As a teenage fisherman, I watched and followed terns to find fish. Later, I studied terns for my Ph.D.

From the happy-go-lucky days of oil exploration and drilling, when a lot of easy sources were being found and easily managed, we're gotten ourselves into this sort of apocalyptic time. We're willing to destroy almost everything, risk almost anything, and go ahead with techniques for which we have no way of responding to the known problems.

When I was in high school in the early 1970s, we knew we were running out of oil; we knew that easy sources were being capped; we knew that diversifying would be much better; we knew that there were terrible dictators and horrible governments that we were enriching who hated us. We knew all that and we did really nothing.

If you want to make change, 'Show me how' can be a stronger, more effective approach than 'Just say no.' That's what I think.

In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity.

I was a pretty independent kid. I thought maybe I'd be a veterinarian or an environmental lawyer.

All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.

Ethanol is a premier, high performance fuel. It has tremendous environmental benefits and is a key component to energy independence for our country.