{"id":1496,"date":"2010-12-19T12:52:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T17:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2010-12-19T13:18:53","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T18:18:53","slug":"saved-by-the-cavalry-armed-forces-go-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1496","title":{"rendered":"Saved by the Cavalry: Armed Forces Go Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Thomas Friedman, NEW YORK TIMES, December 19, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

\"dreamstime_15320587\"<\/a> As I was saying, the thing I love most about America is that there\u2019s always somebody here who doesn\u2019t get the word \u2014 and they go out and do the right thing or invent the new thing, no matter what\u2019s going on politically or economically. And what could save America\u2019s energy future \u2014 at a time when a fraudulent, anti-science campaign funded largely by Big Oil and Big Coal has blocked Congress from passing any clean energy\/climate bill \u2014 is the fact that the Navy and Marine Corps just didn\u2019t get the word.<\/p>\n

God bless them: \u201cThe Few. The Proud. The Green.\u201d Semper Fi.<\/p>\n

Spearheaded by Ray Mabus, President Obama\u2019s secretary of the Navy and the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the Navy and Marines are building a strategy for \u201cout-greening\u201d Al Qaeda, \u201cout-greening\u201d the Taliban and \u201cout-greening\u201d the world\u2019s petro-dictators. Their efforts are based in part on a recent study from 2007 data that found that the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan. Today, there are hundreds and hundreds of these convoys needed to truck fuel \u2014 to run air-conditioners and power diesel generators \u2014 to remote bases all over Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Mabus\u2019s argument is that if the U.S. Navy and Marines could replace those generators with renewable power and more energy efficient buildings, and run its ships on nuclear energy, biofuels and hybrid engines, and fly its jets with bio-fuels, then it could out-green the Taliban \u2014 the best way to avoid a roadside bomb is to not have vehicles on the roads \u2014 and out-green all the petro-dictators now telling the world what to do.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Congress, which can be bought off by Big Oil and Big Coal, it is not so easy to tell the Marines that they can\u2019t buy the solar power that could save lives. I don\u2019t know what the final outcome in Iraq or Afghanistan will be, but if we come out of these two wars with a Pentagon-led green revolution, I know they won\u2019t be a total loss. Wars that were driven partly by our oil addiction end up forcing us to break our oil addiction? Wouldn\u2019t that be interesting?<\/p>\n

Jackalyne Pfannenstiel, the assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, used to lead the California Energy Commission. She listed for me what\u2019s going on:<\/p>\n

On April 22, Earth Day, the Navy flew a F\/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet powered by a 50-50 blend of conventional jet fuel and camelina aviation biofuel made from pressed mustard seeds. It flew at Mach 1.2 and has since been tested on biofuels at Mach 1.7 \u2014 without a hiccup. I loved the quote in Biofuels Digest from Scott Johnson, general manager of Sustainable Oils, which produced the camelina: \u201cIt was awesome to watch camelina biofuel break the sound barrier.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Navy will use only \u201cthird generation\u201d biofuels. That means no ethanol made from corn because it doesn\u2019t have enough energy density. [Read rest of column]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Friedman lays out for us how our armed forces are going to save lives and billions by shifting radically to alternate energy sources, and doing it NOW.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,69],"tags":[889,198,890,891,892,895,897],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1498,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions\/1498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}