I recently got a call from my friend Safia—another transplant from Tallahassee, Florida—letting me know that our friend, Josh, was in the Los Angeles. He’s the drummer for the band, Look Mexico. “They’re playing at The Echo this weekend,” she said.
“Wow,” I said, “They drove all the way from Tallahassee with gas prices this high?”
“They bought a diesel bus and converted it to vegetable oil.”
That Saturday night, before their gig, Josh, along with other members of the band were kind enough to answer a few questions about their experience.
B: What made you decide to convert to vegetable oil?
Josh: We had some friends who were touring in a full sized bus—they had built and installed a system themselves and we were pretty impressed by that…since…the more we tour the more we go into debt!
(laughter from the band)
Josh: It’s just the nature of rock and roll these days. So we decided to bite the bullet and shell out the money.
B: How much did it cost to convert from diesel to vegetable oil?

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While I enjoyed watching the guys from Mythbusters find ways to improve fuel efficiency yesterday, it seems they left out the promising potential of a car that runs almost entirely on compressed air.  Zero Pollution Motors is preparing to launch 8,000 Compressed Air Vehicles (CAVs) by 2011, which will be sold directly from factories in the United States. (Hopefully they can get someone to fix up their website sooner!)

Check out this video report from CNN:

(Excuse me, Mr. Beck: “No man would drive a smart car”?! I’ll assume that comes from a place of insecurity.)

This is where we need to be heading to remove ourselves from

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Taking a bold and admirable stance, the U.N. has announced that subsidies and production of biofuels are contributing to increased food prices and food shortages.   Echoing the warning call of environmentalists and many scientists, the U.N. argues that the recent mad dash to produce biofuels, has pushed farmers to plant commodity crops like corn to create ethanol, leaving little room for food people can eat, including wheat.   Food supplies go down, prices shoot up, and more forests are cleared to plant biofuel crops. The U.N. report says that biofuel policies should be:

urgently reviewed in order to preserve the goal of world food security, protect poor farmers, promote broad-based rural development and ensure environmental sustainability,

We obviously want to end our addiction to fossil fuels, and while plants sounded like a very green replacement, the approach that has been taken is more like covering your body with nicotine patches to quit smoking:  

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Let the biofuels debate begin! The video below shows biofuel advocates Josh Boger of the Biotechnology Industrial Organization and Joe Trippi, political consultant, discussing concerns over the link between biofuels and the reduction of food stock and increased food prices. If we’re willing to “keep the conversation going,” and invest in new technologies to improve the functionality of biofuels with regard to food shortages/prices, then we’ll all be better for it. See David Roberts’ response (of Grist Magazine) after the JUMP—>

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Diageo might be the biggest companies that you’ve never heard of - they own and distribute Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Red Stripe, Tanqueray, Dom Perignon…should I go on? Cause there’s more. But (almost) more important than the brands they make is the fact that Diageo has announced the building of a new bioenergy facility in Scotland’s largest distillery. From the press release:

The facility will for the first time integrate sustainable technologies – including anaerobic digestion and biomass conversion – on a commercial scale. It will be the largest single investment in renewable technology by a non-utility company in the UK and is set to reduce annual CO2 emissions at the site by approximately 56,000 tonnes (equivalent to taking 44,000 family cars off the road).

The distillery, once completed, will be able to turn spent wash - the refuse of the distilling process comprised of wheat, barley, yeast and water - into a fuel source to be reused at the plant instead of being shipped offsite.

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Make fuel, not war, says eco-crusader Josh Tickell, who has taken his film Fields of Fuel and the message of American energy independence on the road this year. The film, which was introduced on TakePart back in January, won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the Sundance Film Festival, and is now on a 50-city tour across the United States.

“This year, the Fields of Fuel crew will be joined by 10 biofuel-powered vehicles and over 40 professional educators and outreach personnel on a 50-city nationwide tour. The objective of the tour is to bring green energy to the cities and towns of America ” and just as importantly, to make green energy the #1 issue in the 2008 presidential elections.”

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by Kerry Trueman

You’d think that Iowa’s corn farmers would be doing cartwheels in their fields after harvesting a bumper crop this season and getting top dollar for it, thanks to the ethanol boom. But as the Washington Post reports today, corn farmers have reaped an earful of bad PR along with those 420 billion or so ears of corn.

The phrase “corn-fed” sounds like a dis, now, thanks to corn’s starring role as the villain in Michael Pollan’s best selling The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and the documentary King Corn, both of which lay the blame for our corroded food chain on all those amber waves of grain.

The ethanol bandwagon’s hit a pothole, too, now that the downside of ratcheting up corn production for fuel is getting more press. As Jerry Schnoor, a University of Iowa professor of civil and environmental engineering, told the Washington Post, “The environmental constraints are just too great. It’s too much nutrients, too much soil loss, too much pesticides. We don’t have the land.”

Corn fields already cover 14 million acres in Iowa, more than a third of the state’s surface. As the Washington Post notes, “Tens of thousands of acres in Iowa once set aside for conservation were plowed this year for corn. The Iowa landscape is a patchwork of corn and soybean monocultures, with about as much biodiversity as a bachelor’s refrigerator.”

Yes, and with just about as much nutrition. But as long as Americans remain addicted to soda, fast food and the promise of “cheap” fuel, corn will continue to rule. Crunch all you want. They’ll plant more.

by Kerry Trueman

Used grease used to be one of those things you couldn’t give away. Restaurants had to pay someone to haul off all those gallons of used cooking oil from their deep fryers. But that was before folks like Willie Nelson and Darryl Hannah jumped on the biofuel bandwagon. Now, biodiesel’s so hot, the AP reports, that restaurants in Portland, Oregon, are selling their used fryer oil for $1.20 a gallon.