THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And their reasons for doing so involve National Security as well as environmental issues. For reasons probably related to their other assualts on the integrity of the United States, the Republican/Teabaggers are ferociously opposing this effort.

The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and a strike force of 71 jet fighters, helicopters and transport planes, set off on a demonstration voyage off the Hawaiian island of Oahu this week, powered by a 50-50 mix of conventional fuels and algae or cooking oil.

An Australian Navy commander also joined the Nimitz in a biofuel-burning helicopter.

But the voyage that should have been the pinnacle of the navy’s green aspirations instead found the Pentagon and Obama administration fending off Republican attacks on the biofuels project.

In a telephone call with reporters on Thursday, the navy secretary, Ray Mabus, and Obama administration officials made their most public effort to date to head off moves in Congress to block the navy’s biofuels project.

Congress is considering a 2013 spending bill that would effectively shut down the navy’s green fleet, four years into the project.

The navy took its first steps to “greening” the fleet in 2009 and tested the first jet engines on the biofuels mix a year later. But the project became controversial late last year when the navy spent $450,000 on biofuels, paying about $15 a gallon for used chicken fat with a dash of algae, compared to $3.60 for conventional fuel.

A bill before the Senate, supported by Republicans Jim Inhofe and John McCain, would ban the navy from buying more biofuels unless the price drops to the same prices as conventional fuels. It also seeks to block the navy from spending on biofuel refineries – support that could help speed up the commercialisation of biofuels.

Curiously, John McCain opposes this because it is too expensive, now. This comes from a man who gave no thought to the cost of turning 5 of Uncle Sam's frontline fighters into junk when he flew. On the other hand, it is not surprising that the Republican/Teabaggers are working so hard to stymie National Security.