Seeger, in my opinion, doesn't get the recognition he deserves, as a sterling musician, as a heart-rending singer, as a song collector and as a political bellwether.

Consider the following facts:

* It was Seeger more than anyone who brought folk songs to the masses, via his immensely popular group The Weavers.
* Seeger, though hunted by Joseph McCarthy and all the other red-haters, gave up no names to save himself in those troubled times.
* He wrote "Turn, Turn, Turn", "If I Had a Hammer" and many others, and popularized the use of the folk song "We Shall Overcome" by the Civil Rights movement.
* He championed Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other cultural touchstones

Now, he wasn't always right; he was too naive about the atrocities perpetrated by Joseph Stalin, and, on a much more superficial level, he refused to see the power and beauty of new forms of music (like Dylan gone electric), thus isolating himself.

But to me, Seeger belongs in that category of fierce American voices who are important as musicians, historians and poets, such as Dylan, Cash and Springsteen. It's a very short list.

And oh, could he sing! Seeger's lilting tenor is among the greatest American voices, soulful and nuanced and incredibly expansive.

Listening to his 1962 children's record (Pete Seeger's Children's Concert, which my children adore, by the way), I realized that Seeger saw the segmentation and alienation of the American people back then. He saw the disconnect that would lead us to spiritual, political and environmental crises. And he did the most important thing a man can do: he fought to make his voice heard, to adults, to children, and to history.

Conservation is about more than just the environment. It should be about keeping alive all those parts of our world and culture that have some good in them. That's what Pete Seeger's life has been about. I hope he has some more of it in him.

For more about Pete Seeger, visit www.peteseeger.net

Skip has devoted much of the last twenty years to his project EcoSoul, which, for my money, is one of the coolest ideas around.

EcoSoul is a multi-power model, using many kinds of energy (solar, wind, tidal, pyrolysis, biodiesel, ethanol, etc.) to create a completely sustainable energy solution in Avalon, a city on Catalina Island just south of Los Angeles.

The idea is to incorporate multiple beginning points, have them all run to a central hydrogen storage facility, and then back out again. This would even out the peaks and troughs in the system, allowing for continuous, green power.

Pretty impressive.

This is the idea: use them all. Not one, not two, but all. There is no magic bullet. All of these systems work, but all have drawbacks. Find a way to harness them all, however, and you're good as gold.

Staats is in the process of putting his partners together, so anyone with ideas should check out the site and get in touch. You'll be part of something special.

As I see it, such an event could show people not yet touched by the environmental debate of the huge pull that energy has over our lives, and how we have backed ourselves into the proverbial corner with Big Oil. People might buy more efficient vehicles, new car companies might emerge as leaders, and maybe even the White House could install solar panels.

Oh wait, that already happened.

It was called the 70s.

Then Ronald Reagan removed those unsightly solar panels (I mean, really, who would want free power from the sun?), cut taxes, oil was invited back into our bedroom after three or four years of sleeping on the couch, and everyone started buying gas guzzlers again. All of our problems were solved, and, as Craig Finn from The Hold Steady would say, we made love to the interstates.

We're human. If there is a path of least resistance, we generally take it. That's not an indictment on us, but it's also the truth. We are motivated by our own self-interest first, and if it happens to coincide with the interest of others and the planet and the spotted owl, then great.

So the only thing that might be as bad as a precipitous rise in oil prices would be a precipitous fall in oil prices.

Why? Because we've already come back to our wife-beating Big Oil domestic partner once. He promised he'd be nice, sent his sister over to talk to us, and we came back. And now he's doing it again.

Problem is, before, we held more sway. If he was Big Oil, we were the Big Oil Buyer. Now, there are these other countries who need the stuff as badly as we do, like China and India. They can overconsume too, and they have a lot more consumers.

We need to make the move now. Load up a U-Haul, get a storage facility, forward the mail. Only this time, let's not have a magic button. Let's dole it out all over: Solar, Wind, Biodiesel, Ethanol, Biomass, Hydrogen. Play the field.

I foresee Big Oil coming over with flowers and ringing the doorbell once we all buy Toyotas. He'll work our self-esteem issues and tell us how ugly they look next to those status symbols we used to drive. He'll tell us it'll never happen again.

Just like the last time.

This is so short-sighted as to be comical, if it weren't so serious. Luckily, there are Senators on both sides of the aisle who are wisely stepping up to the plate in opposition to this measure. You can read their letter here.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for doing what we can to stop the global food crisis. But we would do much more by reevaluating our foreign aid policy and aligning it with more sustainable models.

The one constant in all of the problems we are currently facing (Iraq, food prices, gas prices, airline woes) is that they are all affected by the primacy of oil in our culture. We must do what we can to curb this. Renewable fuels do this. They are not perfect, but they are a start. And that is something we desperately need.

Click here to take action to avoid this grave mistake.

Fortunately, the problem I bemoaned has shown at least some improvement. Governor Sonny Perdue had appointed a bunch of developers to the Jekyll Island Authority, and although they still describe a wonderful and natural stretch of beach as "unattractive", at least they have backed off their plan for a hotel and parking deck.

I honestly still don't trust the people put in charge. They would sell their mother's backside if someone could build a condo on it, but at least they bowed to public pressure on this issue.

I'm back at Jekyll, and took another bike ride. I love this island. Why have we decided that the only measure of progress is a combination of Chili's restaurants and J. Jill stores? This place was progress in 1949 when the state of Georgia made a great statement for the environment, and it still is today. Anything else would be a step in the wrong direction.

Let me repeat that: Biodiesel is NOT adding to any food crisis.

Biodiesel is very different from ethanol, yet both are often lumped together as "biofuels". Their impact is drastically different. Let me tell you how:

1. BIODIESEL USES THE CROP'S OIL.

If soy, which is the primary biodiesel crop, is the feedstock, an acre of soy STILL produces an acre's worth of soy meal. The oil is pressed, and that is what is used to make biodiesel. You are not losing food, or cattle feed, or anything.

Ethanol is different. It uses the crop itself. There is a high-fat corn oil left over, and we're hoping this will develop into a better biodiesel feedstock, but as it stands, the corn used by ethanol is essentially consumed for that purpose.

The crops are interrelated, because they have to be rotated. Because of the heavy corn planting last year, those same lands will probably be used for soy this year. This will affect the price of corn, because there will be less of it, but this is a normal part of any farming cycle.

2. CROPS ARE TRADITIONALLY VOLATILE AND SEASONAL

In 2004, corn prices were at $2.53, soybeans were at $6.95 and oil at $40.

As of this year, those prices sit at $4.78 for corn (an 88% increase), $11.85 for soybean (70%) and $119.10 for oil (197% increase). It is not uncommon for soy and corn prices to fluctuate wildly based on how many acres are planted. The much larger (and historical) volatility is in the oil market.

Realize also that the oil prices directly affect corn and soy prices, not vice-versa (or at least not to the same degree of correlation). What does this indicate? A need for alternatives such as biodiesel Our dependence on oil needs to be curbed, not increased.

3. SOY BIODIESEL WILL DIMINISH DRASTICALLY

Already has. When soy prices skyrocketed over the past year, biodiesel producers began to seek alternatives. Luckily, there are many: black oil sunflower, canola, beef tallow, waste grease and chicken fat to name a few.

Whereas ethanol currently has only three main feedstocks (corn, sorghum, sugarcane), biodiesel literally has dozens. Many of the other crops have greater per-acre yields than soy. They are lighter than soy. They will make better biodiesel. And they are the future of this fuel.

4. FOREIGN AID IS A GREATER CULPRIT

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for foreign aid. But here's how we do it now: We send American crops overseas. It takes an average shipment over six months to arrive. We are mandated by Congress to do this. Once the food arrives, it's free, so it takes away any advantage that a farmer in a neighboring country would have to actually be able to sell a product. So local farmers can't make any money and move to doing something else, thereby compounding the problem.

More than 20% of Missouri corn is sent packing in this manner, compared to 10% used in ethanol. Why don't we use dollars instead of corn cobs as our currency? Let's send our money to help develop agriculture, and keep those crops at home. I like the idea of creating solutions abroad instead of more problems, and you free up the market here as well.

Of course, the farm lobby won't like it, but it's much better than seeing people totally lose sight of larger goals after a few weeks of dissension.

Don't let the oil companies sell you down the river. Biodiesel is part of the solution.

It started out as a good thing -- a red letter day. The Boston Red Sox used it, and the Cincinnati Reds took it over, leaving their colloquial and original "Redlegs" behind.

But then there was that Communist Party flag. Now, it was better to be dead than red. The Cincinnati Reds lengthened their name (while shortening their sleeve length - see Ted Kluszewski) BACK to Redlegs. There were Red Scares and Red Dawns.

Now, the Reds are back in Cincinnati, gone (officially) from Russia, and red now means either (a) a place dominated by Republicans and God or (b) a place dominated by AIDS relief and Bono.

Blue has had a less sweeping history, but it has been used to signify everything from the sad affairs of Son House and Howlin' Wolf to the sad affairs of the Democratic Party, whose blue states always seem to be smaller in number and easier to recall (my apologies to Willie Nelson).

These two colors have dominated in popular culture; you certainly didn't want to be yellow. But their dominance has been ended by a new hue: Green.

All of a sudden, with apologies to Kermit the Frog, everyone believes it's easy to be green. George Bush is speaking out against greenhouse gases, Chevron's bottling that ol' human energy (is that found in the pineal gland, as Hunter S. Thompson suggested?), and even that most bloodless creature, WalMart, is cramming green packaging down their suppliers' throats like it was a wage reduction.

We all want to be green, or so it seems.

Problem is, any time everyone wants something, things get weird. I'm fine with green being a marketing tool, but I'm afraid it can lose the zeitgeist and be the cultural equivalent of a "Baby on Board" sign. By meaning too much, it can cease to mean anything at all.

I'm not discouraging anyone from using or claiming the word -- Lord knows we do. I just hope when we all get done with it, it still means something.

PERSPECTIVE

Unfortunately, many of those most widely known as "Christians" have come late to the cause of the environment; many still aren't there. But to me, the environment and other social causes are absolutely essential to my understanding of the Christian faith.

One thing changed drastically when I finally took up following Christ: My perspective. I had always been a Christian, but, looking back on it, I had a very distant and intellectual view of my religion; I believed it, but nothing really changed in the way I acted or led my life.

Finally, when I began to take the call seriously, I found that "I" mattered less, and God mattered more. Jesus, the son of God, had come to Earth and had used his time not to be exalted, but to serve in an ancient-times version of the Peace Corps. He told his followers that their charge was to serve those around them, that the greatest would make himself the servant of all.

It's a revolutionary decision to believe in a personal God interested in giving me the gift of Grace. I know I don't deserve it; I know I can't repay it. What I can do is act on it.

Served to Servant: There's the change, transforming from someone whose actions lead to negative consequences to one whose consequences lead to action, changing from one who sees the Earth as a private playground to one who sees it as God's holy Creation, to be cradled and cared for.

The environment, along with human trafficking, poverty and AIDS relief, seem to me to be the defining issues for a modern church, just as they are for a modern world. Many Christians are choosing to make a difference, and many more are choosing to stay on the sidelines. Our response will ultimately define us; I pray it's the right one.