Biodiesel Book For Kids
While Googling around today, I came across this story from British Columbia, Canada – the New Society Publishers. This group has a website called RenewableEnergyAccess.com and they have this cute little kids book called “Have Fries Will Travel – the Adventures of a Veggie-Powered Car and an Eco-Rap Star.” They call it “The Perfect Holiday Gift: A book of exciting green adventures on the road with a biodiesel car.”
So, the car is named Tiny “his exhaust smelling like yummy French fries” and the “eco-rap star” is named Rock. The two set off on a road trip to encourage others to use biodiesel in their cars and to meet Senator Slade Twist in Washington, D.C.
* They visit farmers growing soybeans especially for making biodiesel;
* They pick up a colorful assortment of biodiesel converts, including the one and only Ms. Liza Merriweather;
* Rock performs rap songs about the need to stop global warming – with biodiesel cars being a good idea since biodiesel is a very clean fuel.
* A parade of vehicles, including a biodiesel-fueled farm tractor and a big rig follow Tiny into D.C. where a surprise ending awaits.
Hmmmmm….. Anyway, the book is 12.95 in USD and is available at the above link, if you want to check it out.
The mission of the New Society Publishers, according to their website, is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.



In the latest Long Term Energy Outlook report issued by the
More corn from the Cornhusker State will be going into ethanol production. In the past week, at least three ethanol plants have been announced in Nebraska, prompting
The ethanol industry has been exonerated of charges that it is too highly concentrated in the hands of too few companies. Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Federal Trade Commission was required to “perform a market concentration analysis of the ethanol production industry using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index to determine whether there is sufficient competition among industry participants to avoid price-setting and other anticompetitive behavior.” I guess that’s because the energy bill provides incentives for increasing ethanol production and they don’t want to give all that money to a small handful of companies. Maybe there were fears by some in Congress that the ethanol industry was just like Big Oil? Anyway, the bottom line of the FTC’s pretty straightforward 17-page report is that “The level of concentration in ethanol production would be unlikely to provide the opportunity or incentive for one or more firms to act anticompetitively.” (
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The

On-track testing of the