crops should be studied more thoroughly before being cultivated in new areas.
Controlling the spread of such plants could prove difficult, the experts said, producing “greater financial losses than gains.”
The International Union for Conservation of Nature encapsulated the message like this: “Don’t let invasive biofuel crops attack
your country.”
To reach their conclusions, the scientists compared the list of the most popular second-generation biofuels with the list of
invasive species and found an alarming degree of overlap. They said little evaluation of risk had occurred before planting.
“With biofuels, there’s always a hurry,” said Geoffrey Howard, an invasive species expert with the International Union for
Conservation of Nature. “Plantations are started by investors, often from the U.S. or Europe, so they are eager to generate
biofuels within a couple of years and also, as you might guess, they don’t want a negative assessment.”
Iraq Advantage (1/2)

Iraqi supply line in danger – lack of supply collapses stability.
Patrick Lang, head of Middle East intelligence at the DIA, 7/26/2006, The vulnerable line of supply to US
troops in Iraq, http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0721/p09s01-coop.html [ND]
American forces in Iraq are in danger of having their line of supply cut by guerrillas. Napoleon once said that "an army travels on its
stomach." By that he meant that the problem of keeping an army supplied is the prerequisite for the very existence of the force. A
21st-century military force "burns up" a tremendous volume of expendable supplies and continuously needs repairs to equipment as
well as medical treatment. Without a plentiful and dependable source of fuel, food, and ammunition, a military force falters. First it
stops moving, then it begins to starve, and eventually it becomes unable to resist the enemy. In 1915, for example, this happened to
British forces that had invaded Mesopotamia. A British-Indian force traveled up the line of the Tigris River, advancing to Kut,
southeast of Baghdad. They became besieged there after their line of supply was cut along the river to the south. Some 11,000 troops
ultimately surrendered, after the allies suffered another 23,000 casualties trying to rescue them. American troops all over central and
northern Iraq are supplied with fuel, food, and ammunition by truck convoy from a supply base hundreds of miles away in Kuwait. All
but a small amount of our soldiers' supplies come into the country over roads that pass through the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq.
Until now the Shiite Arabs of Iraq have been told by their leaders to leave American forces alone. But an escalation of tensions
between Iran and the US could change that overnight. Moreover, the ever-increasing violence of the civil war in Iraq can change the
alignment of forces there unexpectedly. Southern Iraq is thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian special operations forces working with Shiite
militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades. Hostilities between Iran and the United States or a change in
attitude toward US forces on the part of the Baghdad government could quickly turn the supply roads into a "shooting gallery" 400 to
800 miles long.
Oil’s key to military operations – only way to intervene in the Middle East.
Michael T Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Rising
Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, 6/19/2008, The Permanent Energy Crisis
oilhttp://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/06/michael_klare.html [ND]
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Oil is also essential for military operations. No other substance, no other raw material, is so vital for the prosecution of warfare, than
petroleum. And the United States being the world’s only global power, is totally dependent on petroleum. The Department of Defense
is the world’s leading petroleum consumer. And the U.S. couldn’t play a military role in different areas like Iraq and Afghanistan
without huge quantities of oil. So a shortage or disruption in oil would not only damage the U.S. economy; it would undercut
American military supremacy.
Iraq War key to Middle East stability.

Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2006, “What if We Lose? The consequences of U.S. defeat in Iraq”,
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008124 [Jason]
Broader Mideast instability. No one should underestimate America's deterrent effect in that unstable region, a benefit that would
vanish if we left Iraq precipitously. Iran would feel free to begin unfettered meddling in southern Iraq with the aim of helping young
radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr overwhelm moderate clerics like the Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Syria would feel free to return to its
predations in Lebanon and to unleash Hezbollah on Israel. Even allies like Turkey might feel compelled to take unilateral, albeit
counterproductive steps, such as intervening in northern Iraq to protect their interests. Every country in the Middle East would make
its own new calculation of how much it could afford to support U.S. interests. Some would make their own private deals with al
Qaeda, or at a minimum stop aiding us in our pursuit of Islamists.
Iraq Advantage (2/2)

Middle East conflict causes global nuclear war.
Steinbach 2002 – Analyst, Center for Research on Globalisation
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STE203A.html
Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms
control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle
East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a
last resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining
momentum (and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major (if not the
major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish
satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its
own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate
disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously
destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney,
"... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon - for whatever
reason - the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44)
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2AC A2: Allies Will Give Us Cheap Oil

Nope – hopeless addict image decks heg.
Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, 5/8/2008, Portrait of an
Oil-Addicted Former Superpower, http://verbena19.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/tomgram-michael-klare-
america-out-of-gas/ [ND]
.
Certainly, however, our allies in the region, especially the Sunni kingdoms of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) that presumably look to Washington to stabilize Iraq and curb the growing power of Shiite Iran, are willing to help the
Pentagon out by supplying U.S. troops with free or deeply-discounted petroleum. No such luck. Except for some partially subsidized
oil supplied by Kuwait, all oil-producing U.S. allies in the region charge us the market rate for petroleum. Take that as a striking
reflection of how little credence even countries whose ruling elites have traditionally looked to the U.S. for protection now attach to
our supposed superpower status.
Think of this as a strikingly clear-eyed assessment of American power. As far as they're concerned, we're now just another of those
hopeless oil addicts driving a monster gas-guzzler up to the pump -- and they're perfectly happy to collect our cash which they can
then use to cherry-pick our prime assets. So expect no summer tax holidays for the Pentagon, not in the Middle East, anyway.
Worse yet, the U.S. military will need even more oil for the future wars on which the Pentagon is now doing the planning. In this way,
the U.S. experience in Iraq has especially worrisome implications. Under the military "transformation" initiated by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, the future U.S. war machine will rely less on "boots on the ground" and ever more on technology.
But technology entails an ever-greater requirement for oil, as the newer weapons sought by Rumsfeld (and now Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates) all consume many times more fuel than those they will replace. To put this in perspective: The average G.I in Iraq now
uses about seven times as much oil per day as G.I.s did in the first Gulf War less than two decades ago. And every sign indicates that
the same ratio of increase will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will skyrocket; and that the Pentagon's capacity
to shoulder multiple foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone.
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2AC NAVY Add-On

Oil dependency jacks Naval projection – protecting sea lanes ensures overstretch with EUCOM.
Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, 10/7/2004, Oil Wars:
Transforming the American Military into a Global Oil-Protection Service,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1888/ [ND]
An increasing share of our naval forces is also being committed to the protection of foreign oil shipments. The Navy's Fifth Fleet,
based at the island state of Bahrain, now spends much of its time patrolling the vital tanker lanes of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of
Hormuz -- the narrow waterway connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the larger oceans beyond. The Navy has also beefed up its
ability to protect vital sea lanes in the South China Sea -- the site of promising oil fields claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines,
and Malaysia -- and in the Strait of Malacca, the critical sea-link between the Persian Gulf and America's allies in East Asia. Even
Africa has come in for increased attention from the Navy. In order to increase the U.S. naval presence in waters adjoining Nigeria and
other key producers, carrier battle groups assigned to the European Command (which controls the South Atlantic) will shorten their
future visits to the Mediterranean "and spend half the time going down the west coast of Africa," the command's top officer, General
James Jones, announced in May 2003.
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2AC Sequestration Add-On (1/2)

CTL requires sequestration
Beanne Wagner, May 2008. National Defense “Market for Synthetic Aviation Fuels Off to a Shaky Start” <
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2008/May/Market.htm>
Industry experts have said fuel derived from coal has enormous potential because of its abundance, but production of the fuel
could release twice as much greenhouse gas as petroleum, the Environmental Protection Agency says.
Facilities that use hydrocarbon substances as a feedstock — including coal-to-liquid plants — will require an expensive process
known as carbon capture and sequestration, which catches the carbon during production before it can be released into the
environment.
Geological carbon sequestration escapes

Jane Williams. “Carbon Sequestration: Injection of toxic gases into poor communities or the salvation of the
fossil fuel industry, or both?” Executive Director of California Communities Against Toxics (CCAT). She has
served on many statewide advisory committees, testified in front of Congress and the State Legislature, and
spoken at conferences on the impacts of pollution in adversely impacted communities. She was recently
appointed to the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee for Greenhouse Gases at the Air Resources Board.
2007. http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/04/carbon_sequestr.html
When CO2 is injected into the ground it becomes corrosive to the rock and liberates the metals that are in the ground. Concerns
have been raised about these toxic chemicals affecting ground water. California relies upon its groundwater for more than 40% of
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its water supply. As well, CO2’s acidic nature is corrosive to the underground environment and the gases can. actually eat through
rock There is clearly the potential for this captured gas to escape at some point in the future. A recent pilot project that injected
CO2 into the subsurface in a brine filled oil reservoir liberated metals and organic chemicals as well as dissolved the rock, creating
pathways through which the gas could escape.
Geological carbon sequestration leaks could kill all life in the ocean
University of Michigan, Carbon Sequestration: Helpful or Harmful? March 07.
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/sec005group04/negative_effects
Carbon sequestration has the capability of changing the chemical composition and habitable qualities of the oceans.
These alterations might sound impossible or extreme, but they have a very high likelihood of occurrence, and if they take place,
the consequences would be severe. Even if companies check to make sure that there are no faults or weak spots within the areas
where the CO2 would be stored, there is always the possibility of change. The earth’s plates shift and move, and pressures can
build beyond expected measurements. Life and nature change. Such flexibility is part of their very definition. And if the security
that an oil company was depending upon alters, the company’s actions will not only affect themselves, but the whole world. Deep-
sea life is extremely sensitive to change. As Seibel and Walsh stated in their article “Potential Impacts of CO2 Injection on Deep-
Sea Biota,” “…in the deep sea they [CO2 concentration and pH] have been stable for thousands of years, and organisms are highly
attuned to this stability.” The steady leak of CO2 into this secure environment would throw this balance into chaos. An increase
in CO2 would make it much harder for seas life to receive the needed amount of oxygen, which would put their survival under a
strain. They would have to work harder to acquire the necessary levels of oxygen, yet higher CO2 levels also decrease their
metabolism rate, and as a result, the rate at which they move and function. Creatures’ abilities to synthesize protein would also
decrease, which could negatively impact their ability to use their muscles and their means of mobility. If CO2 levels continued to
be released into the water, deep sea life would be fighting to maintain cellular pH and chemical balance, but eventually the strain
would become too much. The ocean’s chemical balance would be altered, and mass death of sea life would occur. Not only would
these extinctions be a tragedy in themselves, but this change would also affect people around the globe. Fishermen might face an
end to their occupation, and sea food, a large source of nourishment for much of the world, would become severely strained. This
scenario might sound a bit drastic, but taking another look the situation shows it is possible. Many of the companies interested in
using carbon sequestration are intending to store anywhere from 8,000-14 million tons of carbon underground. That is 14 million
for just one company. There are multiple companies looking at carbon sequestration as an alternative to releasing the gas in the
air. If all of this carbon was stored underground and under the ocean, the scene created above does not seem so absurd.
2AC Sequestration Add-On (2/2)

Algal biofuels would be able to replace carbon sequestration and even function
in the developing world.
Biopact. Biopact unites specialists in several disciplines related to bioenergy seen in the broader context of
development and trade: an economic anthropologist, a bio-engineer, a professor in chemistry, a tropical
agronomist, a sociologist with expertise on Central-Africa, and a development economist. June 11, 2007
http://biopact.com/2007/06/carbon-negative-biofuels-and-biochar.html
A major advantage of the 'terra preta' technique is that it is quite low-tech. In contrast to other carbon sequestration
technologies - such as 'carbon capture and storage' (CCS) from coal plants - the technique can be implemented on a vast scale
in the developing world. Especially in the tropics and the subtropics, where soils are often nutrient-deficient, the application of
biochar could yield multiple benefits.
Farmers in the South would thus become producers of carbon negative biofuels, while at the same time using their soils as
carbon sinks that stimulate crop growth.
In contrast to CCS, which requires large and expensive infrastructures and are coupled to large, centralised power stations,
biomass pyrolysis plants can be taken up in a decentralised biofuel production strategy and coupled to local soil improvement
plans.
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Algae Biofuel = Carbon Negative

Fortunetally, the algae biofuel would be carbon negative through the
production of biochar.
agronomist, a sociologist with expertise on Central-Africa, and a development economist. Sunday, October 07,
2007 http://biopact.com/2007/10/towards-carbon-negative-bioenergy-us.html
The low-tech route consists of transforming biomass into useable fuels while keeping part of the carbon locked into an inert
form, called biochar ('agrichar'). This biochar is then simply added to agricultural soils, in which the carbon can be sequestered
safely for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. The discovery of ancient 'terra preta' soils demonstrates that carbon
effectively remains locked up for a very long period of time.
More and more research shows that soils amended with the char have very beneficial effects on crop growth. The enhanced
nutrient retention capacity of biochar-amended soil not only reduces the total fertilizer requirements but also the climate and
environmental impact of croplands. Char-amended soils have shown 50 - 80 percent reductions in nitrous oxide emissions and
reduced runoff of phosphorus into surface waters and leaching of nitrogen into groundwater. As a soil amendment, biochar
significantly increases the efficiency of and reduces the need for traditional chemical fertilizers, while greatly enhancing crop
yields. Experiments have shown yields for some crops can be doubled and even tripled (previous post).
Biochar thus offers the promise of carbon-negative biofuel production sustained by a cycle in which crop production is
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boosted, emissions lowered, and reliance on synthetic fertilizers reduced. Moreover, unlike CCS it is a cost-effective carbon
sequestration method: under a basic scenario sequestering biochar from biofuels produced by pyrolysis would be competitive
when carbon prices reach US$37 (carbon currently fetches €21.55 on the European market, that is $30.5, and prices are
expected to increase strongly in the near future).
The biofuel would be carbon negative while replacing chemical fertilizers and
tripling yields of crops
agronomist, a sociologist with expertise on Central-Africa, and a development economist. June 11, 2007
http://biopact.com/2007/06/carbon-negative-biofuels-and-biochar.html
The group of researchers demonstrated (earlier post) that biofuels can help mitigate climate change by making use of a
carbon sequestration technique known as 'terra preta'. The idea is relatively simple: a stream of biomass is converted into liquid
biofuels (bio-oil and their refined products) via pyrolysis, whereas the biochar (agrichar) that is co-produced in the process is
ploughed into agricultural soils, which get a boost in fertility and water absorption capacities.
The result is that the biofuels become carbon negative - which means their use can take historic CO2 emissions out of the
atmosphere - while the (energy) crops grown on biochar improved soils that now act as carbon sinks see their yields increase. The
team's research showed a spectacular doubling and even tripling of yields from crops grown on such 'dark earth' soils.
Adriana Downie, who accepted the award for Best Energies, said the commercial uptake of the Best pyrolysis
technology will result in significant carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation. “Adoption of the technology will deliver
long-term sustainability benefits of increased soil health and therefore agricultural productivity.”
The slow pyrolysis technology developed by Best Energies is particularly exciting because it not only produces a
renewable energy to displace the use of fossil fuels, but it also produces a very stable form of solid carbon which can be
sequestered over the long term in soils.
Sequestration Increasing
Pressure to appear to be reducing co2 has causes large US industries to turn
to geological carbon sequestration.
Peter Montague. The Environment News Service is the original daily international wire service of the
environment. Established in 1990 by Editor-in-Chief Sunny Lewis and Managing Editor Jim Crabtree, it is
independently owned and operated. ENS news reports are indexed by Reuters/Dow Jones Factiva, and
KeepMedia. November 2007. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2007/2007-11-19-insmon.asp
In response to a relentless stream of bad news about global warming, a cluster of major industries has formed a loose
partnership with big environmental groups, prestigious universities, philanthropic foundations, and the U.S. federal government
- all promoting a technical quick-fix for global warming called carbon sequestration.
Carbon sequestration is a plan to capture and bury as much as 10 trillion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide deep in the ground,
hoping it will stay there forever.
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Once large-scale carbon sequestration begins, it will be unstoppable and will

spread around the world.
Peter Montague. The Environment News Service is the original daily international wire service of the
environment. Established in 1990 by Editor-in-Chief Sunny Lewis and Managing Editor Jim Crabtree, it is
independently owned and operated. ENS news reports are indexed by Reuters/Dow Jones Factiva, and
KeepMedia. November 2007. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2007/2007-11-19-insmon.asp
Once large-scale carbon sequestration begins, it will be exceedingly difficult to stop. As soon as sequestration begins, the coal
and oil corporations, and the environmental groups and universities advocating on their behalf, will assert that "carbon
sequestration has been successfully demonstrated."
Indeed, the environmental advocates are making such claims already, based on a very short history of pumping small amounts
of carbon dioxide into oil wells to force more oil to the surface.
Thirty-five million tons of CO2 are being pumped into depleted oil wells in Texas each year, to force oil to the surface. Thirty-
five million is 0.00035 percent of ten trillion. Scaling up a 35 megaton operation by a factor of 285,000 is not a trivial problem
but this is not mentioned by industry's advocates who are trying to persuade legislators to endorse large-scale carbon
sequestration.
How can anyone "demonstrate" that leakage will never occur in the future? Such a demonstration cannot be made.
Furthermore, once the U.S. government begins to repeat the environmentalists' false claim that carbon sequestration has been
"successfully demonstrated," why would China not adopt it? And India, countries in Africa, the Middle East and the former
Soviet Union - why wouldn't they adopt it? If we claim a right to threaten the future of humanity, don't others have an equal
right to assert such a claim?
But can other countries devote the same resources we can devote to siting, engineering and geologic studies? Will they all be
able to monitor for leaks far into the future, essentially forever?
For that matter, will the U.S. have that capability? Humans have no experience creating institutions with a duty of perpetual
vigilance.
2AC Alternate Military Sector CP

Only the Air Force solves – 73% of oil consumption.
In military consumption of oil, aircraft account for 73 percent, ground vehicles 15 percent, ships 8 percent and ground installations 4
percent. So while there has been significant attention to conserving energy on military installations and converting warships to nuclear
power, these two together account for less than one-fifth of aviation’s thirst for oil. The Air Force has aggressively explored the use of
biofuels in the B-52 bomber and other aircraft with recent success, yet it is not clear that biofuels could be a long-term path to reduced
vulnerability for aviation. In 2006, the U.S. airline industry consumed about 20 billion gallons of fuel, yet the U.S. produces slightly
more than 4 billion gallons of ethanol annually, and that level of production is beginning to be problematic, as evidenced by the rising
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price of corn and milk. At the levels of intractability we face, real solutions must be not only scaleable, but utilize the strictest “full
cost burden” methods of accounting.
And, the Air Force is uniquely vulnerable – no jumping points in the case of oil spike.
Oil’s ascendancy to a strategic commodity was through the military; the military should also be the source of its demise. The British
Navy’s shift from coal to oil and the U.S. Navy’s pioneering research in nuclear power suggest that military requirements and
innovation are well-poised to push difficult or innovative solutions. For starters, U.S. warships are one of the few places where nuclear
power might reduce the transportation sector’s dependence on liquid fuels. Thus the maritime sector has the luxury of being poised for
transformation to alternative methods if and when oil spikes to prices considered inconceivable today. Similarly, land-based
transportation is arguably close to viable jumping points to new foundational technologies, possibly through electric or hydrogen
power. It is significantly less clear what non-liquid or non-carbon technology the airline industry might choose. While there are
alternatives on the horizon for shipping and wheeled transportation, there is no resource so optimized in ease of storage and power
density as good old petroleum. And given that jet fuel constitutes the Defense Department’s largest single energy expenditure,
improvements in this field would not only close the widest gap in civil transportation requirement, they would simultaneously make
the largest improvement in defense propulsion vulnerabilities.
2AC Efficiency CP
Efficiency’s expensive – re-engining.
It should be noted however, that re-engining an aircraft is expensive and can impact all major aircraft systems and the training support
structure. The cost of implementation may include reanalysis, redesign, or recertification of major aircraft systems to include cockpit
controls and instrumentation, bleed air systems, hydraulic systems, electrical systems, aircraft structure, as well as developing and
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training new maintenance operations, publishing new technical manuals, training aircrews on new systems, and modifying training
courseware and simulators as required. In short, re-engining is no simple task.
2AC Ethanol CP
No solvency – only 1% of energy is gas.
Ethanol is an important alternative to petroleum based gasoline in the larger national strategy to reduce oil consumption, and the DOD
should follow government guidelines in purchasing new non-tactical vehicles capable of operating on ethanol or other alternatives to
gasoline. However, gasoline represents only 1.1% of DOD energy costs and aggressive pursuit of ethanol for the DOD will not make a
significant difference.
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Ethanol can’t solve readiness – reduced capacity limits mission capabilities.

-Alcohols. "Ethanol is one," he explained, "and butanol is another."

According to Held, only two of these fuel classes are practical for jet aviation consumption at this time. "Ethanol just doesn't have the
properties, but butanol might. Ethanol has low energy density, thus range is reduced and we have to carry more fuel [for a given long-
range mission]. So right now the alcohols do not look practical except in a low-blend ratio."
At Canada's Gas Turbine Laboratory, director Bob Hastings disagreed. Under the auspices of the Canadian National Research
Council's Institute for Aerospace Research, the Lab is engaged in a joint project with India's Gas Turbine Research Establishment and
National Aeronautical Laboratories in Bangalore and Pratt & Whitney Canada to explore ethanol combustion in gas turbines for a new
turboprop transport under development in India.
"There aren't any showstoppers to burning ethanol in aircraft," Hastings said in a B&CA interview, "although fuel system components
will have to be looked at." However, he cautioned, as opposed to conventional petroleum-based turbine fuel, "there is an issue of how
much energy you can stuff into the fuel tanks using alternative fuels."
Ethanol fails – doesn’t fit infrastructure and costs big bucks to transport.
The final criteria that must be satisfied are transportability and fuel storage. The USAF has a robust fuel distribution that uses various
forms of transportation in order to deliver fuel from the refinery to the aircraft. Figure 13 depicts the common means by which fuel is
shipped to an Air Force base. In order to make use of an alternative fuel, it must fit the current Air Force distribution system comprised
of trains, trucks, barges and pipelines and not require cost prohibitive infrastructure construction. All biofuel alternatives presented are
easily containerized and shipped on trains, trucks, barges and pipelines with one exception: ethanol. Ethanol cannot be shipped in
multifuel pipelines because the moisture in the pipelines and storage tanks is absorbed by the ethanol.147 Because of this limitation,
transportation costs will be higher for ethanol than for other biofuel alternatives. A study conducted by Downstream Alternatives, Inc.,
analyzed the logistics of supplying ethanol to California. The analysis concluded that the only viable method of transporting ethanol
from Midwest ethanol production facilities to California would be by rail or barge. Landlocked Ethanol plants must use rail shipments
at a cost of fourteen to seventeen cents per gallon.148 Although this may be considered a small price to pay, if the USAF required five
billion gallons of ethanol, the cost of shipping by rail would amount to over would amount to $850 million in additional
transportation costs.
2AC Synfuel CP
1. Perm – Do Both – solves carbon best with no modifications.
David Biello, 1/14/2008, Technology & Innovation, Wild Green Yonder: Flying the Environmentally Friendly
Skies on Alternative Fuels, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=flying-environmentally-friendly-skies-on-
alternative-fuels&page=6 [ND]
Before then, the impact on Earth's climate can be limited by blending relatively small amounts of biofuels into such synfuels—an
option DARPA, for one, rejects for logistical reasons—or capturing the carbon dioxide from synfuel production and using it to
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enhance the growth of the plants to be turned into fuel. "Put as little as 20 percent biofuel into nonrenewable fuels—coal-to-liquid and
gas-to-liquid—you can be carbon neutral in a mix," CAAFI's Altman says.
Such a 20 percent mix would not require any modifications to existing aircraft engines or infrastructure, Green Flight International's
Rodante says. "Jet fuel and biofuel mix is something that is easily done," he says "I don't believe 100 percent biofuel is the answer."
Oil prices at $100 per barrel are already well above the $40 per barrel level at which synfuel producing facilities break even, and even
the $70 per barrel level that might make carbon capture economically feasible. "The biggest challenge is production capacity—and
staying the course," FAA's Maurice says. "If the price of crude were to drop, can we sustain the interest?"
2. Algae solves better than FT – production location and costs.

Algae jet fuel offers the Air Force a secure energy source and has the potential to stabilize future fuel costs. With fuel currently costing
the Air Force $3.7 billion annually and foreign oil prices uncontrollably driving this cost even higher, biofuels have the potential to
offer a domestically controlled alternative that will add predictability to operating costs. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory
anticipates it will require three to five more years of research to validate the algae to jet fuel concept with an ability to produce 10,000
to 15,000 gallons of high quality jet fuel per acre of algae fields. Algae jet fuel production offers advantages not presented by F-T jet
fuel. First, algae oil production can take place anywhere onshore or offshore and only requires sunlight, water and a carbon dioxide
supply. Therefore, production can be dispersed and located so as to increase security of fuel production facilities as well as minimize
product transportation requirements. Second, algae oil refinement takes advantage of existing refinery capacity and does not require
the construction of multi-billion dollar F-T facilities in order to produce jet fuel. Therefore, costs associated with expanding
production will be less than the F-T option. Finally, algae produced fuel is an environmental zero-sum venture. Since the algae take
carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere to produce its oil, it does not add additional carbon dioxide when burned. It only
releases what was already present. Algae-produced jet fuel should be the long-term objective of the USAF alternative fuels program.
In order to succeed, the USAF must continue to partner with NREL and industry to develop algae-based jet fuel production
requirements. By fostering this partnership, the USAF can reduce its dependency on foreign procured oil, and do so with a renewable,
environmentally friendly jet fuel alternative.
3. Can’t solve readiness –

A. High prices and no mechanism for long-term contracts.
Synthetic-fuel prices also need to fall: Formerly stratospheric, they're still about 50% above the soaring prices for petroleum. That
should happen if companies can begin operating commercial-scale refineries, says David Berg, a policy analyst who studied the
nascent synthetic-fuel market for the Energy Department in December. He estimated that commercial-scale synthetic-fuel refineries
would be able to sell artificial fuel for approximately $55 a barrel, less than half the current cost of conventional crude oil.
But many in the field say they're unwilling to invest the necessary billions until they can sign long-term contracts with the
government. Right now, the Air Force legally can sign deals only for five years. It has asked the White House's Office of Management
and Budget to seek congressional approval for the rule change, but the Bush administration has yet to act on the request, Mr. Anderson
says.
"These plants are not likely to get built without government help" such as guaranteed long-term contracts, says Mr. Berg, who recently
retired. "And they may not get built even then."
2AC Synfuel CP
B. Increases warming which uniquely threatens U.S. national security.
TOM Z. COLLINA AND PATRICK H. O’NEIL, executive director of 2020 Vision and professor and chair of
the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound, 4/13/2008, Airplane biofuels even
greener now that they’re becoming cheaper, http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/insight/story/333879.html
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Admirable as the Air Force’s determination to reduce oil use may be, there’s another serious game in town – global warming. From
this perspective, coal fuels are a real loser, producing nearly twice the amount of greenhouse gasses as petroleum. If these gases are
captured and stored, as the Air Force plans to do, then coal fuels are similar to petroleum in terms of climate pollution.
In fact, Congress passed a law last year that requires the capture of carbon dioxide from coal fuels, because it bars the federal
government from buying fuels that produce more climate pollution than petroleum. U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Ca., who sponsored
the measure, says the Air Force would “like to have (coal-to-liquids) because of security concerns – a reliable source of power.
They’re not thinking beyond that one issue,” Waxman said. Climate change “is also a national security concern.”
Indeed, a respected group of retired military officers recently reviewed the national security implications of climate change and
concluded, “Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security.” And U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va.,
ranking member of the Armed Services Committee and co-sponsor of leading climate legislation in Congress, has said: “In my 28
years in the Senate, I have focused above all on issues of national security, and I see the problem of global climate change as fitting
squarely within that focus.”
For coal-based fuels to be viable – both from a national security and commercial standpoint – the climate pollution must be captured.
Yet according to the Pentagon’s own Defense Science Board, the technologies needed for capturing carbon “have only been
demonstrated at limited scale, and their costs are highly uncertain.”
This Pentagon panel concluded that “these large expenditures could be used for more productive contributions to (the Pentagon’s)
most pressing energy challenges, rather than demonstrating (coal) fuel technologies that do not appear to have a viable market future
or contribute to reducing battle space fuel demand.”
C. Only algae solves readiness – production location is key to eliminating vulnerable fuel convoys.
TOM Z. COLLINA AND PATRICK H. O’NEIL, executive director of 2020 Vision and professor and chair of
the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound, 4/13/2008, Airplane biofuels even
greener now that they’re becoming cheaper, http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/insight/story/333879.html
Biofuels have significant advantages over coal. They can be produced both domestically and, potentially, at the point of military
engagement, thus reducing oil demand overall and the need for long fuel convoys that are vulnerable to attack. And biofuels can be
produced in ways that create no net increase in carbon emissions.
To be sure, biofuels have their challenges to overcome. Primary among them is finding enough land on which to grow source crops
without displacing food crops or encouraging deforestation. Babassu nuts in Brazil are one option. (Coconuts, however, cost too much
to provide high-volume fuel.)
A more promising feedstock is algae, which could produce over 100 times more biofuel than a crop of soybeans. Using algae, some 85
billion gallons of biofuel could be produced on land the size of Maryland, and could meet 100 percent of the fuel needs of the current
jet fleet worldwide.
2AC Synfuel CP
Synfuels would deck the military – 4 reasons.
TRANSFORMATION,
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The primary benefit of using synthetic liquid fuels is that virtually no infrastructure modification is necessary—simply certify all
current engines for use and start pumping shale oil into the existing fuel distribution system and America’s air, sea, and land power is
preserved. However, four problem areas arise from military reliance on synthetic fuels as a potentially longterm energy solution : 1)
increased lines-of-communication (LOC) demands, 2) potential environmental harm (strip mining, high water consumption, CO2
emissions), 3) increased publicsector synthetic fuel consumption, and 4) neglected allies. According to Defense Energy Supply Center
standard procedures, the DoD globally purchases fuel from regional and local suppliers at a DoD-wide contract price. Oil corporations
ensure that adequate regional supplies exist through an established global shipping and distribution system, while organic military
systems provide final fuel delivery into combat zones or to end users. DoD’s universal adoption of oil-shale fuels by 2020 will create a
unique distribution situation not seen since the U.S. last exported fuel: the flow of full tankers leaving U.S. sea ports! It is unclear
from available literature what type of cargo these ships will carry— will it be finished fuels or unrefined crude requiring dependence
on potentially vulnerable host nation refining before it is ready for use? Project sponsors must specify this information in their
proposals. Additionally, is the U.S. Navy prepared to protect these shipments that an asymmetric enemy could clearly identify and
target on the open seas? Because it would flow through the existing petroleum distribution infrastructure, the post-2020 synthetic-fuel
military might end up relying on a reversed supply system as fragile and vulnerable as today’s. Virtually every industrial process
comes at an environmental cost—coal/shale/tar sand oil is no exception. While it is widely known that the FT process produces liquid
fuels that burn cleaner than their petroleum-derived counterparts, the environmental advantage ends there. Oil shale/tar sand/coal
extraction requires intensive mining operations—subterranean and strip processes in the Appalachians and strip mining in Wyoming
and Colorado where the largest deposits are found. Strip mining would tear open vast tracks of pristine wilderness and destroy natural
habitats. The alternative is to liquefy underground solids with electrical heaters—a process that requires substantial energy of its own.
Combine that with the one to four barrels of water and 400 – 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas needed to refine each barrel of shale
oil107 in a historically water-scarce region of the country, and the millions who live downstream of the Colorado River will certainly
raise loud voices. Finally, shale oil products release a significant amount of CO2, the primary cause in the theory for global warming.
The significant amounts released during the FT extraction process can be sequestered below ground, but widescale adoption of
synthetic fuel does not prevent release of CO2 at the point of end use combustion. Consuming approximately only 400,000 of the
world’s estimated 120M bbls a day by 2020,108 one could successfully argue that DoD’s contribution to global environmental harm
would be relatively negligible, but taking a minimalist approach would not excuse the program from addressing the third looming
issue with DoD conversion to shale-oil: purchase competition from growing public sector synthetic fuel demand. Preliminary studies
have shown that coal/shale/sands oil production becomes economically feasible at approximately $45 a barrel.109 Considering oil’s
recent $70-a-barrel peak, and the fact that each $1/bbl price increase costs the DoD $135M annually,110 synthetic fuels become very
attractive financially. It would only be realistic to assume that the same attraction drawing the DoD to shale-oil conversion would also
generate a stampede of publicsector consumption for the fields of Wyoming. On the one hand, increased economies of scale should
help drive down production costs for DoD, but since oil is a commodity, one must expect synthetic oil to sell for the same volatile
price as petroleum oil. Philip Deutch, in his Nov/Dec 2005 Foreign Policy article “Energy Independence” correctly observes that, “No
private oil company will sell oil on its domestic market for one penny less than it could realize on foreign markets, and the price that a
barrel of oil commands will be based upon pressures beyond any one government’s control.”111 Unless the U.S. Government enters
long-term contracts or cooperatives with producers to provide federal fuel at a fixed price in exchange for Department of the Interior
mining rights on federal lands, free market forces will negate the last portion of the NRAC’s justification for oil-shale development:
“Setting a 2020 goal of complete conversion to assured domestic sources of manufactured fuels will enhance national security and
potentially save money compared to riding the curve of rising global petroleum prices.”112 The final concern with DoD reliance on
shale-oil regards America’s strategic allies and friends. Today and to 2020, allies such as Canada and the United Kingdom can
approximately meet or exceed domestic and security needs. However, nations such as Germany, France, or Japan already rely upon
imported oil for over 90 percent of their requirements. None of these allies have sufficiently vast solid hydrocarbon reserves to
accomplish their own internal shale/coal/or tar sands conversion. For these countries, military foreign energy independence will be a
virtual impossibility by 2020, severely shaping the foreign policy objectives and freedom of these nations reliant on petroleum
imports. Unless the United States is willing to develop its synthetic fuels resources beyond the levels needed to power only the DoD,
many of America’s international military partners may simply be unavailable for the coalitions the U.S. has acknowledged it will need
to favorably shape tomorrow’s world.
Synfuel CP
Synfuel bad – ecosystems and water supply.
James Ridgeway, author of 5 Unanswered Questions About 9/11, It's All For Sale: The Control of Global
Resources and A Guide to Environmental Bad Guys, co-written with Jeffrey St. Clair, 5/30/2007, From I.G.
Farben to Barack Obama, The Long Con on Synthetic Fuels, [ND]
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Members of Congress are falling all over themselves writing legislation that would pump millions of taxpayer dollars into schemes
that promise to turn coal into synthetic gas, develop oil shale, and the most popular at the moment, plans to transform coal into a liquid
oil.
If any of this were to happen, huge hunks of the fragile western plains would be transformed into modern mining camps, wrecking
fragile ecosystems, exhausting and polluting water supplies. Manufacture of synthetic fuels would subject workers, and the general
nearby populations to cancer causing chemicals.
Double bind – either causes warming or isn’t cost-competitive.

An even bigger environmental issue is the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by refining coal can be 50-100% higher than
refining petroleum.43 Advocates for synfuel point out the CO2 can be captured and used for “enhanced oil recovery” by pumping the
captured CO2 into oil wells to retrieve otherwise unobtainable oil, or sequestered in underground saline aquifers or other “storage”
locations to prevent addition of CO2 to ever-increasing GHG problem. Skeptics are quick to point out that carbon capture and
sequestration has never been proven on any large scale, and if attempted, would surely add to the cost of synfuel production.
CTF tech is awful – carbon and water use.

Environmentalists say coal-to-fuel plants give off twice the amount of carbon dioxide as traditional refineries.
"Everybody is looking at this as the magic bullet. But if you look at the carbon footprint, it's not," said Wayde Schafer, a North Dakota
spokesman for the Sierra Club. "Using coal in any form at this point doesn't make sense because of global warming."
The Air Force says its testing showed a drop in emissions from jet engines when using the synthetic fuel.
"The tail pipe emissions don't tell the whole story," Schafer said. "There are a lot of pollutants created before we get to that point."
Producing a gallon of fuel from coal also takes more water than petroleum, and the plants are likely to be built in the West, where
water is a valuable commodity, Schafer said.
Politics – Popular
Air Force alternatives popular – keep focus on renewables as a whole.
Gordon Lubold, staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor, 12/28/2007, Air Force to fly on synthetic fuel?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1228/p03s05-usgn.html?page=1 [ND]
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"The Air Force alternative fuel program is as important to the nation as it is to the Air Force because it keeps focus on alternative fuels
by the largest user of the fuel in the US government," said Rep. Jim Saxton (R) of New Jersey, who attended the event celebrating the
landing of the C-17 in his state last week.
"We must continue to support the research ... to find cleaner, more environmentally friendly fuels that include both renewable and
unconventional fuel," he added.
*** Neg ***
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Solvency – Timeframe
Timeframe’s too long – species selection and infrastructure take 5 years.
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Chris Ladd, popular mechanics staff, 5/29/2008, Algae Startups Confront Promise of Miracle Fuel With Big
Summer, http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4266137.html
Just choosing which kind of algae to start with is a herculean task. There are well over 100,000 species, each adapted to grow in
different environments at different rates, and each capable of producing different amounts of oil—or none at all. The government
collected more than 3000 different strains from all over the world in the 1980s, 300 of which were deemed promising. Today, many
algal strains have been engineered into genetically modified superplants—the secret formulas of biofuel startups—but there is, as yet,
no proven winner. Not to mention, there remains the small matter of how to make the algae flourish, how to cheaply dry several
million gallons of subsequent slush, and how to get the oil out of minuscule cell walls and into the metaphorical barrel.
"It's not as easy as running a combine through a field of canola to get the seeds and crush them," says Michael Weaver, CEO of the
Washington biofuels company Bionavitas. "For anybody who thinks that we can go from ‘Hey, let's look at algae,' to full-on fuel
production in the period of the past three to five years, it's just never going to happen that way."
A number of pilot plants scheduled to come online in the next several months will likely give the most accurate glimpse of algae's
future: how much oil it can produce, how soon and whether it will live up to its promise. GreenFuel, one of the oldest names in algae,
already operates a pilot plant in Arizona, where it houses algae in large, clear plastic bags. Solix will break ground this summer on a
new plant in Colorado, growing algae in what are essentially 325-ft.-long, 1.5-ft.-high freezer pops, suspended vertically in shallow
pools; a smaller array, with eight 65-ft.-long bioreactors, has entered production in recent weeks. HR BioPetroleum, which signed a
deal with Shell last year to produce biodiesel from algae, is currently building a pilot plant in Hawaii using a "hybrid system"—growth
begins in long, clear, horizontal tubes before being dumped into open ponds to multiply further. Blitzing the ponds with algae for a
short time has the advantage of rendering species invasion a nonissue, the company says.
"The jury is out on all of them—nobody has fully demonstrated that their system is going to be affordable and scalable, and be robust
in terms of operations and maintenance and the ability to produce a large amount of oil routinely," says Ron Pate, a researcher at
Sandia National Laboratories who evaluated algal oil in conjunction with DARPA's jet fuel project last year. "There are a lot of
naysayers out there, and that's fine. It's good to be skeptical. But at the same time, I think there's enough promise with algae that it
needs to be given a better shot than what's been done in the past."
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Solvency – More Energy
Algae costs more net energy to produce – our ev’s comparative.
Rosalie Westenskow¸UPI correspondent, April 30, 2008, Analysis: Algae emerges as new fuel source,
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Analysis_Algae_emerges_as_new_fuel_source_999.html
Despite the many advantages, Algae also have some drawbacks, such as their requirement for light to grow. If producers use
electricity to generate light or increase temperatures in an effort to increase productivity, it may take more energy to produce the algae
than the algae will provide. Also, it takes more algae to produce a gallon of ethanol than corn, Byrne said.
"It takes more quantity to run through (the biorefinery) because it's not as high in starch as corn," he told UPI.
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Synfuel Good
Synfuel is sweet – uses domestic reserves and can come online now.
Alternative Fuels
In coal-rich, oil-poor pre-WWII Germany, Franz Fisher and Hans Tropsch developed a process to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuel
from coal that supplied a substantial portion of Germany’s fuel during the war. The Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process is a catalyzed
chemical reaction in which syngas (carbon monoxide and hydrogen produced from the partial combustion of coal which has been
gasified and combined with molecular oxygen) is converted into liquid hydrocarbons of various forms. Typical catalysts used are
based on iron and cobalt. Liquid hydrocarbon fuels produced from coal gasification and the FT process are intrinsically clean, as
sulfur and heavy metal contaminants are removed during the gasification process. The principal purpose of the FT process is to
produce a synthetic petroleum substitute for use as synthetic lubrication oil or as synthetic fuel. The FT process can be used to produce
liquid hydrocarbon fuel from virtually any carbon-containing feed stock, including low-grade tars, biomass, or shale oil; only the
preprocessing steps would differ from the gasification process used with coal.33
Since the United States has the largest coal reserves in the world, synthetic fuel, or synfuel, made from coal is particularly appealing.
Synfuel represents a domestically controlled resource with prices theoretically tied to the coal market instead of the world oil market.
South Africa has been producing synthetic fuel for decades and many consider it to be a mature technology ready for
commercialization. Why then, has the synfuel market not boomed and produced billions of gallons of fuel for US energy needs? Until
recently, the answer has been financial risk.
Congress approved the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act on April 5, 1944. The Act authorized $30 million for a five-year effort for: "...the
construction and operation of demonstration plants to produce synthetic liquid fuels from coal, oil shales, agricultural and forestry
products, and other substances, in order to aid the prosecution of the war, to conserve and increase the oil resources of the Nation, and
for other purposes."34
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Synfuel – Military Key
Only military solves synfuels – key to reducing risk factor for executives.
Seen as Too Risky; B-1 Takes Test Flight, Wall Street Journal, L/N
In late 2006, Baard Energy of Vancouver had said it would build the first commercial-scale synthetic-fuel refinery in the U.S., to be
completed in 2012. Chief Executive John Baardson says he decided to roll the dice on the $6 billion plant because of the military's
interest. "There isn't a market for this right now, so it takes a little bit of faith to get these plants going," he says. "Knowing the military
was out there took one huge risk factor out of the decision-making process."
But other companies haven't followed suit. Syntroleum shut down the plant that produced the fuel used in the B-52 test flight; it had
only been designed to produce small samples for experiments. Rentech is building a new refinery in Colorado, but its plant also is
meant to only refine minute samples of synthetic fuel.
"It's a chicken and egg thing: We'll build a larger plant if we can get the money to finance it and find customers willing to buy what it
produces," says Rick Penning, Rentech's executive vice president of commercial affairs.
Only military solves development – increased funding breaks stalemate.

Keith Johnson, 5/21/2008, Wild Green Yonder: How the Pentagon Could Push Alternative Fuels
Alternative energy isn’t just for greens—it’s also for the folks who wear dress greens. And like computers or the Internet, when the
military plants the seeds, civilian industry often reaps the rewards.
The WSJ’s Yochi Dreazen reports today on the Pentagon’s latest experiment with alternative fuels, a supersonic synthetic-fuel flight
by a B-1 bomber. As with commercial aviation, the alternative-energy drive is part of a push to reduce fuel bills, of course—the Air
Force’s gas bill has tripled to $6 billion since 2003.
But finding an alternative to petroleum is also increasingly a matter of national security for the Pentagon, which alone uses 1.5% of oil
in the U.S. Strategic planners are edging closer to the “peak oil” thesis—and getting nervous.
The Pentagon’s push could be a way to break the chicken-and-egg stalemate that has plagued alternative-energy development so far, a
solution supported by many in private industry, like GE boss Jeff Immelt. The Air Force is working with companies like Boeing and
Pratt and Whitney, which make planes and jet engines. More importantly, the Pentagon, notorious for $400 toilet seats, can operate
outside economic restraints in a way Silicon Valley—or commercial aviation—can’t. The paper notes:
In late 2006, Baard Energy of Vancouver had said it would build the first commercial-scale synthetic-fuel refinery in the U.S., to be
completed in 2012. Chief Executive John Baardson says he decided to roll the dice on the $6 billion plant because of the military’s
interest. “There isn’t a market for this right now, so it takes a little bit of faith to get these plants going,” he says. “Knowing the
military was out there took one huge risk factor out of the decision-making process.”
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Synfuel – Gov’t Funding Key
Cost prevents adoption now – only government subsides spur production that lowers costs.
Carlo Kopp, AUS staff writer, January 2008, The US Air Force Synthetic Fuels Program,
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-USAF-SynFuels.html
The glacially slow uptake of synthetic fuels in current Western economies is largely the direct byproduct of the interplay between
taxation policies and investment funding.
Synthetic fuels currently sit at about half or less the cost per barrel of natural equivalents. However, typical synthetic fuel production
plant is complex and thus expensive, and as a result the amortisation rate of the investment is slow, relative to the expectations of the
investment industry, which likes fast returns. In the absense of tax breaks on plant amortisation, the global investment industry has
been lukewarm at best in funding synthetic fuel plant.
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Synfuel – Spillover
Synthetic fuel spills over – cooperation airplane cooperation.
Seen as Too Risky; B-1 Takes Test Flight, Wall Street Journal, L/N
The Pentagon is hoping its push for alternative energy will feed civilian applications as well. For synthetic fuel, the Air Force is
working with aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing Corp. and the Pratt & Whitney engine unit of United Technologies Corp. North
American synthetic-fuel processors including Rentech Inc., Baard Energy and Syntroleum Corp. all operate or hope to build synthetic-
fuel refineries to feed the military's growing thirst.
"Our goal is to drive the development of a market here in the U.S.," says Mr. Anderson.
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Synfuel – Obama Gets Credit
Obama gets credit – empirically supports military synfuels.
Senators Jim Bunning and Barack Obama have introduced legislation to address the need to pull together the investors and the billions
of dollars need to build a synthetic fuel plant by expanding and enhancing the DOE loan guarantee program included in the Energy
Policy Act of 2005; providing a new program of matching loans to address funding shortages for front-end engineering and design
(capped at $20 million and must be matched by non-federal money); expanding investment tax credit and expensing provisions, and
extending the fuel excise tax credit; providing funding for the DOD to purchase, test, and integrate synfuels into the military;
authorizing a study on synfuel storage in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; and perhaps most importantly to reduce financial risk
associated with starting a US synthetic fuel industry, extending existing DOD contracting authority for up to 25 years.41
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Synfuel – Obama No Credit
Obama doesn’t support – changed his stance for the election.
Peter Wallsten, LA Times staff, 6/13/2007, Obama yields to a greener side,
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/13/nation/na-energypol13
With pressure mounting on Democratic presidential candidates to adopt hard-line positions on curbing global warming, Sen. Barack
Obama on Tuesday backtracked from his long-held support for a controversial plan to promote the use of coal as an alternative fuel to
power motor vehicles.
The Illinois Democrat made his announcement with little fanfare – in a dryly worded and technical-sounding e-mail sent late in the
day from his Senate office to environmental advocacy groups – and did not mention the issue during an appearance at a Brentwood
gas station designed to shore up his green bona fides with a renewed call to nationalize California’s ambitious goals for reducing
carbon levels in fuel.
At issue is legislation, introduced in January, that would give the coal industry tax breaks and other incentives to harness the abundant
natural resource as an alternative fuel. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Obama and Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), promoted the
idea as a way to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil.
But environmentalists charged that coal would produce a dirty fuel and exacerbate global warming, putting Obama in the awkward
position of balancing the desires of an industry with a strong presence in his home state against those of a key voting bloc in the
Democratic presidential primaries.
With his statement Tuesday, Obama seemed to be making his choice clear: pledging to oppose any plan to turn coal into liquid fuel
unless it adhered to strict environmental safeguards.
“Senator Obama supports research into all technologies to help solve our climate change and energy dependence problems, including
shifting our energy use to renewable fuels and investing in technology that could make coal a clean-burning source of energy,” the e-
mail said. “However, unless and until this technology is perfected, Senator Obama will not support the development of any coal-to-
liquid fuels unless they emit at least 20% less life-cycle carbon than conventional fuels.”
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Unpopular – Environmental Lobby
CTF is unpopular – anti-coal lobby is strong.
"The military is telling us, 'We want this stuff, it's great,'" said Jack Holmes, the CEO of Syntroleum, which produced the first batch of
synthetic fuel for the military to test. "The strong support seen by the military has not necessarily been echoed by Congress because of
a very strong anti-coal, anti-carbon lobby."
Plan’s unpopular – warming lobby.

Carlo Kopp, AUS staff writer, January 2008, The US Air Force Synthetic Fuels Program,
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-USAF-SynFuels.html
The radical environmental and Global Warming lobbies are intensely hostile to the prospect of increased synthetic fuel use, as it it
seen to an escape path from the escalating costs of natural crude oil, which is seen to be desirable as a force which retards global
carbon based fuel consumption. If the world shifts to synthetic fuels as crude reserves are drained, the result will be, in the minds of
the Global Warming lobby, further acceleration of global warming and resulting environmental doom.
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Bipartisan
Plan’s bipartisan – house bill proves.
Lincoln Tribune, 7/15/2008, McHenry Signs Petition to Force Vote on Clean Coal-to-Liquid,
http://www.lincolntribune.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9282
WASHINGTON – Congressman Patrick McHenry has signed a discharge petition to force a floor vote in the U.S House of
Representatives on H.R. 2208, the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Act.
The bipartisan legislation written by Representatives John Shimkus (R-IL) and Rick Boucher (D-VA), would promote the use of clean
coal-to-liquid technology to produce alternative energy sources.
"This is a bipartisan, common sense plan to utilize our country’s most abundant energy resource, in a clean and environmentally-safe
way, to help move us toward energy independence and lower gas prices.” Congressman McHenry stated.
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AE?
Coal-to-liquid is alternative energy.
Lincoln Tribune, 7/15/2008, McHenry Signs Petition to Force Vote on Clean Coal-to-Liquid,
http://www.lincolntribune.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9282
The bipartisan legislation written by Representatives John Shimkus (R-IL) and Rick Boucher (D-VA), would promote the use of clean
coal-to-liquid technology to produce alternative energy sources.
110

Air Force Affirmative

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Air Force Affirmative

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AIR FORCE AFF

And readiness is key to heg – signals deters hostile nations.

And, a terrorist attack would trigger a third world war.

And the airline industry is key to economic growth.

Economic decline leads to nuclear war.

Air Force energy development key to a viable aviation industry.

Inherency – Current DoD Strategy

Inherency – Current DoD Strategy

Inherency – Dependent Now

DoD consumption massive now.

DoD’s the biggest U.S. energy consumer.

Inherency – Jet Fuel Demand

Inherency – Renewables Cut Now

Inherency – Synfuel Now

Inherency – Synfuel Now

Synfuel’s coming now – committed to testing and certification by 2010.

Inherency – Synfuel Now

Inherency – Algae Not Coming

Air Power – Key to Heg

Air Power – Deterrence

Air Power – Chinese Deterrence

U.S.-China war destroys civilization.

Air Power – Key to Ground Power

Air Power – Urban Warfare

Air Power – Urban Warfare

Air Force Dependence – Readiness

Air Force Readiness – On the Brink

Air Force Dependence – Readiness – Flying Hours

Air Force Dependence – Readiness - Comptrollers

Air Force – Readiness – Recapitalization

Air Force Dependence – Indirect Dependency

Air Force Readiness – Key to All Readiness

Oil Dependence – Economy

The Economic Costs

Oil Dependence – Laundry List

Oil Dependence – Peak Oil

Military’s entirely reliant now – without oil power projection’s impossible.

Oil’s key to power projection – vehicle transportation.

2.2.3.4 Benefits of Better Fuel Management

Oil adventurism bad.

Dependency spurs terrorism – funds Islamic charities.

Price shocks jack heg – homefront economy and military response.

Airline’s are on the brink – industry’s melting before our eyes.

3.6 National Spinoff Benefits

Alternatives in the military spill over – key to innovation.

Green Army solves private sector – ensures tech acceptance.

Algae solves – fits current infrastructure.

Algae works anywhere – thrives in harsh environments.

Algae solves the air force – will be viable for jets.

Algae – Solves Dependency

Algae Solvency – Warming/Pollution

Algae solves emissions.

Algae Solves Now

Solvency – Shifts from FT

Solvency – Military Key

Algae – Solves Ethanol

Solvency – Air Force Key

Solvency – Fed Key

Food Prices Advantage (1/3)

Food Prices Advantage (2/3)

That causes nuclear war

Food Prices Advantage (3/3)

Algae development trades off with current biofuels – commercialization.

Algae biofuel doesn’t impact food prices.

* Neg *