Following the rave reviews at Sundance, every major studio in North America has approached him to buy the film, but the tour will happen regardless of who distributes the movie, Tickell says. He has three goals to achieve by the end of the tour: to inform as many people as possible about alternative fuels, to get school bus fleet managers across the country to convert to biodiesel and to work with government officials to create a declaration of energy independence. Tickell will be collecting signatures during the tour and will present a petition to presidential candidates at a rally in Washington, D.C., prior to the November election.

Education will be an important aspect of Tickell’s tour. In “Fields of Fuel” prescreenings held in cities throughout the country, he was often surprised by the audiences’ lack of knowledge of the oil industry. After a screening at a Los Angeles middle school, students said they thought the section of the film concerning the 1970s oil crisis was fictional because they had never heard about it. Tickell believes that about 95 percent of the people who attended question and answer sessions didn’t know the difference between biodiesel and ethanol. Through his travels, Tickell determined that more than 60 percent of high school students have a good grasp on what biofuels are, compared with less than 20 percent of people over the age of 20. “I think there’s an assumption that people know what biofuels are,” he says. “There’s a huge disconnect between what the biofuels industry thinks the public knows and what they actually know.” If Tickell can bridge that gap of knowledge even just a little before the movie’s popularity plays itself out, he will consider it a decade’s worth of work well done.

Kris Bevill is a Biodiesel Magazine staff writer. Reach her at kbevill@bbibiofuels.com or (701) 373-0636.

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