How Bout Them Algae

This is not much of a diary but it gets into the political economy of energy just enough for the highly political people here at Kos.  There is not much discussion here other than "he said, they said" and "So n' so is Satanic" and if you believe something other than my way is the right way then you are a Republican.

But this algae stuff is really important.  I recently published a diary about the great ANWR Rip Off.  And that diary was very political. At least it was as political as I would typically get.  In it I accused the Republicans of seeking favor with the all powerful oil companies in their never ending quest for supreme fascism.  I will not retract that position any time soon.

There has also been an attack of Obama for his support of biofuels and specifically an attempt (justified or not) to link him to corn based biofuels.  That is a bad association to have in today's red hot food shortage world.  Obama is smart enough to dodge that I think and he is also smart enough to be promoting a "Profits Tax" on the oil companies.  He has not been explicit about the use of the revenues from such a tax and I have published what I think is the absolute stone cold nuts on that issue.

I am pleased that Obama has not yet pissed on my idea.  But the reason for this diary is to simply say that the market can work to solve this fuel problem if we are smart enough to redistribute the economic rent currently being captured by the oil companies.  That is what the "stone cold nuts" tax plan does.  The shareholder of Exxon will be smart enough to fund the algae farms.  And Obama will be smart enough to remove the tax on imported biofuel from Brazil and smart enough to remove the trade barriers that block importation of sugar cane from Cuba.  That cane is a lot better source of near term biofuels than is corn.

McCain wants to go to Mars.  Obama should simply lead the charge to become totally independent of foreign oil in 8 years.  This can be done like the Go to the Moon thing but with a lot less government involvement and a lot more use of the market.
It takes REAL leadership and vision. The role of government should be to make sure that centralized power does not collect into the hands of a few as it has with the oil companies.

Algae are the real deal:

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/...
http://algae4oil.com/

The above article claims that to supply enough biodiesel to run all the vehicles in the USA:

Startup cost is $308B (less than the most conservative Iraq cost)
Production cost is $42B (only $2B more than Exxon's PROFIT for 2007)

What's the hold up?

http://www.cnn.com/...
http://www.pr-inside.com/...
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/...

Lets not forget the microsized roaches:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...

That is why the absolute stone cold nuts is important.  It isn't a "government program" it is (in economics) a redistribution of economic rent.  The money is poked into the bottom of the economy where all the entreprenuers get a shot at it.  Left on their own big oil will simply figure out a way to maintain their rentier gravy train.

To paraphrase Limbaugh "Reagan is dead.  His policies live on, but we're doing something about that as well".