I left out things that seemed obvious – that it is better to bike, walk, use mass transit or just stay home. That there are a bunch of other things we need to do in addition to moving to entirely renewable sources of energy – combine trips, massively increase efficiency of our vehicles, buy locally, use flex cars, work from home, carpool… I figured these things were safe to leave out, given the audience would be smart, educated people with open minds.

I wish I could have covered algae in greater depth. I don’t think it is possible for us to get out of this mess without it (where ‘this mess’ equals peak oil + climate change). And there is no way our need for liquid fuel is going to go away, unless we go back to living in the trees. Liquid fuel is fundamentally a part of everything we do, and biodiesel has the least impact of any of our choices. Any of them. I did another ten hours of research on other renewables and caught up on the latest biodiesel research to make sure everything was up to date. I uncovered some new research that bears some further following up – it might be the case that some farming methods may have negative impacts. That’s why it is all the more important to focus on algae, which alleviates those concerns entirely. The best I could do on that was get the message out about not buying Palm oil biodiesel.

Anyway, I received overwhelmingly good responses both at the show and afterwards, and had a great time. I can’t wait to see the next round of Ignite presentations!

I also got a taste of what’s in store for my presentation for Tuesday’s Ignite Portland, in which I have a whopping 25% more time than I did on the Teach-in panel… 5 minutes compared to 4! It was a real challenge to compress what is normally a 45 minute talk down to 5 minutes. I love the format for the show, and I can hardly wait for the event.