Earthrace, the biodiesel boat trying to break the powerboat round-the-world record, was here recently during the Miami Boat show. I teamed up with local video production company Digital Visualistics to sit down and chat with the folks involved with the boat. They’ve now put together the piece, and it is available to view here and on Current.TV. Please give it the green light to get it on the air!
The boat was amazing, the people were even more incredible. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so comfortable with people I’d just met. They have been spreading the good word on biodiesel for a couple of years now, and they have done an incredible job. They take off from Barbados on March 6 to attempt to break the world record. Earthrace exists through the support of the community. In fact, before leaving Miami, (new!) local biodiesel company Sol Atlantic donated 520 gallons of fuel to help get the boat down to Puerto Rico before they head off to Barbados.
Spend some time on the Earthrace site and read some of the blogs – enjoy learning about this wild ride. You may be so inspired to donate some money, time, or resources to the project. They really need the help, especially in these final days before the sixty-something day trip around the earth. And PLEASE…watch the video and let us know what you think, right there on Current!
4 Responses to “Earthrace Biodiesel Boat Video on Current.TV”
This is wonderful news. I really hope that this boat would be able to arrive intact and break that record in the name of BioDiesel. =)
Hi,
Just wondering what you think about the idea that biodiesel and farming derived biofuels in general have many harmful outputs and their widespread use doesn’t solve the problem of over consumption. This article does a good job of responding to biofuel proponents’ main claims:
http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=755
On the other hand I see you’re using lots of recycled stuff to get the fuel, which is great… The same magazine with that article proposes sweden’s use of recycled biogas from waste products as a positive use of bio-fuels (more info here: http://www.malmberg.se/module.asp?XModuleId=14080), contributing to more efficiency and unable to be mistaken for the holy grail of energy sources that farming based bio fuels are sometimes seen as.
We need to learn the difference between contemporary and prehistoric carbon. Biofuels are derived by reclaiming CO2 from the atmosphere through the natural process of plant growth. (In the case of animal fat the animals ate the plants.) Natural Gas, Oil and Coal are all ancient carbon which the earth has been storing for thousands to millions of years and which is now being returned to the atmosphere. These fuels increase the CO2 load in the atmosphere while biofuels are only returning contemporary carbon to the atmosphere from which it came. Of course the better idea would probably be hydrogen which would do neither.
We also need to consider the amount of energy required to create the biofuels in the first place – many of these so called clean fuels require a large amount of natural gas or other fuels to accelerate the fermentation or distillation process. If solar or other green energy can be used instead of ancient carbon that would be far better.
AND we must continue to consider emissions of other pollutants as well. Sulfur, for instance, is a very destructive pollutant which we need to stop spewing into the atmosphere. Biofuels tend to not contain sulfur.
Excellent Pod!!! We linked to the current video on our blog (getting to maybe) in hopes of getting you more votes.
I really hope to see it on Current soon!!!!!