[ESSP] biodiesel america

[Vanessa Paulman]

Dear Friends,

Good news. As I’ve indicated over the past couple 
of months – our team in Los Angeles has been 
cookin’. The purpose of this letter is to 
introduce you to “Biodiesel America” 
(http://www.biodieselamerica.org) - our new name, 
our new mission and our new direction. Also, I 
want to touch on something we will talk more 
about as our new organization develops - how you 
participate in a new vision for biodiesel that 
will have direct, tangible impact on you and your 
family.

What I Learned on My Retreat – or – How I Closed 
the Chapter on Seven Years of Work with the 
Veggie Van

Friends, recent events such as filming Willie 
Nelson and Neil Young, writing a new book and 
seeing a worldwide surge of interest in biodiesel 
have instilled in me a new passion for the work I 
have done for the past seven years and the work 
you, our worldwide community of biodiesel-active 
people, have done. But these events have also 
caused me to look back and analyze our successes 
and our shortcomings. The largest realization I 
have had is that, like many organizations, our 
organization has spent the past seven years in 
reaction. Despite our successes in the media, in 
writing the first ever book on biodiesel and in 
making awareness-raising web sites and films, we 
have been fighting “against” the status quo 
rather than fighting “for” a new vision.
This is common with many organizations that you 
and I respect. Think about a few organizations 
you may know:
1) Greenpeace – fights against whaling, logging, 
bad corporations & the destruction of the 
environment
2) World Wildlife Federation – fights against extinction of animals
3) Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) – 
attorneys and scientists who “defend” natural 
resources by fighting court battles.

Whether you like them or not, these organizations 
and many others like them fight for worthy 
causes. But, in general, they are in the business 
of fighting against problems, not the business of 
fighting for solutions. And that is a critical 
distinction. Because when you fight against a 
problem, you are reactionary – you’re playing 
defense. Every time the problem morphs or changes 
direction – you too, must change. In this 
scenario, you have lost before the game begins.

This may sound a bit esoteric, but think about 
what I’m saying, and I’ll bet you’ll agree - when 
you’re fighting for an articulated, defined 
vision, you not really fighting at all, you’re 
“creating” the future you want. Rather than 
reacting to events, we want to “create” our 
future.

When I realized that, I made an important decision:

I was going to stop fighting. I was going to stop beating against a brick wall.

And instead, I decided to reach out to the people 
who want to build a new vision, a new dream for 
America and “build” the blocks to turn that 
vision into reality.

The people who can build those blocks are you – the people reading this letter.

People Are Talking

When I travel across our great nation, I stop in 
small towns and big cities and I listen to local 
people. I listen to what’s on their minds – what 
they’re complaining about and what they love to 
do. What amazes me about this process of 
“listening to America” is how diverse we are as a 
nation but how similar our stories are.

Here are a few of the issues I hear people speak about:
1) The difficulty of getting a good job in today’s job market
2) Lack of availability of good schools
3) The high rate of taxes
4) Pollution in the cities

There are many other issues, but these are 
constants regardless of the city or town. 
Interestingly enough, they’re interconnected and 
they just might be connected to a solution.

The Big Question

What if I told you there was a simple way to 
reduce your children’s risk of cancer 
substantially, to decrease the number one cause 
of absenteeism in the United States, to bring 
jobs into our communities, to help farmers who 
have lost 750,000 family farms since 1960 and 
continue to lose 350 family farms a week, to 
increase your nation’s independence from mid east 
oil and to decrease your community’s impact on 
global warming? What if I told you that you could 
do all of this and the cost to you as a citizen 
was the price of a latte per year? For the cost 
of a cup of fancy coffee each year you could do 
all of this. Would you do it? Because the 
citizens of Berkeley did it and so could you. Let 
me tell you how.

First there are a few facts that are critical for you to know. Here they are:
FACT #1 – There are 460,000 school buses in 
America. 390,000 of them are diesels.
FACT #2 – 24 Million American children ride a 
school bus every day (9% of our population)
FACT #3 – The average American child spends 1.5 hours a day on the bus
FACT #4 – The number one cause of absenteeism in the United States is asthma
FACT #5 – The air inside a diesel school bus is 
more carcinogenic (more cancer-causing) than the 
air your child breathes at any other point in 
their day. The air inside a diesel school bus 
also has a higher level of particles that stick 
in your child’s lungs (a huge contributor to 
asthma) than any other direct airborne source.
FACT #5 – Biodiesel DECREASES YOUR CHILD’S RISK 
OF CANCER CAUSED BY SCHOOL BUS EMISSIONS BY 85% 
AND DECREASES THE PARTICLES THAT ATTACH TO YOUR 
CHILD’S LUNGS BY 60-80%

Berkeley Goes Biodiesel

Now a quick story about what happened in 
Berkeley, California. I know you’re thinking that 
this if it’s in “Berkeley” it must be a story of 
a longhaired hippy type from Berkeley who got his 
town to use biodiesel. Well, you’re right. Dave 
Williamson has long hair, and a beard. He’s in 
charge of Berkeley’s recycling program. This 
seems typical, but there’s something amazing 
about Dave. Seeing Dave on the street, you might 
call him a big hippy, but Dave is no dummy. When 
Dave arrived at the Berkeley Ecology Center, less 
than 5% of Berkeley’s municipal waste was being 
recycled. Dave’s critics told him it would be 
impossible to ever increase the amount of 
recycled waste in Berkeley higher than 15%. 
Thanks to Dave, Berkeley now recycles 50% of its 
solid municipal waste.

Dave took his success with recycling one step 
further – he got Berkeley to begin using 
biodiesel. But instead of just getting a few 
vehicles to use biodiesel, Dave partnered with 
scientist and researcher Dr. Randall Von Wedel 
and together, they put forth a proposal that the 
city of Berkeley begin using biodiesel in all 197 
of Berkeley’s municipal vehicles. And, instead of 
using a blend of biodiesel with conventional 
diesel, Dave and Randall convinced the town of 
Berkeley to use 100% biodiesel – something that 
had never been done before in any city in the US.

So how did they do it? Well, the short story is 
that Dave and Randall figured out that the price 
increase per taxpayer in Berkeley per year for 
using 100% biodiesel is about $2.50 per year. 
Dave and Randall built a team of support and 
brought in everyone from the town fleet managers 
to the actual truck drivers themselves. They 
befriended council members. And by the time they 
went to propose the amendment to the city at the 
town meeting, by the time Dave Williamson got up 
in front of the council, who was naturally 
waffling at the idea, and said in his big, 
bear-like voice, “Look, people are dying in wars 
for oil and we can give you energy independence 
for the price of a latte per year – how many of 
you people buy a latte every day?” The city then 
passed the amendment.

To this day, Berkeley remains the only city in 
the United States with its entire municipal 
vehicle fleet – from garbage trucks to school 
buses – running on 100% biodiesel that was made 
in the USA.

Dave Williamson is an ex-Marine. He served in 3 
worldwide tours of duty. He comes from a family 
of roughneck oil workers in a state called 
Louisiana. Dave Williamson is a leader and a 
patriot. He is fighting for your families. And he 
is winning.

And he’s not alone.

Building a Vision

There are a lot of great web sites on the 
Internet about biodiesel. The National Biodiesel 
Board has a great site at 
http://www.biodiesel.org Keith Addison has a 
great site at Journey to Forever at 
http://www.jtforever.org and there are now 
hundreds of sites on biodiesel – all working to 
educate people about the benefits of this fuel. 
When we moved our organization to California and 
began rebuilding our mission, I realized that the 
one thing biodiesel lacked was a place for people 
to discuss the ‘vision’ driving biodiesel fuel. 
Another thing lacking was a cohesive national 
(and perhaps even one day international), 
vision-driven campaign.

The purpose of this letter is to bring you along 
the path that lead me and my team to change the 
name of our organization to “Biodiesel America” 
and to change our direction to a 
campaign-oriented structure that emphasizes the 
need for biodiesel in American school buses.

Our goal is to leverage the power of our upcoming 
book and film to roll out a vision that biodiesel 
can be used in communities like Berkeley. 
Communities where kids suffer from asthma, where 
people need jobs and where the heartbeat of 
America is still strong. Communities all across 
America. Communities like yours.

So take a moment to log on. Have a look at our 
new web site at http://www.biodieselamerica.org. 
If you like our direction and what we are doing, 
donate to us for a tax-deduction and, please tell 
your friends and family:

The biodiesel revolution has begun and you are part of it.

Best regards,

Josh Tickell

Founder, Biodiesel America
Director, ‘Fields of Fuel’

P.S. – I will be updating you periodically on all 
of the new aspects of ‘Biodiesel America’ and how 
you can get more involved in our mission. Keep 
your eyes peeled for my next email announcement.

-- 
Vanessa Paulman
Center for Science Exploration
Hampshire College

phone: (413) 559-5792
fax: (413) 559-5438
Adele Simmons Hall #132

http://ScienceExploration.hampshire.edu