Run For One Planet Blog

It’s a fact, we are into our last week of double digits folks! Hi from Yuma Arizona, gearing up for another 4 days of running until we see the sparkling blue waters of the west coast once again in San Diego! Our third of four corners!!

We are getting excited as we are seeing and feeling the climate changing towards more green fields of organic produce and fruit (which we ran through yesterday) and in our rear view mirrors, the dry immense beauty of the desert.

10 Mo’ to GO!

We love you ALL!!

See more from our Tucson Album as we experience the desert!

That has been the name of the game this past couple of days here in Arizona. Dry, really hot in the daytime, really cold at night, and more jaw dropping beauty running amongst the Saguaro forests. The desert is alive with these giants cacti (that can take up to 75 years just to grow a side arm!) – the tallest is 13.8 meters tall and 3.1 meters wide. Now that’s a giant, and we’ve been privileged to run with these Sentinels of the desert for the last three days. Before that, we did five days straight, or about 260 miles, as we trekked our way to Patagonia. I must admit though, that between the natural surroundings and where we’ve been laying our heads these last few nights, having a sunburn and dry mouth isn’t too hard to take.

Courtesy of our team members Jess and Adam, we’re getting the incredible opportunity to experience the local culture of these areas through the place we’re staying. While in Tucson, we got to experience living in our own “casita” at the Casitas at Smokey Springs (www.thecasitas.com). The next night we found ourselves at a real dude ranch, called the White Stallion Ranch (www.wsranch.com).

And then, after another hot, dry day, we’ll be laying our heads here for our time in Phoenix, courtesy of Adam, our other team member, at the Indian Spring Ranch: www.indianspringsranch.com.

These are ALL places anyone living in cool climates would LOVE staying at this time of year…. For that matter, anyone living anywhere would love at anytime 

So yes, it is getting warmer here in the desert, but it’s pretty nice to know we have a light on from some wonderful people who believe in a clean shower and time away from some stinky running shoes.

So we hope everyone has a great Sunday. We’ll fill ya’ll in on what were up to today in tomorrows blog. It’s gonna be a good one folks, tune in!

PS We saw our first signs for San Diego yesterday – our first sign for the coast!!

By Chris Tilley

High Density Vertical Bioreactor (photo courtesy Global Green Solutions)

First of all what is Bio Fuel? Bio Fuel is any fuel that is made from recently deceased biological material. Now this is a carbon based fuel. Like we talked about back in ‘What is One Tonne of Carbon?‘ plants take in water sunlight carbon dioxide and using photosynthesis produce sugar. That sugar is what the plant use to grow and contains the carbon. When we burn it the carbon comes out as carbon dioxide. The advantage is that since it was just grown the carbon it contains was absorbed out of the atmosphere as apposed to fossil fuels that are plant material, but ages old.(source)

Now that is the ideal, the reality isn’t quite as pretty although there is hope. Some of the problems are clearing of land in order to plant fuel crops. Orangutans are being killed in the name of palm oil for bio- diesel.(source) Another is displacing food crops to grow fuel crops.(source) The production of bio-fuel is also water intensive creating demand on a resource that is already stressed. A large amount of electricity is need to make ethanol and increasingly the source of choice is coal. (source)

Ok enough of the negative, those where all first generation bio fuels. Third generation bio-fuels are based on algae.

Acre-by-acre microalgae can produce 30-100 times the oil yield of soybeans on marginal land and in brackish water.(source)

PetrolSun went in to production in April of 2008. This is very promising in that it isn’t a food crop, its partially using water that isn’t fit for drinking or even crops and uses land that wouldn’t be crop land.

Another company in Global Green Solutions. They have a high density vertical bioreactor. (pictured above) This a closed loop system so the water use is very minimal and it doesn’t require arable land. They estimate that they can remove 1000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per acre.(source)

Bio-fuel has a bright future and adding checks to make sure that the entire carbon content is accounted for will make it even greener. We can improve bio-fuels by using green electricity like wind and solar to power the plants. The algae is just starting but it will grow and the prices related to it will fall as it grows.