Affirmative Advice
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- Non-military is an adverb- their interpretation leads to a slippery slope that makes everything potentially untopical- non-military just means how its used not by whom
- Default to reasonability- good is good enough- we aren’t stealing negative ground- specifying DOE solves- still get DOD CP
- Includes economic development
- Default to reasonability- good is good enough- competing interpretations incentivize a race to the bottom
- Licensing disad- government action is key to get the NRC on board- that’s Madia and Chandler
- Learning improvements- government facilitate faster innovation than free market alone- that’s Rosner
- *Read Market Involvement Block*
- Counterplan doesn’t solve
- And the DOD is politicized
- Turn and no solvency- DOD involvement in energy trades-off with hard power focus and causes failure
- 1AR- DOD $ Kills Military
- Military clean tech development is controversial
2AC Off CaseTopicality2AC T- “Non Military”We meet- floating SMRs would be used for civilian and commercial purposes by the DODWe meet- they would be owned by the DOE- thus could only be used to assist the DOD- makes it an effect and not a mandate of the plan- they conflate solvency and topicality- any affirmative that won a spill over claim would be untopical- kills logical affirmativesNon-military is an adverb- their interpretation leads to a slippery slope that makes everything potentially untopical- non-military just means how its used not by whomMalykhina 3/10 (Elena Malykhina began her career at The Wall Street Journal, and her writing has appeared in various news media outlets, including Scientific American, Newsday, and the Associated Press. For several years, she was the online editor at Brandweek and later Adweek. “Drones In Action: 5 Non-Military Uses”, http://www.informationweek.com/government/mobile-and-wireless/drones-in-action-5-non-military-uses/d/d-id/1114175?image_number=3, March 10, 2014) At the moment, almost all commercial drones are banned by the FAA. But that should change in 2015, when the agency expects to release its guidelines for safely operating drones. In the meantime, government agencies, a number of universities, and a handful of private companies are putting robotic aircraft to good use -- and in some cases challenging the FAA's authority. A judge agreed March 6 the FAA had overreached fining businessman Raphael Pirker, who used a model aircraft to take aerial videos for an advertisement. The judge said the FAA lacked authority to apply regulations for aircraft to model aircraft. That may open the skies to a lot more privately controlled drones. Default to reasonability- good is good enough- we aren’t stealing negative ground- specifying DOE solves- still get DOD CP2AC T- DevelopmentWe meet- the plan increases development of the oceans through investment in float nuclear powerCounter-interpretation- development includes building thingsMerriam-Webster No Date (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/development) Full Definition of DEVELOPMENT 1 : the act, process, or result of developing Includes economic developmentLongman No Date (Online Dictionary, http://www.ldoceonline.com/Geography-topic/development) de‧vel‧op‧ment 1growth [uncountable] the process of gradually becoming bigger, better, stronger, or more advanced: British Englishchild development development of British Englisha course on the development of Greek thought professional/personal development American Englishopportunities for professional development 2 economic activity [uncountable] the process of increasing business, trade, and industrial activity economic/industrial/business etc development Our topic is best- their interpretation kills best affirmative grounds- better debates outweigh more limited ones- the topic says development of the ocean- not the ocean itself- means their interpretation is contrivedDefault to reasonability- good is good enough- competing interpretations incentivize a race to the bottomCounterplan2AC CP- Free MarketPerm do bothPerm do the counterplanThe 1AC was an impact turn to the counterplan
Licensing crushes the domestic industryNTH ‘10 (Nuclear Townhall “Despite Small Reactor Optimism, Industry Leaders Wonder If They Can Run The NRC Gantlet,” http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/despite-small-reactor-optimism-industry-leaders-wonder-if-they-can-run-the-nrc-gantlet/, October 21, 2010) Despite the excitement, there was a lingering sense that the nuclear industry is stagnating in this country and that all the action is shifting abroad. “There’s more excitement in emerging markets right now,” said Ali, of Advanced Reactor Concepts. “Nuclear is sexy right now in India and China. That isn’t happening here.” “How are we going to compete with China if we don’t innovate in this country,” asked Dr. Robert Schleicher, project manager of General Atomics’ EM2, a 240-MW reactor that runs on spent fuel. “The tradition of the U.S. is innovation. New reactors are important to this.” To some surprise, venture capitalists on the Wednesday panel seemed very enthusiastic about nuclear. “Most of our investments have been in biotech and nuclear seems much less risky to me than biotech,” said Richard Kreger, senior managing director at the Source Capital Group. “Only one out of 100 drug properties ever make it through the FDA approval process. To me a nuclear reactor with a license is a much better risk.” Yet it was the licensing issue that hung like a cloud over the three-day proceedings. “The NRC is the gold standard,” said Ali, of Advanced Reactor Concepts, in a comment often repeated throughout the week. But the question remained whether the U.S. would get stuck on a decade-long quest for gold while the rest of the world moves ahead with silver and bronze. “The FDA is a `Yes, if’ organization,” said Nordan, of Venrock. “They try to help you through the process. The NRC is a `No, because’ agency. You get the feeling they’re not concerned whether you make it or not. The words `generating electricity’ do not appear in the NRC’s mission statement.” Representatives from several SMR companies said they are already looking abroad as a way of risk-managing the NRC licensing process. “”We’re exploring licensing in Britain,” said Deal-Blackwell, of Hyperion. “We may be dealing with Canada before the U.S.,” said Paul Farrell, president of Radix Power and Energy, an outgrowth of Brookhaven National Laboratory. “There’s a big need for isolated power up there.” Ifran Ali, of Advanced Reactor Concepts, complained that his company’s sodium-cooled SMR had been virtually eliminated from the competition because the NRC can only deal with light water reactors. “The regulatory process is making decisions," he said. "Already we’ve been moved to the back of the line without having the chance to demonstrate our technology. These decisions should be made by the market, not the bureaucracy.” Perhaps the most dramatic confrontation of the conference came when William A. Macon, Jr., of the Department of Energy, tired of hearing criticisms of the government, pronounced, “Nobody is going to bypass the NRC.”
No bubble – energy is distinctCSPO/CATF ‘9 (A Joint Project of CSPO AND CATF, INNOVATION AND POLICY CORE GROUP Jane “Xan” Alexander Independent Consultant D. Drew Bond Vice President, Public Policy, Battelle David Danielson Partner, General Catalyst Partners David Garman Principal, Decker Garman Sullivan and Associates, LLC Brent Goldfarb Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, University of Maryland David Goldston Bipartisan Policy Center; Visiting Lecturer on Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard University David Hart Associate Professor, School of Public Policy, George Mason University Michael Holland Program Examiner, Office of Management and Budget Suedeen Kelly Commissioner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Jeffrey Marqusee Director, Environmental Security Technology Certification Program, and Technical Director, Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, Department of Defense Tony Meggs MIT Energy Initiative Bruce Phillips Director, The NorthBridge Group Steven Usselman Associate Professor, School of History, Technology, and Society, Georgia Tech Shalini Vajjhala Fellow, Resources for the Future Richard Van Atta Core Research Staff Member for Emerging Technologies and Security, Science and Technology Policy Institute PV TECHNICAL EXPERTS Dan Shugar President, SunPower Corporation, Systems Tom Starrs Independent Consultant Trung Van Nguyen Director, Energy for Sustainability Program, National Science Foundation Ken Zweibel Director, Institute for Analysis of Solar Energy, George Washington University PCC TECHNICAL EXPERTS Howard Herzog Principal Research Engineer, MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment Pat Holub Technical and Marketing Manager, Gas Treating, Huntsman Corporation Gary Rochelle Carol and Henry Groppe Professor in Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin Edward Rubin Alumni Professor of Environmental Engineering and Science; Professor of Engineering & Public Policy and Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University AIR CAPTURE TECHNICAL EXPERTS Roger Aines Senior Scientist in the Chemistry, Materials, Earth and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory David Keith Director, Energy and Environmental Systems Group Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy, University of Calgary Klaus Lackner Ewing-Worzel Professor of Geophysics, Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University Jerry Meldon Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Tufts University Roger Pielke, Jr. Professor, Environmental Studies Program, and Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado OTHER PARTICIPANTS Keven Brough CCS Program Director, ClimateWorks Foundation Mike Fowler Technical Coordinator Coal Transition Project, Clean Air Task Force Nate Gorence Policy Analyst, National Commission on Energy Policy Melanie Kenderdine Associate Director for Strategic Planning, MIT Energy Initiative Michael Schnitzer Director, The NorthBridge Group Kurt Waltzer Carbon Storage Development Coordinator, Coal Transition Project, Clean Air Task Force Jim Wolf Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, “Innovation Policy for Climate Change”, http://www.cspo.org/projects/eisbu/report.pdf, September 2009) The complexities of innovation systems and their management must be grasped and mastered to develop effective energy-climate policies. In past episodes of fast paced innovation, government policies have been crucial catalysts. What can be learned from casessuch asinformation technology? The IT revolution stemmed from a pair of truly radical technologies: electronic computers running software programs stored in memory, and the solid-state components, transistors and integrated circuits(ICs) that became a primary source of seemingly limitless performance increases. These spawned countless further innovations that transformed the products of many industries and the internal processes of businesses worldwide. 4.1 Why Energy Is Not Like IT The needed revolution in energy-related technologies will necessarily proceed differently. There are two fundamental reasons. First, the laws of nature impose ceilings—impenetrable ceilings—on all energy conversion processes, whereas performance gains in IT face no similar limits. Second, digital systems were fundamentally new in the 1950s. To a minor extent they replaced existing “technologies”—paper-andpencil mathematics, punched card business information systems. To far greater extent, they made possible wholly new end-products, indeed created markets for them. By contrast, energy is a commodity, new “products” will consist simply of new ways of converting energy from one form to another, and costs are more likely to rise than decline, at least in the near term, as a result of innovations that reduce GHG emissions. IT performance gains have often been portrayed in terms of Moore’s Law, the well-known observation that IC density (e.g., the number of transistors per chip, now in the hundreds of millions) doubles every two years or so. Since per-chip costs have not changed much over time, increases in IC density translate directly into more performance per dollar. And while IC density will ultimately be limited by quantum effects, the ceiling remains well ahead, even though performance has already improved by eight or nine orders of magnitude. For conversion of energy from one form to another, by contrast, whether sunlight into electricity or chemical energy stored in coal into heat (e.g., in the boiler of a power plant) and then into electricity (in a turbo-generator), fundamental physical laws dictate that some energy will be lost: efficiency cannot reach 100 percent. Solar energy may be abundant, but only a fraction of the energy conveyed by sunlight can be turned into electrical power and only in the earliest years of PV technology was improvement by a single order-ofmagnitude possible (as efficiency passed 10 percent). Even though both PV cells and IC chips are built on knowledge foundations rooted in semiconductor physics, PV systems operate under fundamentally different constraints. Today the best commercial PV cells exhibit efficiencies in the range of 15-20 percent (considerably higher figures have been achieved in the laboratory). After more than a century of innovation, the best steam power plants reach about 40 percent, somewhat higher in combined cycle plants (in which gas turbines coupled with steam turbines produce greater output). Limited possibilities for performance gains translate into modest prospects for cost reductions, and in some cases innovations to reduce, control, or ameliorate GHGs imply reductions in performance on familiar measures, such as electricity costs, as already recounted for power plants fitted for carbon capture. While energy is a commodity, and PV systems compete with other energy conversion technologies more-or-less directly (generators for off-grid power, wind turbines and solar thermal for grid-connected applications), successive waves of IT products have performed new tasks, many of which would earlier have been all but inconceivable. Semiconductor firms designed early IC chips in response to government demand for very challenging and very costly defense and space applications, such as intercontinental missiles and the Apollo guidance and control system. Within a few years, they were selling inexpensive chips for consumer products. Sales to companies making transistor radios paved the way for sales to TV manufacturers at a time when color (commercialized in the late 1940s and slow to find a market) was replacing black-and-white (color TV sales in the United States doubled during the 1970s). IC chips led to microprocessors and microprocessors led to PCs, mobile telephones, MP3 players, and contributed to the Internet. Innovations in microelectronics made possible innovations in many other industries. That is why, although the semiconductor and PV industries began at about the same time, sales of microelectronics devices grew much faster, by 2007 reaching $250 billion worldwide compared with PV revenues of $17 billion. Like other technological revolutions, the revolution in IT reflected research conducted in earlier years, at first exploiting foundations laid before World War II when quantum mechanics was applied to solid-state physics and chemistry. Much relatively basic work now finds its way quite rapidly into applications: like many others, the semiconductor industry lives off what might be termed just-in-time (JIT) research. JIT research, conducted internally, by suppliers, by consortia of firms such as Sematech, and in universities, has helped firms sustain the Moore’s Law pace. Generally similar processes have characterized developments in PV technology, but natural limits on efficiency gains, and the commodity-like nature of electricity, keep this technology from following a path similar to IT. 4.2 Energy-Climate Innovation Policy Choices Plainly, the needed revolution in energy-climate technologies will be very different from that in IT, even though the sources will be similar: technological innovation taking place within private firms, with assists from government and, for GHG reduction, either a strong regulatory prod or the government as direct purchaser. The technology and innovation policies on which the U.S. government can call come in many varieties and work in many ways (Table 2). Competition both in R&D and in procurement, for example, were highly effective in IT but have not been very significant in energyclimate technologies, which have been monopolized by the Department of Energy (DOE). *Read Market Involvement Block*2AC CP- DODPerm do bothPerm do the counterplanPICS are a voting issue- kill affirmative ground and destroy the 1AC- make it impossible to be affirmative- reject the counterplan for fairnessCounterplan doesn’t solve
And the DOD is politicizedDavenport ’12 (Coral Davenport is the energy and environment correspondent for National Journal. Prior to joining National Journal in 2010, Davenport covered energy and environment for Politico, and before that, for Congressional Quarterly, “Pentagon's Clean-Energy Initiatives Could Help Troops—and President Obama”, http://www.nationaljournal.com/pentagon-s-clean-energy-initiatives-could-help-troops-and-president-obama-20120411?mrefid=site_search, April 11, 2012) While Pentagon officials haven’t tried to politicize their renewable-energy portfolio, the White House and Democratic candidates aren’t shying away from publicizing Defense Department moves that highlight their broader energy agenda. On Tuesday evening, White House and Pentagon officials held a telephone press briefing on Wednesday’s clean-energy announcements in an evident effort to raise their profile. In a non-election year, it’s doubtful that announcements about how military bases will generate electricity would merit a White House background call—or whether a slate of such programs would even be rolled out together publicly. In Michigan, Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow are scheduled to be present at the opening of the advanced combat-vehicle lab. Stabenow could face a tough reelection fight this fall. As it happens, the conservative super-PAC American Crossroads is also rolling out on Wednesday a $1.7 million television ad campaign attacking Obama’s energy policies in six 2012 battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia. Turn and no solvency- DOD involvement in energy trades-off with hard power focus and causes failureO’Keefe ‘12 (William O'Keefe, CEO, George C. Marshall Institute, “DOD’s ‘Clean Energy’ Is a Trojan Horse”, May 22, 2012) The purpose of the military is to defend the United States and our interests by deterring aggression and applying military force when needed. It is not to shape industrial policy. As we’ve learned from history, energy is essential for military success, independent of whether it is so called “clean energy” or traditional energy, which continues to get cleaner with time. There are three reasons for the Department of Defense (DOD) to be interested in biofuels—to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and reduce vulnerability. These are legitimate goals and should be pursued through a well thought out and rational Research-and-Development (R&D) program. But it’s not appropriate to use military needs to push a clean energy agenda that has failed in the civilian sector. Packaging the issue as a national security rationale is a Trojan Horse that hides another attempt to promote a specific energy industrial policy. Over the past four decades such initiatives have demonstrated a record of failure and waste. As part of the military’s push for green initiatives, both the Navy and Air Force have set goals to obtain up to 50 percent of their fuel needs from alternative sources. The underlying rationale is to reduce US dependence on foreign oil. But the Rand Corporation, the preeminent military think tank in the nation, recently conducted a study, Alternative Fuels for Military Applications; it concludes, "The use of alternative fuels offers the armed services no direct military benefit." It also concludes that biofuels made from plant waste or animal fats could supply no more than 25,000 barrels daily. That’s a drop in the bucket considering the military is the nation’s largest fuel consumer. Additionally, there is no evidence that commercial technology will likely to be available in the near future to produce large quantities of biofuels at lower costs than conventional fuels. The flipside of that argument is that the cost of conventional fuels is uncertain because of dependence on imports from unstable sources. While that is true, it misses the point. For example, our reliance on imports from the Persian Gulf is declining and could be less if we expanded our own domestic production. Until alternatives that are cost competitive can be developed, DOD should look at alternative ways to reduce price volatility, just as large commercial users do. The second reason for pursuing alternative fuels is related to the first. Greater efficiency reduces costs by reducing the amount of fuel used. The military has been pursuing this goal for some time, as has the private sector. DOD total energy consumption declined by more than 60% between 1985 and 2006, according to Science 2.0. Improvements will continue because of continued investments in new technologies, especially in the private sector, which has market-driven incentives to reduce the cost of fuel consumption. Finally, there is the argument that somehow replacing conventional fuels with bio-fuels will reduce supply chain vulnerability and save lives. Rand also addressed this issue from both the perspective on naval and ground based forces. It concluded that there is no evidence that a floating bio-fuels plant “would be less expensive than using either Navy oilers or commercial tankers to deliver finished fuel products.” It also dismissed the concept of small scale production units that would be co-located with tactical units. It concluded, “any concepts that require delivery of a carbon containing feedstock appear to place a logistical and operational burden on forward-based tactical units that would be well beyond that associated with the delivery of finished fuels.” Future military needs are met by a robust R&D program carried out by the services and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Letting that agency and the services invest in future technologies to meet their specific service needs and maintain our military strength without political meddling is in the nation’s best interest. Advances in military technology that has civilian applications eventually enters the market place. Take for example the DARPA’s research into improved military communication that eventually developed into internet technology that revolutionized how we communicate and obtain and use information. If DOD pursues research focused on lower costs, greater efficiency, and more secure fuel supplies, the civilian economy will eventually benefit. At a time when the military if faced with substantial budget cuts, allocating scarce resources to pursue so called “clean energy” objectives is worse than wasteful. It borders on a dereliction of duty. 1AR- DOD $ Kills MilitaryTurn- funding for green military trades-off with actual hard power capabilities- kills solvencyHodge ’12 (Hope Hodge, Hope Hodge reports on national security and defense issues for Human Events. “The Green Monster”, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51594, May 19, 2012) Their agenda: spend millions on expensive alternative biofuels. Invest even more in undeveloped “green” technology. Prepare for the melting of the polar ice caps brought on by climate change. Some aggressive and well-funded environmentalist group? Nope. It’s the U.S. military. A few days ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta added fuel to the fire of an emerging controversy—just now capturing the attention of some members of Congress—by sharing his plans for the future of the military with a group of rapt environmentalists at an Environmental Defense Fund gala in his honor in Washington, D.C. “Our mission at the Department is to secure this nation against threats to our homeland and to our people,” he said. “In the 21st century, the reality is that there are environmental threats which constitute threats to our national security. For example, the area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security: rising sea levels, to severe droughts, to the melting of the polar caps, to more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.” Despite pending defense cuts that have had a dismayed Panetta pounding lecterns across the country, the Defense Secretary said DoD would be committing $2 billion in the next fiscal year alone to energy-efficient equipment and efficiency programs, and research and development for green technology. Not so fast, Secretary Panetta. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a staunchly pro-military member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, takes the opposite view. He argues that’s money that could be used to manufacture or update a new fleet of aircraft. He now has defense leaders squarely in his crosshairs, determined to hold them to account for espousing debunked philosophies on climate change and promoting costly green initiatives while procurement needs go unmet. Following Panetta’s speech, Inhofe fired out a statement promising to provide congressional oversight and build awareness about the Defense Department’s “radical agenda.” Inhofe deconstructs Panetta Inhofe sat down with Human Events in his office last week and countered one by one each of Panetta’s climate change claims, reading from a ring-bound folder of research drawn from academic journals: there has been no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise over the past century. The oft-cited severity of the 2011 drought, which covered 25 percent of the country, was nothing compared to one in 1984, which affected 80 percent of the land mass. Hurricanes, a common natural disaster, have been on the decline since the U.S. started keeping records of them in the 19th century. Everything Panetta said, Inhofe concluded, was a talking point cribbed from Al Gore’s 2006 global warming opus “An Inconvenient Truth,” and each, he said, has been refuted. Inhofe had a head start on the research. The minority leader of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, he is also the author of The Greatest Hoax, a refutation of climate change theory published earlier this year. The senator doesn’t expect Panetta to be as well-versed on climate change as he is, saying Panetta’s role is to lead the troops, not create environmental policy. Nor does Inhofe attribute all the far-left language and green initiatives to the defense secretary, who Inhofe said knows better than to spearhead such programs. “I’ve always liked Panetta; I served with him in the House and he’s always been one who has been very straightforward, very honest,” Inhofe said. “However, he has a commander in chief named Obama, so he has to say what Obama tells him to say.” Panetta has publicly and strongly defended the climate change and green energy talking points to critics, however, such as when he responded in March to criticism from Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) at a House Armed Services Committee that Conaway’s premise for disagreement was “absolutely wrong” and that embracing the green agenda would make for a better military. The “Green Fleet” ready to launch While having America’s fighting forces plan for hypothetical climate change might be regarded as silly, DoD’s aggressive pursuit of biofuels as an alternative to traditional fossil fuels is a more immediate and potentially more damaging proposition. At the same gala featuring Panetta, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told guests about plans to launch “Great Green Fleet” featuring ships and aircraft operating on a blend of traditional and biofuels. At up to $26 per gallon, biofuels can cost more than six times as much as traditional fuel sources at $3 or $4 per gallon, putting them out of the price range of many private industry maritime consumers with similar needs. Last December, in what was the largest government biofuel purchase in history, the Defense Logistics Agency procured 450,000 gallons of an advanced variety of the alternative fuel, made from both non-food waste and algae, for the relative bargain price of $12 million. Other test fuels have used the oil of the camelina mustard seed. According to a plan first made public by Mabus in 2009, the Navy expects to launch the fleet this summer for its exercises on the Pacific Rim—powered by the $12 million biofuels purchase—and to deploy it by 2016. Mabus listed his reasons for promoting the infant biofuel technology for his audience: the U.S. was too dependent on volatile areas of the world for fossil fuels, and unexpected fuel price fluctuation, as during the Libya conflict, could and did cost the DoD billions of dollars. Troops were endangered transporting traditional fuel to the battlefield. And like American steel in the 1880s, biofuel was a new technology waiting for an investor to come and purchase it at above-market prices, so eventually it could reduce its costs and become competitive. “That’s what we can do with energy,” Mabus said. “We can break the market.” The environmentalists applauded. Military inappropriate for green testing While keeping troops safe and lowering long-run costs are valuable goals for the Defense Department, biofuels won’t accomplish either, said Dr. David Kreutzer, a Research Fellow in Energy Economics and Climate Change for the Heritage Foundation. In the first case, he said, convoys would still have to transport fuel, whether “green” or petroleum, over ground to reach deployed forward operating bases. And since biofuels have a lower energy density, transport convoys would actually have to be larger to carry the supply, creating a broader target for the enemy. Second, Kreutzer said, if the technology behind alternative fuel sources was truly propitious, endorsement by the military should not be necessary to ensure its survival. “The fact that you have to get the Department of Defense to fund this to me is a sign that (biofuels are) not all that promising,” he said. Moreover, Kreutzer said, there were plenty of cheaper alternatives closer at hand. “We could drill a couple of wells in the Gulf of Mexico and get way more than we could for their biofuel initiatives,” he said. Kenneth P. Green, an energy and environment expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said the idea of energy security and independence was equally suspect. “The price shock issue is real,” he said. “But trying to decouple from the world energy economy isn’t going to fix that.” Biofuels, subject to the laws of supply and demand, would increase in cost during a fuel price spike—and if kept off the world market, the cost of keeping them off would be high. “It’s more a matter of energies-phobia,” Green said. “The idea of survival as sort of independence in everything is the sort of reflexive mindset. We don’t think about this with regard to smartphones, knapsacks... with almost everything, we understand that it’s better with world trade.” And, Green said, the military had no business choosing the winners in fuel technology, especially with untapped options such as shale gas close at hand. “You don’t economize on keeping your soldiers alive, but where possible, don’t they have an obligation to conserve costs with the public’s dollar?” Green said. “Find the cheapest fuel, not the most politically correct fuel.” Biofuels could hurt combat readiness A study released in late March by the Bipartisan Policy Center on energy innovation within the Department of Defense found that while the military had some success in piloting new efficient technologies that would keep troops safer, its size and capacity meant it was ill-equipped to become a pioneer for green energy. “DoD’s ability to house supply and demand under one roof, and to produce lasting improvements in complex systems over time, driven in part by large, sustained procurement programs, is nearly unique—and unlikely to be widely reproduced in the energy and climate context,” a summary read. “There are significant constraints upon what DoD is likely to do directly in this area; the department is unlikely to become an all-purpose engine of energy innovation.” The study concluded the military would do best if pragmatism, not politics, drives energy and environmental decisions. “We believe that DoD’s scope in this area will be significantly constrained to issues and opportunities... that will also reliably assist DoD’s ability to fulfill its core mission,” one of the study’s authors, Samuel Thernstrom of the Clean Air Task Force, told Human Events. “Where those activities do not fall squarely within DoD’s core mission, it seems less likely that those efforts will be successful.” Sen. Inhofe’s game plan On Capitol Hill, Inhofe said he was the loudest voice protesting wasteful defense energy policies, but he said there were others who agreed, including Democrats who worried that the issue would affect their re-election races. While Inhofe’s options in terms of direct political action are limited, he said, because the Republicans lack a majority in the Senate, he plans to maintain a watchdog role to keep public attention on the issue. Later this month, he will deliver an extended address on the Senate floor denouncing the military’s far-left energy policies. And Inhofe looks forward to seeing how this year’s presidential election may provide a way to walk back the liberal Defense energy policies of the last term. Panetta is a great Secretary of Defense, Inhofe said; he would just be a better one serving under someone else. 1AR- PTX LinkMilitary clean tech development is controversialZaffos 4/2/12 (Joshua, Scientific American, “US Military Forges Ahead with Plans to Combat Climate Change”) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-military-forges-ahead-with-plans-to-combat-climate-change Connecting the military's fossil-fuel and overall energy use with risks to our national security hasn't been easy in this political environment, especially with the presidential election looming. Congressional Republicans have repeatedly questioned and criticized the Armed Forces' new-energy strategies, portraying initiatives as political favors to clean-energy businesses. 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