Now that clean-diesel technology, and low-sulfur fuel formulations are widely available, Diesel power seems to be enjoying a surge in popular interest in NorthAmerica. One of the main attractions is the versatility that this engine design has for using alternative bio-fuel sources, which are reviving a century old vision of BioFuels that can lead us away from our reliance on fossil fuels…But there’s only one biofuel that won’t displace food crops, and offers other positive ecological side effects.

Bio-Diesel might certainly not be the final solution, but at least its a good low-carbon bet to hedge on while awaiting the developments that will enable electric cars to overcome their expensive, heavy, and toxic battery technologies, and of course find new energy sources to satisfy their raw and enormous thirst for more coal-fired electricity. While we await these cleaner primary sources of electricity to come online, the resulting interest in BioFuel continues to spawn a huge grass-roots interest in Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Diesel. The question arises though, is the hype and promise of BioDiesel turning into a bigger “product” than the actual end-product itself!?!

During this interim phase between the “World as we know it, “, and the “World we wish it to be”, we’re starting to hear alot more about the DIY methods of making BioFuels which all promise to provide an organically sourced energy for transportation that ‘consumes’ as much greenhouse gas in it’s growth phase as it releases during combustion. It’s also a The trouble is that alot of these sales programs and consumer messages have the production value of late night informercials or Get-Rich-Quick schemes – where the purported “know-how” is the product being sold, rather than the actual end result. Even the more well packaged and produced offerings seem heavy on the sauce, and pretty light on actual substance.

So how do we tell the SnakeOil Salesmen from the ones who actually have a solid plan that improves things beyond their own bottom line? Take for example this promo piece (above) that so easily glosses over the details, but which we’re all so much more prone to accepting since it doesn’t end with a logo of an Oil Giant…

So is the desire to Go Green, just another resource to be exploited by Salesmen?

It’s unconscious knowledge that even the best intentions can be subverted to make a buck, and there’s never been a better time for tapping into people’s desires to make the world a better place…Than right now.

While Political Correctness may have already reached it’s zenith as the annoying beacon that otherwise impotent, and ineffectively self-righteous people have been flocking to for many years now, there’s still a largely untapped and enormous groundswell of unsatisfied people who genuinely wish they could make a measurable difference if only they knew how. More specifically, the average person knows that the current course that Humanity is on is unsustainable, yet almost everyone is at risk of surrendering to the defeatist concept (or God Complex) that big changes have to come down from above…Since individual choices are rarely generating the kinds of clear and wide-scale results that we’d all have liked to see in the big picture by now.

This all represents an enormously powerful and pent-up market demand. The risk in satisfying this demand is in providing people with marginal products and perspectives that will make them just feel better in the short term, rather than actually do better for the planet in the long run. One would like to think that grass-roots marketing would be the way to go, when it comes to spreading and proliferating an exciting new technology, that would benefit Society in general. The trouble is that Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) has been getting a progressively bad ‘rep’ since Amway first introduced the masses to an otherwise very potent marketing method.

Individual choices (like CFC’s and recycling) do make it easier to live with ourselves for however much longer we might personally need the planet, but what about the hard choices like…Eating less meat. Vacationing more locally. Cycling instead of Driving. Changing our landscaping desires. Adapting business attire to slightly lower climate control costs. Or even, just cutting more fats and sugars out of our diet? These are still some of the many simple things that would make enormous differences to our shared Ecology. Such changes might not be easy, but they would certainly serve to quickly demonstrate just how powerful Consumers actually are when it comes to changing the world. Mass Consumption is a two-way street, and it’s already been proven repeatedly that ‘We the Consumers’ don’t just have the power to jumpstart an Economy out of a recessions with some discretionary spending, we also have the power to change that Economy as well – with what we choose to spend on!

So, if you’d like to go backwards in time and see how at least one great man managed to change the world for the better…

Then feel free to read about Rudolf Diesel’s vision HERE.

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Or if you’d like to get down and dirty with making clean Bio-Diesel, you can start learning more right HERE

Pax