In 2007, the U.S. used about 7.6 billion barrels of petroleum, the petroleum industry experienced record profits, and the U.S. government gave $18 billion worth of tax credits to petroleum companies.

 

If you choose to drive a car or truck, please convert it to run on ethanol or used veggie oil from restaurants. Establish biofuel stations.

 

Learn about the damage being done to rainforests to supply the world with biofuels. The expanding palm oil industry is doing much harm to the rainforests of Borneo and leading the orangutan to extinction in the wild. Much of the forests are being burned down. The palm oil produced from the growing oil palm plantations is being sold into the world biofuel market.

 

Become aware of the obscene damage being done to Canada’s forests to extract tar sands. First, roads are being built into pristine forests. Then, thousands of acres of trees are cut down. Open pit and strip mining then takes place, leaving behind trashed landscapes, destroyed wildlife habitat, and poisoned rivers, bogs, ponds, lakes, and aquifers. Seventy-five percent of the oil from Alberta’s tar sands mining is used by the United States, including for airplanes, fleet trucks, and other vehicles.

 

“In the old-growth forest of Canada’s Alberta Province, a sprawling network of bogs, lakes, and rivers provides a pristine breeding ground for millions of North America’s songbirds and waterfowl. Lynx and caribou roam undisturbed among the forest’s dense stands of aspen and poplar. But in recent years, soaring demand for oil has driven energy companies to strip bars thousands of acres of this thriving wildlife habitat to produce fuel from buried tar sands – an immensely polluting and energy-intensive process even by oil industry standards. 

… Driven by skyrocketing U.S. demand, the tar sands rush has spawned a rapidly expanding web of pipelines, roads, and wells that threatens to destroy and fragment more than 55,000 square miles of boreal forest habitat – and area the size of Florida.

… The staggering environmental impact of this dirty fuel boom extends well beyond the boreal forest. The massive amount of energy needed to extract, upgrade, and refine tar sands oil generates three times the amount of global warming pollution as conventional oil production. In fact, global warming pollution related to tar sands development is projected to quadruple from 25 megatons in 2003 to as much as 126 megatons in 2015, the equivalent of putting 15 million new cars on the road. Even now, tar sands extraction is largely responsible for Alberta’s rising levels of air pollution and is Canada’s fastest growing source of global warming pollution. Most Americans are unaware that fully 8 percent of our oil supply already comes from Alberta’s tar sands – at an unacceptable cost to our continent’s boreal forests.”

–        The Natural Resources Defense Council, http://www.nrdc.org  

–        http://www.SaveBiogems.or/birds/

 

Even though it can be used to produce oil for diesel engines and ethanol for gas engines, hemp is a plant that remains illegal in the U.S. Hemp provides more oil per acre than corn, soy, or oil palm. And it does so with less water, and it does so without the use of pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, miticides, or fertilizers. Work to legalize industrial hemp. Access http://www.VoteHemp.com.

 

Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, http://www.BerkeleyBiodiesel.Org

http://www.BiodieselNow.Com, Site contains a link to locations where biofuel is available.

Mayors for Climate Change, 436 14^th St., Ste. 1520, Oakland, CA 94612; http://www.CoolMayors.Org

Piedmont Biofuels, Pittsboro, NC; http://www.Biofuels.CoOp. This site provides a good variety of information on how to create biofuels.

http://www.TerraPass.Com. Company funds clean energy projects through donations and buyback programs. You

can purchase a pollution buyback that is equivalent to the amount of pollution your vehicle creates every year.

Yokayo Biofuels, http://www.YBiofuels.Org