Contemporary Authors

• From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank: The Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel Green Teach (Sarasota, FL), 1999
• Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body, and Ultimately Save Our World Enliven Books (New York, NY), 2017
• The Revolution Generation: How Millennials Can Save American and the World (Before It's Too Late) Enliven Books (New York, NY), 2018

1. The revolution generation : how millennials can save America and the world (before it's too late) LCCN 2018017343 Type of material Book Personal name Tickell, Joshua, author. Main title The revolution generation : how millennials can save America and the world (before it's too late) / Josh Tickell. Published/Produced New York, NY : Enliven Books, [2018] Projected pub date 1809 Description 1 online resource. ISBN 9781501146114 (eBook) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. The revolution generation : how millennials can save America and the world (before it's too late) LCCN 2018016448 Type of material Book Personal name Tickell, Joshua, author. Main title The revolution generation : how millennials can save America and the world (before it's too late) / Josh Tickell. Published/Produced New York, NY : Enliven Books, [2018] Projected pub date 1809 Description pages cm ISBN 9781501146091 (hardcover) 9781501146107 (pbk.) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 3. Kiss the ground : how the food you eat can reverse climate change, heal your body & ultimately save our world LCCN 2017032347 Type of material Book Personal name Tickell, Joshua, author. Main title Kiss the ground : how the food you eat can reverse climate change, heal your body & ultimately save our world / Josh Tickell ; foreword by John Mackey, Founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market. Edition First Enliven Books/Atria Books hardcover edition. Published/Produced New York : Enliven Books/Atria, [2017] Description xii, 334 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm ISBN 9781501170256 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER S605.5 .T58 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 4. From the fryer to the fuel tank : the complete guide to using vegetable oil as an alternative fuel LCCN 99073501 Type of material Book Personal name Tickell, Joshua. Main title From the fryer to the fuel tank : the complete guide to using vegetable oil as an alternative fuel / Joshua and Kaia Tickell. Edition 2nd ed. Published/Created Sarasota, FL : Green Teach Pub., c1999. Description 162 p. : ill. ; 28 cm. ISBN 0966461614 CALL NUMBER TL214.F78 T53 1999 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Josh Tickell - https://www.joshtickell.com/bio

  According to Inc Magazine, Josh Tickell is "America’s #1 Strategist" for Connecting with the Millennial Generation (a.k.a. “Generation Y”). He is also a film director who specializes in movies geared toward Millennials.

  Tickell grew up in Louisiana where he lived next to waterways polluted by petroleum refineries. In 1997 he captured national attention by driving a van powered by used French Fry oil across the United States. “The Veggie Van” as it was called was a viral sensation. Only four years after the first web browser was introduced (and AOL was still a novelty), Tickell’s Veggie Van Web Site with its early “blog” received over 1 million unique visitors (continuously crashing its server due to overwhelming traffic). The Veggie Van Voyage spurred an international wave of media coverage pushing Tickell into the spotlight as a voice of change for the young generation.

  By 1998, Tickell had published his first book and was touring colleges giving talks to the first members of “Generation Y” (a.k.a. “The Millennials”). College students enthusiastically embraced Tickell’s philosophy of making the world a better place through smarter technologies.

  Tickell continued his Generation Y lecture tour de force for a decade, serving as a breakthrough business consultant for a number of high profile companies and earing a Master’s Degree in Film from FSU along the way.

  ​

  His journey culminated in 2008 with the release of his first feature film, FUEL (a.k.a. ‘Fields of Fuel’).

  FUEL won the Sundance Audience Award for Best Documentary and was released theatrically in the United States. FUEL became a global sensation gaining millions of viewers on Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and CNBC, Russia TV, TeleSur and beyond. The movie was screened in the White House for energy and environment staff working in the Obama Administration and was shortlisted for an Oscar.

  During the production of FUEL, Tickell met his wife Rebecca Harrell, (a millennial) who was at the time a producer on the movie. The two married in 2010 and have made several films together. The Tickells run a film studio called The Big Picture Ranch in the California resort town of Ojai.

  Josh Tickell directed the Cannes Film Festival movie, The Big Fix (2011). The film explores the corporate and political malfeasance that led to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. His third film, Freedom (2011), focuses on alcohol fuel and aired on the SuperChannel in Canada. His latest documentary PUMP (2014) exposes a conspiracy to block fuel choice at the gas pump and is being theatrically released by Submarine Entertainment. He is currently in production on Good Fortune (2015), The Official Biography of John Paul DeJoria, Co-Founder of Patrón Tequila and Paul Mitchell Systems.

  Today Tickell spends much of his time working for companies on strategies that engage members of the millennial generation. He achieves breakthrough results by modifying internal and external corporate practices to meet the desires and needs of Generation Y. By combining aspects of Corporate Social Value, Participation, Emotional Response and Product Design and Functionality, Tickell provides a wide variety of organizations with unprecedented success in connecting with members of Generation Y.

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Tickell

  Josh Tickell
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (October 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
  Josh Tickell
  Josh and Rebecca Tickell at AFI Dallas.jpg
  Josh and wife Rebecca Harrell Tickell at AFI Dallas Film Festival, March 2010
  Born August 7, 1975 (age 42)
  Lancaster, Ohio, United States
  Spouse(s) Rebecca Tickell (2010–present)
  Josh Tickell is an American film director who specializes in movies with a social message. His first feature movie, Fuel [1] won the Sundance Audience Award for Best Documentary, was released theatrically in the United States and became a global sensation gaining over 1 million viewers on Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and CNBC.[2][3] The movie was screened in the White House for energy and environment staff working in the Obama Administration.

  Tickell has been a featured guest on Jay Leno's The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, CNN, Discovery, Reuters, NBC, Fox and NPR. Articles on Tickell and his films have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, The Huffington Post, Hustler Magazine, Maxim Magazine, Popular Mechanics and thousands of international newspapers and magazines.[4]

  He directed the Cannes Film Festival movie, The Big Fix.[5] The film explores possible connections between corporate and political malfeasance and the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. He went on to direct his third film, Freedom (2011),[6] which focuses on alcohol fuel and aired on the SuperChannel in Canada. He just completed his latest documentary, "PUMP," and is currently in production on "Good Fortune", The Official Biography of John Paul DeJoria, co-founder of Patrón Tequila and Paul Mitchell Systems.[7]

  Josh Tickell holds Masters in Film from Florida State University's School of Motion Picture Arts.[8]

  Contents
  1 The Veggie Van Voyage
  2 Books
  3 Filmography
  4 Clean energy advocacy
  5 Education
  6 See also
  7 References
  The Veggie Van Voyage
  Tickell returned to the USA, bought an old diesel-powered Winnebago van that he painted with sunflowers and called the "Veggie Van".[9][10] He built a small biodiesel processor that he named "The Green Grease Machine" and then set off on a 25,000 mile, two-year tour of the USA powered by the biodiesel he made from used grease collected from fast food restaurants along the way. This journey, which eventually became known as The Veggie Van Voyage, attracted the attention of numerous media outlets, serving to promote the publicity of biodiesel as a viable alternative fuel.

  Books
  After the Veggie Van tour, Tickell wrote his first book, From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank – The Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel.[11] His second book is titled Biodiesel America: How to Free America From Oil and Make Money with Alternative Fuel. The book examines the status quo of the oil industry, the automakers and the government and offers an alternative energy roadmap to wean the US off fossil fuels.

  Filmography
  The Big Fix, with Rebecca Harrell Tickell
  Pump
  Clean energy advocacy
  In September 2009, Tickell's documentary on alternative clean energy, Fuel, was rolled out into 150 cities. In 2012, Tickell's advocacy for clean energy led him to join the advisory board of Grow Energy,[12] a startup focused on developing algae as a viable energy resource.

  Education
  Tickell holds an undergraduate degree in Sustainable Living from New College of Florida. After the publication of his first book, Tickell enrolled in Florida State University's School of Motion Picture Television and Recording Arts where he earned his MFA in film.

• CAL Entertainment - http://www.calentertainment.com/portfoliotype/josh-tickell/

  Josh Tickell
  NY Times Critics’ Pick Journalist
  Oscar Shortlisted, Sundance-Award-Winning Film Director
  Expert on Generations in the Workplace & Sustainability.

  Josh Tickell is an award-winning film director, author, and according to INC. Magazine, is America’s #1 Strategist on generational issues in the workplace, with a focus on the Millenials / GenY Generation (those born between 1980 and 2000). He is also a recognized thought leader and relied upon expert on Sustainability with a focus in Energies, Agriculture, and Wellness.

  His directorial debut movie FUEL went viral, capturing the Sundance Film Festival’s prestigious Best Documentary Award and millions of viewers worldwide. After it was shortlisted for an Oscar, the movie was screened in the White House for the Obama Administration. Josh’s films have also been awarded Official Selection at Cannes Film Festival, Best Documentary at several Film Festivals, and in 2017 he won Best of Festival and Best Documentary at the Sedona Film Festival for Good Fortune, a movie about legendary businessman (founder Paul Mitchell hair products, Patron Tequila) and conscious capitalist pioneer, John Paul DeJoria. His multiple award winning films have been featured on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Video, and multiple media outlets, as well as in theaters worldwide.

  Josh’s motto is: “The History of the Future is Being Written Today.” He educates companies and organizations on the broad megatrends that are shaping society – focusing on trends that are being driven by the 80-million-person Millennial, GenY generation (the largest generation in history) including Generations in the Workplace, Sustainability, Conscious Capitalism, and Wellness.

  Josh speaks to global audiences at companies such as Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Walmart, and Fidelity, at major conventions such as the Young Presidents Organization Global EDGE and MPI’s IMEX America, and for institutions such as MIT and many governmental agencies and associations. He has also presented to over 150 colleges in the US and overseas. Josh has been a featured guest on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show and Good Morning America and is a regularly featured opinion leader in major media outlets including:

• Speakers Network Worldwide - http://www.speakersnetworkworldwide.com/SpeakerDetail.aspx?SpeakerId=28947

  << Return To Search Main Topics : Energy Strategic Planning Technology Fee Range : East: Call for Quote West: Call for Quote Speaker IamgeJosh Tickell About Josh Tickell : Josh Tickell is a thought leader at the intersection of new energy, new technology, new fuel and new urbanism. He serves as a worldwide, in demand, strategist for Fortune 500 Companies, billionaires, and industrialists. As an award winning producer/director his movie FUEL went viral, capturing the Sundance Film Festival's prestigious Best Documentary Award and millions of viewers worldwide. The movie was screened in the White House and used as a template by the Obama Administration to roll out a $28 Billion dollar new energy campaign that transformed the global markets for algae, fuel and solar power. Tickell's motto is "The History of the Future is Being Written Today." He educates companies on what is coming next in solar, wind, fuel, batteries, urban design, transportation, and the broad megatrends that are shaping society. Tickell has spoken to global audiences at companies such as Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and at institutions such as MIT. He can show any industry, group, or company how to save money within that industry and also how to take advantage of new emerging technologies to create wealth and profits, transforming your company into a "planet-conscious" enterprise. Tickell's insights are practical, no-nonsense good business. Tickell understands how brands, companies and technologies are changing the planet. He consults on issues ranging from new technology product launches, to consumer attitudes, legislative strategies, operations-wide waste to energy and new technology installations for companies such as Green Mountain Energy Resources, Clif Bar, Yum Brands, Audi, General Motors and William Morris Endeavor. Tickell has been a featured guest on Jay Leno's The Tonight Show and Good Morning America. He is a regularly featured opinion leader in news stories on CNN, Discovery, Reuters, NBC, Fox and NPR. Articles on Tickell, his films, and his work have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, The Huffington Post, Maxim Magazine, Popular Mechanics and thousands of international newspapers and magazines. Josh Tickell's life story is an inspirational David versus Goliath tale. He grew up in an area of Louisiana, called "Cancer Alley," home to some 150 petrochemical facilities which process 60% of America's gasoline. The area has cancer rates that are up to 1,000 times the national average. Tickell watched members of his family suffer with severe pollution related illnesses including cancers, lupus and auto immune diseases. He rose from these adverse circumstances to become a world leader in renewable energy, raising billions of dollars for new technology companies, altering international policies and forever changing the energy future of humanity for the better. Tickell is an active change agent in his home state. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Tickell lead a disaster relief project for which his nonprofit organization was selected by President William J. Clinton as part of the Inaugural Clinton Global Initiative on Climate Change. He recently directed a new documentary, 'The Big Fix,' about the BP oil spill in Louisiana which premiered at the Festival De Cannes, has won numerous international awards and is being released by Lionsgate.

• The Humanist - https://thehumanist.com/magazine/september-october-2008/features/the-humanist-interview-with-josh-tickell

  QUOTED: "
  "Fuel is a worldwide journey to answer the question: Why did the United States not engage with green energy use after the attacks of 9/11?
  We explore the critical parts of the U.S. energy system–including the oil industry, the auto industry, and eventually the government itself–and ultimately reveal the machinery that’s in place to keep the United States from moving toward green energy use. We go around the world to countries like Sweden and Germany, and we see the progress they’ve made with green energy. The comparison is just astounding."

  THE HUMANIST INTERVIEW with Josh Tickell
  BY JENNIFER BARDI • 20 AUGUST 2008
  Portrait
  Josh Tickell is one of the nation’s leading experts on alternative fuels and the author of From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank (2003) and Biodiesel America: How to Achieve Energy Security, Free America from Middle-East Oil Dependence and Make Money Growing Fuel (2006). In 1997, after obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in film from Florida State University, Tickell drove across the country in a diesel Winnebago (dubbed “The Veggie Van”) fueled by used frying oil from fast food restaurants. He also began working on a documentary to chronicle and raise awareness about biodiesel and the green energy movement. The feature-length film, Fields of Fuel, has been winning awards at festivals around the country, including the Audience Award at Sundance, and is scheduled to be released nationwide in September. The film features appearances by Woody Harrelson, Larry Hagman, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, and other notable celebrities and cultural icons. In addition to consulting for various environmental companies and organizations and speaking at colleges and universities in the United States and abroad, Tickell is the founder of the Biodiesel America Organization, which was selected in 2005 by former President Bill Clinton to be part of his Global Initiative on Climate Change. The Humanist caught up with Tickell in July to talk about U.S. energy policy, alternative fuel, and his growing reputation as “that biodiesel guy.”

  The Humanist: I understand you’re in the final phase of post-production on your documentary Fields of Fuel. Tell us a bit about the film and your experience making it.

  Josh Tickell: Basically, Fields of Fuel is a worldwide journey to answer the question: Why did the United States not engage with green energy use after the attacks of 9/11?

  We explore the critical parts of the U.S. energy system–including the oil industry, the auto industry, and eventually the government itself–and ultimately reveal the machinery that’s in place to keep the United States from moving toward green energy use. We go around the world to countries like Sweden and Germany, and we see the progress they’ve made with green energy. The comparison is just astounding.

  The Humanist: Together with the film, your first book, From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank, and your latest, Biodiesel America, have established you as one of the nation’s leading experts on biofuel. What originally got you interested in alternative energy?

  Tickell: I grew up in Louisiana, partially, amongst the oil refineries and I watched a lot of people get sick from the pollution.

  The Environmental Protection Agency specifies that oil pollution of any kind is, A) non-regulated and B) non-toxic. And so this disallows any accountability whatsoever within the petroleum industry in terms of processing and refining oil. And it essentially allows a tremendous amount of what we call externalization, or passing the costs onto the public or the consumer. The 150 petrochemical facilities in Louisiana generally have some of the highest pollution rates of any industry in the United States. The area along the Mississippi River that contains those facilities has become known as Cancer Alley.

  Having seen this situation up close I realized there must be other ways of fueling our society. So I began to look–at a very young age–at solar energy, wind, and other alternative ways to create energy. But it wasn’t until I was in Germany working on an organic farm that I saw biodiesel, which they made themselves.

  The concept of biodiesel–not the actual fuel itself but the core concept–was local, sustainable, diversified energy and energy that was created and used in the same area. So it was just a radically different way of doing business than what I had grown up with.

  Portrait
  The Humanist: We hear a lot about the good and bad of biofuel generally. Can you talk a little about biodiesel as a specific potential solution to our energy woes?

  Tickell: The definition of biofuel refers to a spectrum of fuels that’s as broad as the spectrum we call drugs. Aspirin is a drug, and so is cocaine, but their effects are vastly different. In the same respect, biofuel has been brandished in the media as this one thing. But it isn’t; it’s many different types of fuels.

  The subject of most news stories is corn-based ethanol, which is the standard biofuel in the United States. Over a billion gallons is made here each year, with noted deleterious effects. Corn-based ethanol is extremely degrading to the soil and is energy-neutral, if not energy-negative, meaning all of the fossil fuel inputs used to create corn-based ethanol result in very little gain in terms of energy. You might as well just burn gasoline. Moreover, most of the fossil fuel inputs used to make it–the phosphates, the nitrates–run off the soil; very little is actually absorbed. The tremendous amount of these chemicals coming down the Mississippi river has created what is called the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. And that dead zone is now the size of Massachusetts.

  So the effects of corn-based ethanol are numerous just on the fuels basis. But then we start to look at the international situation where oil prices have doubled in one year, which has made our everyday items more expensive, as well as the core commodities that run our society, like cement, steel, wheat, and rice.

  On the far end of the spectrum are biofuels that take very little oil input; things like algae-based biodiesel which is extremely energy-positive and uses no food or land whatsoever. So the spectrum is broad, but wherever you are on the spectrum you’re tied to oil at this stage because we simply don’t produce enough biofuel. Less than one percent of our entire nation’s energy use comes from biofuels.

  The Humanist: A recent report from the British government proposed putting the brakes on the biofuel rush due to fears of higher food prices and increased greenhouse gas emissions resulting from its production (and concurrent changes in land use). It sounds like what you’re saying is that some methods for producing biofuel–specifically biodiesel–are more reasonable than others.

  Tickell: Exactly. It isn’t biofuel that’s good or bad. It’s the feedstock that either works or doesn’t. And so, when you start to look at this from a place of science, you’ll see that we are dealing with two types of feedstocks; one is made from food, the other is not.

  The Humanist: In the film you say that instead of turning food into fuel, we need to turn waste into fuel. Later you meet with scientists who have been experimenting with the production of biodiesel from algae. Does it ever bother you that people are so anxious for answers and solutions but don’t seem to be at all interested in the process? Is there a way that the public’s thinking can be changed to care a bit more about the process of innovation?

  Tickell: Here is the core challenge, whether we deal with oil, biofuels, or some other future technology: when encountering an enemy or a threat, it’s human nature to isolate it and then try to blame it or counter it or attack it or annihilate it. We are using brains that perhaps adapted to circumstances that took place a million years ago to cope with the modern circumstances we have inadvertently created.

  So while primal human beings had this very simple fight or flight existence, we now have an interconnected society where there is no one piece of the system that can be isolated. So for people to say biofuels are the cause of starvation, or biofuels are the cause of the deforestation, or biofuels are the cause of global warming–that is using a caveman brain to attack modern human issues.

  I recently saw UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon speak and he said there are one billion people in the world right now who are threatened with hunger and starvation because of rising food prices. Now, because we have people starving, we have to find the reason. If you look at how food is produced globally, biofuels are less than one percent of one percent of agricultural production. So we begin to look at the economic drivers in the system. Oil is obviously an economic driver. It’s in every fertilizer. It’s in every gas tank of every tractor in the entire world. It runs every truck. It runs every grain storage facility.

  And agriculturally the system is largely based on monocropping, which is done far from the point of use. We get bananas from Chile, apricots from Portugal, and so on in this interconnected global system of how we use energy, how we use food, and how we transport ourselves. At the end of the day the system is completely predicated on oil and simply isn’t sustainable.

  You asked what we can do to engage people in this. I think it goes back to education, and that’s really why I made the movie in the first place. People think the film is about the paradigm of biofuels–it isn’t. The film is actually about the paradigm of sustainability.

  The Humanist: Fields of Fuel reveals how U.S. politicians and energy industries have attempted to prevent the widespread adoption of homegrown alternatives to petroleum. Is the biodiesel movement–what your website refers to as a “rag-tag group of scientists, environmentalists, and ex-government hawks”–growing, and can it compete?

  Tickell: It’s growing exponentially. That’s the difference, I think, between a movement that becomes viral and something that is just a hobby for people. You can liken the biofuels movement to home beer brewing as something very niche and very small. But if you look at the sustainability movement as one movement–which hasn’t really congealed yet–it is growing. One indicator is called LOHAS, which stands for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. This is now the largest market sector in the United States, between forty and sixty million American adults.

  So the consciousness of the public is rising very fast. The leadership and the corporate activism that responds to that market are not there yet. We have politicians talking green. We have companies talking green. We do have things like greener yoga mats and greener trash bags, but these are band-aids on top of a cancer. We haven’t gotten to the core yet and the core is oil, it is fossil fuel, it is our carbon-based society.

  The Humanist: You screened the film for members of Congress this past spring. What was their response like?

  Tickell: The response has been almost unequivocally positive. We have seen Barack Obama quoting the film in three separate speeches. We have seen several other members of Congress quoting parts of the film almost word-for-word. And that is the viral effect we’re hoping for. Because when you affect the speaking of politicians you begin to affect the context in which the county operates.

  Now, when it goes to theaters could we hope to see a very fast viral spreading of the messages in the film and a very fast viral understanding? My hope is that it will spread so quickly that by the end of the year people–especially young people–will say, “What took you so long?”

  The Humanist: One of my favorite parts in the movie is when you ask a Swedish taxi driver why he wants to drive a “green” cab, and he grins and responds, “It’s simple. I have three children.”

  As a filmmaker, do you see it as your job to pose the questions surrounding renewable energy in a way to make the answer seem so simple? How hard is it to do that?

  Tickell: If you look back at Ancient Greece or the Renaissance, during these major social shifts there were artists and storytellers and scientists and social thinkers and politicians who rose up behind the scenes before the shift occurred. And they began to design the next face of society whether intentionally or unintentionally. This happened in Rome. This happened in England. This happened in different parts of the world in different periods of time, and I would like to think that we are preparing for a sustainable renaissance now. It is going to happen whether we, as a society, attempt to continue business as usual or whether we begin to work together to really hold these values as the primary values of society.

  It has happened before in American history when we chose to enter World War II. We chose to reorient our entire society to the goal of beating the Nazis. But that was a discernible, definable enemy. We also chose to go to the Moon. But again, it was against the discernible, definable enemy. It was against Russia; it was against this thing called Communism. Environmental degradation is now the greatest danger, and the greatest challenge that we face as a species.

  The Humanist: Of course, powerful forces are trying to convince us that what’s in danger is our freedom.

  Tickell: Yes, and those who are telling us that are the same people who are passing laws that curtail the foundation of democracy in this country. Things like the Patriot Act limit personal freedom.

  And when politicians who are clearly funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by corporations with specific agendas it becomes very clear who is writing the energy policy. For example, thirteen pages of the recently passed energy bill were taken word-for-word from a letter that was given by Chevron to every member of the House and Senate. (I have a copy of the letter.) Once upon a time Eisenhower called it the “military-industrial complex.” What people didn’t know is that he intended to say “military-industrial-congressional complex,” but decided to strike the word congressional to placate legislators. If you really look at it, today we have a military-petroleum-governmental complex.

  So the real question becomes, can we shift from a “me versus you society” to a society that is based on “us.” It’s a huge evolutionary shift. It’s a shift in consciousness, a shift in how we design our society, and how we use our energy.

  I can show you biodiesel working in my car all day long. I can show you how to make it. I can give you graphs. I can show you the sustainability aspects. I can prove without a doubt to you whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, whether you live in Mississippi or California, that biodiesel made from algae is a future fuel that is going to totally redefine how fuel and energy is used. But unless we make that evolutionary shift to an inclusive, non-dualistic view of the world, we will be trapped inside the same paradigm we’re in now.

  The Humanist: I’ve read about the advent of “cooking oil rustling” whereby used fryer grease is being stolen from restaurants to be used as biodiesel. How do you propose getting more biodiesel into gas stations?

  Tickell: It’s an interesting question because it’s kind of the end effect of everything the film talks about. The easy answer is: make more biodiesel.

  The Humanist: I suppose you could also say by getting more people to ask for it.

  Tickell: Yes, we need to increase consumer demand. We can do that with tax credits for biodiesel use and a carbon tax so all fuel is taxed based on the amount of carbon it emits into the atmosphere. We need all of those things.

  And as committed as I am to science being the avenue for us to succeed as a species on the planet, I’m also committed to making sure that people wake up to how the country is being run and how it is being perceived by the rest of the world. The reality is that biodiesel isn’t going anywhere without political leadership.

  People always roll their eyes when I say, “Well, we have to change the political structure of the country.” But you can’t succeed with a new technology or a new fuel in a market where oil is subsidized between four and five dollars a gallon. According to Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, according to National Geographic, according to any independent body that has ever studied this, gas at the pump would be more than double the price it is today without the tax subsidies.

  So the reality is we need a restructuring of the entire economy and it will happen one of two ways: It will happen either voluntarily because people like humanists, who are very rooted in science and understand that there is a cause and effect to our actions, will take on the process of restructuring America, or it will happen involuntarily. We will continue to ignore the fact of America’s spiraling debt and our need for oil, and at some stage the market will crash, the dollar will become worthless, and the United States will begin to look more like a Third World country. So by one of two ways, we will restructure the economy. The question becomes: Are we going to turn the ship around, or are we going to allow it to crash into the iceberg?

  The Humanist: I’d say the film has some dark, intense moments, and there are accusations made, but then there is a transition into a sense of inspiration, in a non-partisan sense. Of course you are going to be talking about the present administration, but I think the film’s overriding sense of hope will certainly work in its favor in terms of a general audience. Tell us a little about the plans for distributing Fields of Fuel.

  Tickell: It will have a very short run in Los Angeles and New York to qualify for the Academy Awards. And then the film will be released more widely in September when school starts up.

  The Humanist: In addition to writing, filming, and lecturing, you also head the nonprofit organization, Biodiesel America, which used biodiesel-fueled relief ships to deliver 20,000 meals, clothing, and medical supplies to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Where do you find your own personal energy to do so much?

  Tickell: When I spend time with other people I realize how their jobs really do end at five o’clock and there is this whole other world that occurs between then and the time they go to sleep, and then they have these things called weekends. For me, I’m just terribly bored without this work. It’s what I live to do.

  The Humanist: It’s sustainable.

  Tickell: Yes. And I do take breaks. But I feel that if we, as a global culture, don’t deal with the energy issue now it’s very likely that human civilization as we know it will take a radical shift. Because I can see this, I’m in a position of accountability and that is an unfortunate place to be if you want to really have a life with a lot of vacations.

  The Humanist: In as much as humanists believe that humankind is ultimately responsible for its actions, do we bear a particular responsibility for preserving the environment?

  Tickell: Absolutely, unequivocally yes. And here is the reason: because in the United States we have a society that still bases a lot of its actions on mythology rather than science. And when I say mythology, I don’t mean Zeus and Nike and these types of myths. I mean like the myth that the world will be a better place if we have more war because war is the only way to sustain an economy. Or the myth that we have to have oil or we can’t survive.

  People who have an understanding of truth, and of cause and effect understand humans’ place in the world, not as somehow above the law and order of nature. Part of what it means to be human is to understand our place in a pre-established universe. And inside that universe there are certain physical, chemical rules. If you increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere there are certain effects that you have to deal with. And in science there is no pretending, there is no mythology.

  And so, I think humanists are a potential group of heroes in the challenge of bringing humankind to an understanding that we have to be accountable for our actions, and that environmental degradation is just a symptom of a culture that is in a failed state. And it takes some personal reckoning to realize that the world we are about to hand the next generation is going to be predicated on limited resources that will be fought over and that inside of that context, peace is impossible.

  The only way for humankind to find peace is going to be through science, dedication, and a commitment to recreating society based on the principles of sustainability.

  Jennifer Bardi is the editor of the Humanist.

  Published in the September / October 2008 Humanist

  Tags: alternative fuel, energy

• Huffington Post - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-tickell/the-fuel-revolution-has-b_b_130669.html

  QUOTED: "The film is an insightful visual touchstone for what I believe will be this generation’s call to arms—not with violent protests and conflict driven clashes of power like those in the 1960’s ... but rather a peaceful, rapid revolution fueled by ingenuity."

  THE BLOG 11/01/2008 05:12 am ET Updated May 25, 2011
  The Fuel Revolution Has Begun
  headshot
  By Josh Tickell
  United States financial institutions are crumbling. U.S. troops are being reassigned to our streets to do crowd control(For what?).

  Anyone looking at the news feeds this morning might think we are living inside a dark Tim Burton parallel universe movie.

  Whatever is going on, one thing is for sure — it’s about fuel. And oil. And politics. And money. And just maybe, just possibly — it is about greed.

  So what’s new?

  Well, a revolution has begun. It is starting across the country. It is on college campuses. It is in big cities and small towns. It’s not a Democratic or Republican revolution to elect a figurehead. It’s bigger. Much bigger.

  It is a revolution to give every person clean energy that is made by them and for them. It is about new technologies that are already available, new jobs that are waiting to be filled and a new economy that is lying dormant — waiting for us to pick it up and put it to work. It’s about decentralization — of energy — of money — and mostly of our political power.

  In less than four weeks, Fuel, the film that has taken a worldwide team of experts, activists and green voices over 10 years to make — will premiere. It is a powerful movie that received an unprecedented 11 standing ovations at The Sundance Film Festival this year, taking home the coveted Audience Award for Best Sundance Documentary. It is a film that has already been quoted by both presidential candidates. It is a film that has already begun to change the towns and cities in which it has been test screened.

  The film is an insightful visual touchstone for what I believe will be this generation’s call to arms — not with violent protests and conflict driven clashes of power like those in the 1960’s or those more recent battles like those that surround WTO meetings, but rather a peaceful, rapid revolution fueled by ingenuity, by the web, by simple technologies and mostly by people like you.

  Over the upcoming weeks, the Fuel team and I will blog this revolution from the eye of the storm. Our objectives are simple:

  1) Take the film to 1,000 screens.

  2) Make sure that no less than 10 million Americans see this amazing film.

  3) Give people online access to networking tools, information and things to do.

  4) And finally, give money back to the communities in which it plays.

  The culmination of these accomplishments will be the Fuel Revolution.

  The Fuel Revolution stems from a personal commitment many of the Fuel team, and I, hold: that each and every person on earth have access to clean food, clean water, clean air and clean energy and that no child knows war. It is from this context that we begin this clean, peaceful and all pervasive revolution.

  I invite you to join us.

• John Livesay - https://johnlivesay.com/connecting-the-millennial-generation-with-josh-tickell/

  QUOTED: "I was born in Australia. I grew up there until I was nine years old. I grew up very much outdoors in nature, enjoying the beauty of planet earth. When I was nine, we moved to Louisiana. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, was sick and dying of cancer. We realized that all of the people that we knew were sick and dying of cancer."
  "It’s no exaggeration to say that the lymphoma leukemia and cancer rate in what’s called Cancer Quarter is a thousand times the national average. There are 150 petrochemical facilities in a hundred mile stretch of land between Houston and Baton Rouge. That’s where we lived. It set me off at young age thinking: 'There must be alternatives to everything we see. There’s got to be at least one other pathway.'"
  "I don’t consider myself an activist. I don’t consider myself a front lines type person. What I try to do with my work, my team, and everybody I work with, is I try to create a future and work backwards. What does the future look like without fossil fuels?"
  "The big a-ha, the big OMG in the book is when we look at wealth dynamics, at social dynamics, at class dynamics, race dynamics, all the way down the line. There isn’t a massive aggregation of income, not wealth, inside the baby boomer generation. This cuts across all developed nations, like eighteen developed nations. Australia is the only exception. Baby boomer income is growing. Millennial income is declining, meaning the money we make, not the money saved."
  "You’ve got these economically disparate generations. What set the millennials apart was 2008, not 2001. 2001 changed the birth rate, but 2008 created the tenor of a generation."
  "We’ve talked about The Revolution Generation. It’s about the people who are going to change the world, hopefully save it. Kiss the Ground is the blueprint. It’s the how-to. If we look at all the dynamics of humanity right now, we look at all the great challenges that we have, we have huge geopolitical challenges with North Korea with the potential for a new nuclear threat. We’ve got bio-terrorism. Then we’ve got the dynamics that affect everyone. Food, water, climate."

  Episode Summary:
  Parents often teach their kids that there are many ways to solve a problem. Whether its fossils fuels, climate change, or connecting the millennial generation, Josh Tickell will find a way to solve it. As America’s number one strategist for generational conflict, Josh has filmed many movies geared towards millennials. He creates a future and works around it backwards so everyone can tag along his non-linear journey. His concept of reverse engineering the concept of business is the future of storytelling and a great blueprint for success and scaling.

  —

  Our guest on The Successful Pitch is Josh Tickell, the author of Kiss the Ground. The foreword was written by the CEO and Founder of Whole Foods. He has an amazing story that he shares with us of how Whole Foods got started. The book is sold on Amazon who also owns Whole Food. Josh talks about how if we put the right food in our body, we’re not only healing our body but healing the planet. He said the real key is to figure out how you want to reverse engineer the future. He has some great insights on how he’s done that not only with this book, but other movies that he’s created. He’s been on all kinds of press. He has smart insights on reverse engineer something, tells a story, and then solve a problem, whether that problem is oil, climate change, or the generational conflict. He is literally an expert on knowing why the cultures don’t get along and have different work styles and values.

  Listen To The Episode Here

  John Livesay
  TSP 158 Connecting The Millennial Generation with Josh Tickell
  Connecting The Millennial Generation with Josh Tickell
  Our guest is Josh Tickell and he has been called America’s number one strategist for connecting with the millennial generation a.k.a. generation Y according to Inc. magazine. He’s also a film director that specializes in movies that are geared to the millennials. He grew up in Louisiana where he lived next to waterways that were polluted by petroleum refineries. In 1997, he captured national attention by driving a van powered by used French fry oil across the US. The Veggie Van, as it was called, became a viral sensation. Then four years later, after the first web browser was introduced, his website was receiving over a million unique visitors. Today, that would be equivalent to probably 100 million. He’s done so many other incredible things. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing him speak. He’s got a great book called Kiss the Ground. Josh, welcome to the show.

  Thank you, John. Thanks for having me.

  It’s so exciting to see all the different things that people like you have created in their life. I always like to ask my guests to take us back to their own story of origin. Can you take us back to what it was like then? How that has led you to decide that you wanted to be a keynote speaker as well as an author and filmmaker?

  It is not a linear journey as you might expect. I was born in Australia. I grew up there until I was nine years old. I grew up very much outdoors in nature, enjoying the beauty of planet earth. When I was nine, we moved to Louisiana. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, was sick and dying of cancer. We realized that all of the people that we knew were sick and dying of cancer. It’s no exaggeration to say that the lymphoma leukemia and cancer rate in what’s called Cancer Quarter is a thousand times the national average. There are 150 petrochemical facilities in a hundred mile stretch of land between Houston and Baton Rouge. That’s where we lived. It set me off at young age thinking, “There must be alternatives to everything we see. There’s got to be at least one other pathway.” My guiding light all these years is to find a solution to a problem. What’s the problem? Is it oil? Is it climate change? Is it generational conflict? Is it all of these things together? That’s led me on this distinct and non-linear path that has brought me through promoting alternative fuels, to making movies, to writing books on how to reverse climate change.

  Reverse engineer your future.
  CLICK TO TWEET

  You’re almost like the male version of Erin Brockovich. You see a problem, you’d become the voice of the people who don’t have a voice. That turns into a movie.

  To some degree, yes. I don’t consider myself an activist. I don’t consider myself a front lines type person. What I try to do with my work, my team, and everybody I work with, is I try to create a future and work backwards. What does the future look like without fossil fuels? In 2006,we were filming Fuel which won Sundance, went to the White House, went to 150 countries, and was translated in all languages. When we were filming Fuel, we go, “What does the future look like?”We said, “We have a particular desire for this one fuel.” I was into biodiesel at the time. It definitely looks like plugs on electric vehicles. We found a company that would modify a Prius. They put a big battery where it previously used to have a little battery. They put a big battery in the Prius and they put a plug on the Prius. We filmed a Prius plugging into solar panels and we said, “This is the future that we see.”We got a letter from Toyota right away, “You can’t modify our Prius without our permission.”Fast forward six years and Toyota releases the plug-in Prius.

  That’s what we try to do with all of our work, create the future and visualize the future. Tell the story and make sure it’s scientifically valid. Sometimes it does shame car companies, oil companies, and these big companies. They’re not organized around future vision. The exception is Elon Musk who I interviewed later for Pump, the third film that we made. His companies are organized around a future vision. You are seeing this with the new generation. You’re seeing this with millennials. You’re seeing this with a lot of the companies that are being formed today, which are B Corps, Benefit Corps. They are organized around future vision. That’s where we get powerful, where we can use the vehicle of corporation to make a big difference in the world.

  I look for problems to solve, whether it’s oil, climate change, or generational conflict. If you’re a startup trying to figure out, “How am I going to scale my business or even get it funded?” I love this concept of, “No matter what business you’re in, how do I reverse engineer what I want to have happen?” This concept of reverse engineering this future, telling a story that is solving a problem, is such a great blueprint, whether you’re making your film, working on scaling your business, or growing your brand as yourself, no matter what it is you’re selling. Clearly, you’ve had some success there. It’s fascinating that you’re not an activist yet you have the results of one without possibly the controversy. Would that be fair?

  Yes, sometimes there’s a little controversy.

  TSP 158 | Connecting The Millennial Generation
  Connecting The Millennial Generation: Food is the basis for society so we have a more peaceful, equitable planet.
  It’s unintentional. You’re not approaching it from an antagonistic, “Let’s go out and scream and yell,” necessarily. You find your voice through your filmmaking. It’s even much less confrontational than someone like Michael Moore who also makes movies that get a lot of attention about pointing out disruptive concepts. Let’s talk about how you became an expert in Generation Y. What’s the problem that you see happening with the generational conflict? Is it baby boomers versus Generation Y? Tell us that story.

  Let me answer that question after I talk about my journey to learn about millennials. The journey began with my first film, Fuel. Wed did over 100 college bookings with the movie, which is unheard of. You don’t go to 100 colleges. These were paid speaking engagements. As a filmmaker, you’re not going to say no. I did a lot of them with my wife who is a millennial. It was so interesting to see the generational difference between myself. I was born in 1975.A lot of the young people that we were speaking with were born after 1985, ten years’ difference but a totally different mindset. The more colleges I went to and the more we screened the film commercially in theaters, the more I saw the audience was such a clear linear divide in terms of age range. We had young people come in to see the movie.

  We did not have Generation X-ers. We did not have baby boomers unless they were dragged by their millennial children. It was college age at the time. As that progressed three movies later, I went, “We got the same people showing up to all these films. We got the same people not showing up to all these films. What gives?” That’s when I decided to turn the camera the other way on the audience and really dive into what are the values differences. What is the core of the code of the millennial generation? That’s been an investigation that I’ve been on for four years now. It started by looking at corporate social value. Corporate social value came in when the millennial buying power came online.

  What year was that do you think?

  A lot of people are confused as to which generation is which. The other confusion is many people conflate the idea of a marketing segment and the idea of a generation, and they will mix them up. Asocial generation is a group of people born in the span of about twenty years who experienced the same touchstone moments. Have a birth rate either rise or fall. For millennials, we’re talking about people who came of age in the new millennium. They were born roughly from the end of the oil crisis and the financial crisis of the 1970s, at the end of 1979, beginning of 1980 until September 11th, 2001 when the birth rate dropped. Those two periods of time has the most intense rise of human births in the history of our civilization, 80 million people in the US and 2 billion worldwide.

  That’s a big a-ha moment. A lot of baby boomers think, “We’re the biggest and we’re growing up be the biggest forever.” Everything’s been so geared to marketing and advertising world towards baby boomers because they had the money. The baby boomers are causing a lot of disruption. A lot of the values are different. I’m fascinated that it ended 2001 right when 9/11 happened. Is that a strange coincidence or is that what you were talking about when you mentioned big social marker?

  No coincidence at all. We experienced social moments viscerally when they are huge. People have more babies when things are going well, less babies when things are not going well. Economically speaking, that factors in tremendously to people’s procreation numbers. When you look at the millennial generation and the baby boomer generation, they’re roughly the same size. There are 78 million baby boomers and 80 million millennials in the US. Millennials is a little bigger. Largely, the millennials are the children of the baby boomers. There is a generation in between, which was a dip in births. That’s Generation X. We’ve got these two massive generations. They’re like two weights on the end of the spring.

  The baby boomers are known for creating great music. They set culture on its path. They’re moralists so it’s very much right or wrong. Abortion is right or abortion is wrong. There is no in between. That’s the way they are in many issues. You can see that in the presidential race of 2016.We had two baby boomer candidates. We had Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Everything was either morally right or morally wrong. There was no gray area for them. Then you’ve got somebody from a completely different generation, Bernie Sanders. You saw the radical difference in terms of view of the world. We also get our worldview from our generation. When you look at the boomers and you look at millennials, your question was, “What’s the generational conflict we see?”

  I finished the manuscript for the book on millennials. We’re looking at The Revolution Generation. Most people seem to gravitate to it. The big a-ha, the big OMG in the book is when we look at wealth dynamics, at social dynamics, at class dynamics, race dynamics, all the way down the line. There isn’t a massive aggregation of income, not wealth, inside the baby boomer generation. This cuts across all developed nations, like eighteen developed nations. Australia is the only exception. Baby boomer income is growing. Millennial income is declining, meaning the money we make, not the money saved. You’ve got these economically disparate generations. What set the millennials apart was 2008, not 2001. 2001 changed the birth rate, but 2008 created the tenor of a generation.

  TSP 158 | Connecting The Millennial Generation
  Connecting The Millennial Generation: Create the future and visualize the future.
  Social generation experiences touchstone moments together. All millennials were born by 2008. The youngest were about eight years old, the oldest were about 28. That middle range of those people were experiencing the workforce. They were experiencing college. They were experiencing debt. They’re experiencing parents being laid off in mass, coming home with their things in boxes, their photographs. Social security was a concept that was part of our social construct. That is not part of the construct of millennials. Now you’ve got an economic free for all generation that doesn’t believe in any of the economic principles that came before. They don’t believe in the patriarchy of the man making the money and the woman being the housewife. They don’t believe in corporate power. They don’t believe the corporate structure will be around. You see this explosion and disruption, Uber, Bitcoin, all of these things. That is a different universe than the one in which baby boomers grew up in.

  Airbnb is classic. The fact that we work is going to create shared living space for that generation. The baby boomers would not be comfortable in that work or living space. This group’s whole shared economy concept is revolutionary to say the least.

  When you put these two generations in a room together and you go, “You are going to accomplish tasks.”The baby boomers organize in a hierarchical manner. They begin to dole out who’s going to do what. There’s an alpha. That person gets established very quickly. All of the hierarchy gets established all the way down to the bottom level of bureaucracy where you’ve got people just sitting there, mouth breathing, drooling. Millennials are completely different. They create a team, they organize as a unit, then they begin to attack tasks together. It’s almost like parallel processing. The communication style is different. It’s dynamic. It’s constant communication. There’s information flowing back from all the points. If one person isn’t as strong as the rest of the team, the team compensates. You try to create a work style that’s going to work for a hierarchal military patriarchal model and an equitable teamwork model. When you put those things together in the workplace, there’s explosions, fireworks.

  Baby boomers are like, “I’m not using Slack. I’m not going to give way. You better answer my email. I’m not answering your texts right back and forth.” I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it. It’s quite fascinating. You said there’s a ten-year difference between you and your wife. You can’t believe how much difference there is. My youngest sister is five years younger than I am. I experienced a complete disconnect with her because we have completely different tastes in music. Her frame of references of what she remembers and what she doesn’t historically is very different. That’s why I like your book title, The Revolution Generation. Instantly, in my head I go, “You say you want a revolution?” that music. For some people, they don’t have that song as a reference guide so they wouldn’t resonate with it. For me, that was instantly what came up. Take a minute and talk about how music reflects what’s going on with this generational conflict.

  Music is part of our shared value system. Part of how you know what generation you’re from is by the music you resonate to you. There is no way to grow up in a westernized culture without being inundated with music. I don’t care if you only go shopping once a year, you are going to hear that stuff coming in over the pipe, the canned speakers. I took a yoga class and the woman teaching it is about my age. All the music was the coolest stuff in the late ‘80s. I’m going, “This is such awesome music.”I’m thinking to myself, “All the twenty-year olds in this class, none of them even know who these musicians are.”Part of how you construct your identity is through your peer relationships, through what you speak about. Music is a generational expression of what’s going on in the world. Think about Billy Joel and how influential he was. Think about Billy Idol. The millennials are like, “That’s classic.” You’re like, “Who’s cool? Katy Perry is.” It’s a totally different world. That’s how you know what generation you’re in.

  Let’s transition into Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body, & Ultimately Save Our World. That is amazing to think of all of those things being influenced by what we put in our mouth, whether it’s climate control, oil, what we put in our car, fuel. There’s a whole generational focus that’s very different than the baby boomers who grew up on Jolly Green Giant and Favita cheese. There was no concept of farm to table. Only the people who lived in a farm had that. Now, people living in urban areas want that.

  TSP 158 | Connecting The Millennial Generation
  Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save Our World
  That’s a very millennial concept. Health has come online hugely as they see their parents age, as they see a generation of people who are mired in a medical system that is about going after disease versus going after prevention. That is economic. When you have the money to have surgeries, do pills, and all of that stuff, you have a different mindset than when you grow up in an economy that doesn’t have money. If you don’t have money, you’re about prevention. You’re going to go to yoga classes, you’re going to run, and you’re going to try and eat healthier. That is a generational mindset. The two stories, Kiss the Ground and The Revolution Generation, are part of the same arc. We’ve talked about The Revolution Generation. It’s about the people who are going to change the world, hopefully save it. Kiss the Ground is the blueprint. It’s the how-to. If we look at all the dynamics of humanity right now, we look at all the great challenges that we have, we have huge geopolitical challenges with North Korea with the potential for a new nuclear threat. We’ve got bio-terrorism. Then we’ve got the dynamics that affect everyone. Food, water, climate. I’m not talking about, “Did humans create global warming?” We don’t even have to have that conversation.

  We know stoic and metrically that if you burn a gallon of fuel, it creates 22 pounds of carbon dioxide. It is provable. It is absolute. There is no question. That’s 22 pounds of carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere. What it does after that long-term, whether it heats or cools the planet, is a different conversation. We know once again scientifically, the majority of that carbon dioxide will go into the oceans where it acidifies the water. In that water is the phytoplankton and coral. The phytoplankton and coral creates 50% of the oxygen we breathe. We’re acidifying and killing the life forms that create oxygen for humans. This is a very simple conversation. If we want to have human life three generations from now, we have to deal with carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. I don’t care what you believe in, I don’t care what your system of understanding is, that is absolute. The best way to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is to put it in the soil.

  Here’s what happens. When you bring carbon dioxide in the soil, you also bring water and nitrogen into the soil. The soil fertility goes through the roof. You can grow more food. The water that’s stored becomes part of the localized water cycle which diminishes drought. It reverses desertification and brings life back. Let’s look at the other human problem. A billion refugees by 2050 don’t have food, they don’t have water, and they don’t have a place to farm. That’s happening already. That’s what happened with Syria which expressed itself as a civil war. If we go back, what actually happened was serious. Farming intensified because they had to get water. Desertification was happening, which is a man-made problem. Now, Syria has a few million refugees. Let’s expand that to a billion. What does the world look like? The world looks dysfunctional with a billion refugees. If we’re going to deal with the biggest and most immediate threat to humanity, we have to address carbon dioxide. The way we do it is by building soil fertility. That’s what Kiss the Ground, the book, is about, which is on Amazon.com. You can order it. It is an incredible book. It’s a blueprint for the future.

  Heal your body and heal the planet at the same time.
  CLICK TO TWEET

  You also have the foreword by John Mackey. For those who don’t know, tell everybody who John is and what an interesting, impressive person to get to write your foreword.

  John started a health food store in Austin, Texas. The store started about 30 years ago. It got flooded in a freak flood that totally destroyed it. He put his family’s money on the line. He put all his friends’ money into it. The store was gutted. He had nothing. No money. He was going to go bankrupt. The next day, the entire community of people that bought food from that store showed up. They began to mop, clean, and built. What that community built under John’s leadership is something called Whole Foods.

  I never knew that story of origin. I love it. Thank you so much for that.

  Whole Foods has been sold to Amazon.com. It’s an amazing testament to our society’s change in taste and what we value.85% of Americans will buy organic food this year. That is a huge vote for clean and healthy food for our children.

  That generation who’s buying the organic food typically doesn’t have a huge disposable income compared to the baby boomers, yet they see the value in it for prevention.

  It’s a value shift. Baby boomers were raised largely in TV dinner, Levitin, suburbanite explosion of the world, that everything could be George Jetson-ized, wrapped in plastic, and come out a machine. Fast forward 40 years and we realize that is the worst thing you can do for your health. That is the worst thing you could do for the planet. The values are shifting.

  In the book, there are interesting and accessible interviews. You don’t have to be a scientist to want to read this book at all. You’ve interviewed celebrity chefs, farmers, and ranchers. It’s being turned into a documentary film narrated by Woody Harrelson.

  I basically lived on the road for a year with the support of my amazing family. It was an incredible experience to go and meet these people, live with them, and see this whole other world. How we can heal our bodies and heal the planet at the same time? That’s the big lesson. If what you’re putting into your body is good for your body, it’s nutritionally dense, it’s full of life, and it’s also good for the soil, that is the big lesson.

  Everyone who eats needs to read Kiss the Ground.
  CLICK TO TWEET

  Talk about zooming out and thinking on a spiritual, philosophical look at life and everything being connected, that you’re not isolated from plants, trees, and animals. You’re putting that into your body as nutrition and fuel. It’s makes perfect sense, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody explain it quite the way you did in a very concise and compelling pinch. If you’ll hear your body, you’re healing the planet at the same time, even if that’s not your intent or goal.

  One of the people who did a review of the book on Goodreads said, “Everyone who eat needs to read Kiss the Ground.” If you are interested in health and you don’t care about the climate, you don’t care about the future. You’re going to do what’s best for your body. That is agreed instinct that is, in this case, very good. We want people to do the absolute best thing for their health. As we show in the book, The Harvard Medical School has what they call The Healthy Eating Plate, the culmination of a thousand studies that they’ve done over decades. That is what we codify in the book as the regenerative diet, a diet that’s rich in plants and vegetables. We’re not saying don’t eat meat. We’re saying be very selective with the type of meat you eat. It’s a diet that eschews things that are made from corn syrup and things that are highly processed. It’s not a hard diet to follow because it’s a lifestyle. When you take that on with Kiss the Ground as your manual, you begin to transform inside and outside.

  When we’re healed, we’re not healed alone. We’re healing not just ourselves but hopefully, our family and ideally the planet along the way. Are there any last thoughts you want to leave our audience with about Kiss the Ground or telling a good story?

  Part of what we always try and do with our stories is in part reverse engineering the future. In Kiss the Ground, we went, “What does the future look like where the climate is balanced, where carbon dioxide is not in excess in the atmosphere?”The good news is that is achievable within your and my lifetime, and definitely within the lifetime of millennials. That is a world which has abundant food and abundant fresh water. Ultimately, food is the basis for society, so we have a more peaceful, equitable planet. When you look at that future, you go, “It’s too big. I can’t participate.” You go, “You do. You participate.” If you’re in America, you probably participated three times a day by what you put in your mouth. In terms of telling a good story, the biggest thing that I can leave as a takeaway is how do we get people to participate in creating the story? That’s what we’re doing with Kiss the Ground. That’s why the book is out there on Amazon and other places. We want people to take that story into their own lives, and then write their own story. Write the future because that’s what’s available.

  That’s the ultimate summary. When you get a shared vision, you get a lot of customers, you get a lot of investors, you get the best people to join your team. Josh has given us that blueprint, not only in Kiss the Ground, but in this interview. Thank you so much, Josh.

  John, thank you. Thanks to your audience.

  Links Mentioned:

• Insteading - https://insteading.com/blog/an-interview-with-josh-tickell-about-his-new-film-fuel/

  When I first met Josh Tickell a few years ago, he was a blonde-haired, baby-faced, young man driving around the country in a diesel van painted with yellow sunflowers that he was running on used fast food vegetable oil. He called it the Veggie Van and he was an unabashed biofuel evangelist.

  I asked Josh my favorite biofuel question at the time: If Willie Nelson can figure out how to run a car on vegetable oil, why can’t Detroit? I’d like to think we bonded a little over that. He had me test drive a diesel Volkswagen and told me that he had written some books and was going around the country in the Veggie Van, lecturing on the benefits of biofuels. He also said he was working on a film. I didn’t think much of the film making bit. I live in L.A. Every one is working on a film about something. Still, Josh had a sincerity and contagious optimism about him that was distinctly antithetical to being just another L.A. film guy.

  Some time went by and as some of us started reading and writing about the down side of corn and soy based biofuels, I sometimes thought about Josh and his biofuels crusade. Granted, he was talking about biofuels from waste products and the negative reports were about biofuels from crops, but still, major media, environmental organizations and the blogosphere were becoming an echo chamber of “biofuels aren’t the answer”. And then the second generation biofuels from algae, waste products and fast growing, low impact crops started showing up and suddenly the conventional wisdom was shifting again to “biofuels might really be the answer.”

  As it happens, Josh did make his film, Fuel. And as it turns out, it is a beautiful documentary, which may seem a strange adjective to use for a film about petroleum and vegetable grease. However, it follows what turns out to be a deeply personal journey for the filmmaker, conveyed in a way that the viewer feels a part of it, because, in fact, we all are.

  Among other awards, the film won the Best Documentary Award at Sundance in 2008. Ironically, shortly thereafter, the mainstream media started reporting on the horrors of biofuels. In order to produce them, forest were being clear cut, people in the developing world were starving and food prices were rising.

  Fuel is now out in limited theatrical release (California, Washington, Hawaii and New York) coinciding with a new understanding about the potential of second generation biofuels.

  I caught up with Josh in between an appearance on Jay Leno and answering viewer questions at screenings of Fuel. And despite now being an award wining film maker, he remembered exactly when we met and standing around the Veggie Van talking.

  fuel poster newLeslie Berliant: The film covers several years, how long did it take you to make?

  Josh Tickell: It took 11 years to make the film. I began filming in 1997 and always had the intent of making a movie that would both capture the zeitgeist of the sustainable revolution and propel it forward. People thought I was nuts! And while they may have been right, I think the film meets those original objectives. There were many times, though, that it wasn’t clear that it was actually going to happen.

  LB: So much happened in those 11 years concerning biofuels, energy and environmental issues. By the end of the film, you are really talking about a whole suite of answers to our energy needs. Were there key events that effected the direction you were going?

  JT: There were really 3 pivotal moments for me during that time. The first was September 11th. It was such an obvious moment in history and time to galvanize an international source of support for sustainable energy. Of course, that was the only thing that made sense, what else would you do at that point?

  LB: Go shopping.

  JT: Exactly. Socially and culturally, that response was such a shock, it was the most unusual response to the magnitude of what had happened and it really heralded for me that there were forces at work that were much darker and deeper than I had imagined. It showed the naïveté of the American people, through no fault of their own, and the lack of true clarity around the issues of dependency on foreign oil. It prompted me to realize that I had to get serious about this movie; it had to get made.

  The 2nd defining moment was Hurricane Katriana. And really, it was the experience of it, rather than what came after. I thought, this is what it looks like when you talk about the effects of climate change. On top of that, I was seeing the places I knew (Tickell spent part of his childhood in Louisiana) so radically altered and an entire community in a state of shock. I realized that we are not equipped to deal with the results of climate change. People were walking around like cave people, walking in rubble, wearing found clothing, and this included people with Ph.D.s and 6 figure incomes. It was a huge shift.

  I’ve been studying this stuff since I was 9 years old. I thought about the Club of Rome predictions from the 1970’s about the ecological shifts by 2030 that would be caused from over consumption and the resulting human displacement and lack of basic necessities…Having that background and seeing the results of Katrina was totally unnerving. It was happening 24 years too early…and I thought not only did we not see what really occurred with 9/11, but we don’t understand this; this is what it looks like when an eco-system can no longer maintain the land and population around it. Oil exploration and drilling had destroyed the canals and the local flora and this was the result. I was shocked to the point of total indignation and righteous anger.

  At that point, I decided I was not doing this alone. I was going to find everyone who gets it and connect with them. I didn’t care what kind of clothes they wore, the slogan on their t-shirt, what kind of job they had, who they were, what they did, what else they believed in. If they were sustainability people, I needed to connect with them.

  The 3rd pivotal moment was the biofuels backlash. It played off of myths, partial truths and an incomplete story, telling the public that biofuels would lead to an increase in global warming, jack up food prices and cut down forests. They spun it so that it was as bad, or worse than, petroleum. The public interpreted it to mean that anything organic that makes fuel is bad for the planet and the crazy eco-freeks want to starve people for fuel. It was heart breaking. I realized it was going to take a lot of research to find out if it was true. At the same time, I started to wonder if for 10 years I had led people down the wrong path. It was a real crisis.

  In a way, it was good, though. It taught me that the information had to be so clear for people that they could get the whole thing, understand the whole picture. And from that, I think we were able to make a film that if people watch, they get it.

  LB: So what is your take on crop based biofuels?

  JT: Corn and soy are not future fuel crops. No reasonable person would suggest making fuel from what we make food from. But at the same time, what about the food versus fuel argument? There is almost no news coverage on the amount of petroleum it takes to make food. We use petroleum products to grow the corn we feed the cows to become food. We’re eating oil, it’s completely unsustainable.

  LB: The film has such a deeply personal quality to it, and not just because of your childhood in Louisiana. Can you speak a little bit about that?

  JT: I’ve been doing this for 24 years. It’s who I am. At times, I wanted to quit. I went to Australia to escape it, to just get away from it, and some people came up to me on the beach and said “hey, aren’t you the Veggie Van guy?” I can’t escape it. There’s a point at which there’s no turning back. Over1000 people participated in making the film possible. At some point, I don’t get to quit. When people attack green energy, they are attacking the 2700 people in my database. It has become a movement – not without its faults, its failings, its bickering – but at its core, it’s a movement for sustainability. It’s about the next phase of what it means to be human. It’s not about buying more, getting a better car, a bigger house. It’s about being in community and being able to sustain a community so that there’s something to pass to the next generation.

  Our lives are extremely predictable, even mine which doesn’t seem predictable; we live for the next generation. We don’t have sustainability and so we have lost our spirituality. I don’t mean religion, I mean spirituality as in our connection to something else. We are lost when we have no connection to the next generation. So the sustainability movement is really about a spiritual movement. Everything we need for survival is at our fingertips. There are so many more lessons to learn from this earth, but they must be learned inside a context of whole systems. There’s no such thing as waste or an infinite resource, except perhaps the sun, which is why so many cultures revere it.

  LB: So what comes next for you?

  JT: Now it’s the next phase of the green revolution. I have no interest in being a film maker. Now we have clear information presented in a way that this generation can get it which had to be in a movie and told through a true story. This generation doesn’t like deception. Now that we’ve got the messaging piece, it’s time to build the infrastructure to have a social movement.

QUOTED: "Fellow members of the author's choir will find ... useful nuggets, but readers seeking to learn more about microbial soil health and its implications for farm practices and climate change should look elsewhere."

Print Marked Items
Tickell, Josh: KISS THE GROUND
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Tickell, Josh KISS THE GROUND Enliven/Atria (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 11, 14 ISBN: 978-1-5011-
7025-6
A journalist, activist, and filmmaker examines how soil-conscious farming practices may affect climate
change and aims to move consumer sentiment to support them.
Tickell (Biodiesel America: How to Achieve Energy Security, Free America from Middle-East Oil
Dependence, and Make Money Growing Fuel, 2006, etc.), whose films include Fuel and The Big Fix, is a
vocal disciple of value-based consumerism. Unfortunately, in seeking to convert the uninitiated, the author
too often preaches to the choir. The book will appeal the most to readers who are already pro-organic
foodies and/or anti-GMO crusaders. Refreshingly, the narrative is richly visual, likely due to the author's
primary vocation as a respected documentary filmmaker; his description of the arrival of the French
Minister of Agriculture reads like a scene from a James Bond film. However, the science at the center of this
thesis is lacking. Tickell argues that the reason these farming techniques will transform agriculture is
because they foster the health of the billions of microbes and fungi that live in the soil, but he only rarely
mentions the name of a single species (there are thousands). Furthermore, it takes more than two-thirds of
the text for the author to note that soil microorganisms thrive when suspended in water and go dormant
without it, a premise central to his thesis. Similarly, Tickell discusses soil microbes that break down
methane, a greenhouse gas found in cow excrement, but he fails to adequately explain the scientific research
focused on it. In addition, the entirety of the book takes place in France or the United States, where food is
plentiful. What happens when you take Tickell's ideas to nations that struggle to feed their people?
Fellow members of the author's choir will find some useful nuggets, but readers seeking to learn more about
microbial soil health and its implications for farm practices and climate change should look elsewhere.
Regarding microbes and our bodies, a good start is Alanna Collen's 10% Human (2015).
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Tickell, Josh: KISS THE GROUND." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509243978/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1361e89d.
Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509243978

"Tickell, Josh: KISS THE GROUND." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509243978/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 20 May 2018.

Word Count