FUEL
Eleven years in the making, FUEL is the in-depth personal journey of filmmaker and eco-evangelist Josh Tickell, who takes us on a hip, fast-paced road trip into America's dependence on foreign oil.
Combining a history lesson of the US auto and petroleum industries and interviews with a wide range of policy makers, educators, and activists such as Woody Harrelson, Sheryl Crow, Neil Young and Willie Nelson.
Animated by powerful graphics, FUEL looks into our future offering hope via a wide-range of renewable energy and bio-fuels. Winner of the Sundance Audience Award.
The events of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina factor in both visually and thematically, providing provocative anchors for the movie's indictment of what Tickell believes is the Big Oil-cozy, ecologically indifferent Bush administration.
Johnny O'Hara's WGA Award-nominated script doesn't dwell on muckraking, however; it's more focused on broadly inspiring viewers than preaching to the converted.
Interviews with a wide range of environmentalists, policy makers and educators, along with such "green" celebrities as Woody Harrelson, Sheryl Crow and Larry Hagman offer serious fuel for thought - as well as for action.
Smartly animated interstitials, memorable archival material and a lively soundtrack round out the fast-paced proceedings.
Now this is REALLY SHOCKING!! Europeans always think wisely for the people & to the people! Unlike the U.S. where the people are slaves according to the industries!
excellent write up
great, thank you so much!
Don't forget that the guy who invented the car that ran on water was assassinated !! Great movie loved it and felt very moved. We have to move in this direction or it's game over!!
I remember when I purchased gasoline for 19 cents a gallon. That was before the EPA and the US government taxed and regulated the oil companies out of the country. There is a chance now that the US could become self sufficient but this Obama administration does everything in its power to punish and suppress the oil companies. Hence 4 dollar gasoline with an abundant supply of oil just waiting to be pulled out of the ground.
This is a beautiful piece of work. I did gardening work for Josh and his partner Rebecca for several years and helped them grow their own organic produce.
What promted me to comment here is an experience as a kid. Riding on the scholl bus, I was frequently overwhelmed by toxic fumes that wafted in through the widows that made my lungs and eyes hurt. In the fifth grade, I started riding my bicycle 5 miles to school to avoid the pain.
really nice love it that post and also wounderful
The problems still are: 1. tonnage of metal vehicles still will kill people on the roads. 2. People are still getting fat and suffering diabeties through lack of exercise. 3. With humans addiction to assisted transport, the right to a car is overshadowing that humans need to eat. What, people go hungry to give energy to a machine? Solution: 1. people live close to what they need through social organisation and they WALK to where they need to go, without getting run down. 2. People are healthier because walking is good for you. 3. the best machines humans have is their own bodies. Energy is dedicated to organic and sustainable food sources.
They've made cars that run on water but destroyed them because it interferes with the oil warlords and their money.
It just has to happen please just keep reminding the guys upstairs!
I really enjoyed the movie. I found it very informing. Now I feel a change. I want to know more. I find my self searching for answers to questions I didn't have before. I see a lot of you mention several different options for leaving the oil generation behind. You say the like it can only be one or the other. But why can't we use all of them? Just a thought. It seems the fungus they can grow is the most efficient way to produce bio fuel. Solar power would be to the ultimate but we have not gotten there yet with 100% efficiency.
I know because of this film and, Gasland, The Union I will be trying to figure out how to become part of the movement. We have a river there is got to be a way to work with that and we have a lot of wind. I would hope every one would start trying to make the change instead of just talking about it. It may be a pipe dream to some. But I have learned that you have to set goals to achieve them. I'm so glad they made this movie. :)
as an engineer i agree with the comments that bio diesel, as grown in fields is not the answer, however using old cooking oil as diesel is better than throwing it down the drain, causing more polution, the answer is totally electric vehicles, powered by electricity from wind mills, wave energy, and other forms of renewable, none poluting energy...
just to point out that diesel engines were orignally made to run on vegetable oil, and most modern diesel engines will run on any such oil, with no additives!!...i know, i'm an engineer and i've done it...and the idea of making a pump to collect the oil is ridiculous, its already in big cans so pick it up carry it to the vehicle, put a funnel in the filler hole of your vehicle, cover the top of this funnel, with two or three pairs of ladies hose stretched, across the top of this funnel, and pour the oil directly into your tank through this funnel...all you need to do is remove the larger bits of debris from this oil and away you go....warning don't do this with a petrol engine...it wont work....the operating principle is different for petrol engines
just to point out that diesel engines were orignally made to run on vegetable oil, and most modern diesel engines will run on any such oil, with no additives!!...i know, i'm an engineer and i've done it...
Great Doc.
Cheesy, biased doc. Style is totally b- grade Michael Moore. Plus he only deals with vehicle fuel, which is only part of the problem of our dependence on oil. watch Collapse (Mike Ruppert doc) instead for a much more informed and complete picture.
So much of this documentary is bullshit. Bio diesel is a panacea, it takes energy and a lot of water and land to make it. The entire system is ****** and the director of this doc should know that!
The changes aren't going to happen. People are dumb and dumber by the day.
why dont we just grow Hemp again for fuels
sorry world, didn't know
As one of the co-producers of the film, and after many showings, it is very interesting that some people understand the concept of growing your own fuel supplies and some still do not. Our new Global headquarters to supply 2,000,000 trees per month to our International contracts in Vietnam and Africa will achieve us purchasing biofuels from them instead of producing it ourselves, growing our trees only on polluted lands such as the Nevada Test Site, the Hanford Site in Washington State, the Salton Sea Project in California would supply millions of gal of biofuels per year and give us clean air to breath. Why am I going to Hanoi to plant trees when we need them here in the good ol USA? Critics, Critics, Critics. Get on my soap box with me and demand the trees planted in polluted locations here.
Dr. Ray Allen
Emerald Energy
I haven't watched this yet, just read the comments.
Corn isn't the only plantation we can use for biofuels. Technology has advanced and we are in the process of making a biofuel from algae. Algae won't affect the cost of our food, it will most likely correlate with a drop in food cost. Also, algae can grow virtually anywhere on this planet including deserts with some water. Algae plants are very "gas dense" (I can't think of how to word it) so this would wipe out the use of corn or any other plant grown for biofuels. We wouldn't be having this problem if Rockefeller didn't manipulate the original diesel engine which ran off peanut oil.
Yeah, and then there was Durban.
:-(((
I am beginnning to SERIOUSLY believe that the human species is simply too ill equiped to survive another 100 years. People (masses of them) are SO EASILY MANIPULATED by self serving greed people at the top.
Look at how we follow false gods, politicians and worse of all MONEY.
I have watched nearly ALL of TDF's documentaries, watched Peter Joseph struggle to educate us and how Occupy Wall Street goes unheard.
Just look at history! World War 1 and 2 ... and down to Roman and Greek times. ALL of them failed... what makes the present time any different?
If you think technology will save us... well think again. It is technology that is going to kill us and the atmosphere... yes, I know technology is used for good or Ill... but I am sad to say it is used mostly to control and manipulate minds.
Just look at FOX NEWS.
Sure you and I can say we know our problems... but the percentage of you and I that are good and thoughtful is FAR BELOW the percentage of those that are childish followers to their death.
My wife is 50% Native American. She reminds me of how brutal and hateful white people are... even the greatest Philosophers has SERIOUS doubt that we can change (all of us, not just a few thousand that watch TDF) in time...
Human beings are simply not going to make it.... after all... does it matter? The sun will burn out and that will be that ... we are only going to burn out the atmosphere MUCH sooner.
Im sorry folks... but anyone that believes we can overcome money, twisted human concepts that go against nature are fooling themselves.
I DID have hope... and I got into many MANY arguments with my Native American wife that white people can change IN TIME.... but I see now we will not.
THERE WAS A UTOPIA.. but that was destroyed long LONG ago. Just be happy for the life we have now... love yourself and your friends and the Earth. But, our time is up and we are on our way into extinction.
Scary? Why be scared... it is what it is.
There are so many holes in this documentary I don't know where to begin. First he recommends the use of an oil substitute based on the refuse of fast food which is killing a lot of poor folk who cannot afford to eat better but that's the least of the problem here. He doesn't highlight the problem that arises from ethanol in a world where population is exploding, namely the replacement for the scarce fertile land from food production to corn for food. The UN is already reporting food shortages for 2011 as prices for wheat rise. As noted by Yale's C. Ford Runge who wrote an article called The Case Against Biofuel: Probing Ethanols hidden cost:
"In light of the strong evidence that growing corn, soybeans, and other food crops to produce ethanol takes a heavy toll on the environment and is hurting the world’s poor through higher food prices, consider this astonishing fact: This year, more than a third of the U.S.’s record corn harvest of 335 million metric tons will be used to produce corn ethanol. What’s more, within five years fully 50 percent of the U.S. corn crop is expected to wind up as biofuels.
Here’s another sobering fact. Despite the record deficits facing the U.S., and notwithstanding President Obama’s embrace of some truly sustainable renewable energy policies, the president and his administration have wholeheartedly embraced corn ethanol and the tangle of government subsidies, price supports, and tariffs that underpin the entire dubious enterprise of using corn to power our cars. In early February, the president threw his weight behind new and existing initiatives to boost ethanol production from both food and nonfood sources, including supporting Congressional mandates that would triple biofuel production to 36 billion gallons by 2022.
Yet a close look at their impact on food security and the environment — with profound effects on water, the eutrophication of our coastal zones Subsidy supports are a testament to the power of the farm lobby and its sway over Congress. from fertilizers, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions — suggests that the biofuel bandwagon is anything but green. Congress and the administration need to reconsider whether they are throwing good money after bad. If the biofuel saga illustrates anything, it is that thinking ecologically will require thinking more logically, as well."
It takes too much land to grow ethanol, huge acreage. These crops releases nitrous oxide into the atmosphere — a greenhouse gas 296 times more damaging than CO2 — and contributes more to global warming than biofuels save through fossil fuel reductions. This film is offering a misguided solution and if you want to address really what needs to change and what we really face in terms of crude oil then watch 'Blind Spot' and 'A Crude Awakening'. This guy is just proposing one disastrous solution to amend the present disastrous solution.
Biofuels are unsustainable!!! Ethanol is an agribusiness get-rich-quick scheme that will bankrupt our topsoil. Fertile soil will be destroyed if crops and other "wastes" are removed to make cellulosic ethanol. The government has studied the effect of growing continuous corn, and found it increases eutrophication by 189%, global warming by 71%, and acidification by 6% (Powers 2005)