The Center for American Progress's Action Fund launched a new viral video campaign last week.
Unfortunately, it hit the same day as Blogosphere Day, so I think it didn't get the attention it should have. I've been asked to help give it an extra push, and I'm more than happy to. The issue is flexible fuels, which is a big issue right now as the Senate is considering a major new energy bill.
The CAPAF project features a series of clever videos, with some inspired appearances by Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, Matt Damon, Sarah Silverman, Jason Biggs and a few others, including the serial killer guy from Saw.
Links to all the videos and a bit more information below the fold...
The concept for the videos is a film student named Phin (amusingly set up as the product of two empty boxes of wine and a broken condom) and his quest to find a way to persuade Congress it should be persuading industry to make biofuels and flex fuels more available.
There are six installments, and three are out. The second half are coming soon. which you can see on the Project Phin: Clean My Ride website.
Skeptical? That's fine. I was too, before checking them out. But if you disagree, no hard feelings. There is a Facebook group and a MySpace page to go along with it, and that's all fun, but the campaign does get down to specifics, too.
What is CAPAF pushing for, specifically? This:
The House should also require a certain portion of service stations to sell e85 to replace oil-based gasoline with corn-based ethanol. Currently, there are 4.4 million flex-fuel vehicles on the road, but only 1,000-plus service stations that sell e85 - many of them concentrated in a handful of Midwestern states. California, for instance, has 250,000 flex-fuel cars but only two stations that sell the fuel. New Jersey has 116,000 flex-fuel cars and no stations that sell e85. New York has 170,000 flex-fuel cars and only two stations. In other words, flex-fuel cars provide little reduction in oil use or global warming pollution because they rarely run on e85. The House should make Big Oil sell e85 at a certain portion of service stations so that flex-fuel cars can run cleaner.
Is it the whole picture? Surely not. There's a lot we have to do before we start turning around the environment. But flex fuel is something that is waiting to happen, is simply waiting to get done. Why doesn't it? Heck, you should ask Congress that yourself.