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You've also done a couple books for children -- does that tie into it, working toward a young age?

"Yeah. It occurred to me -- actually when my sister brought the notion of doing the books to me, it seemed to me that if you can reach them young, it'll be ingrained in their worldview."

Do your children fit as an inspiration for it?

"Well, my children weren't around when I first started doing it, but they're certainly an inspiration now."

I didn't know if you -- let's see what reaches them the best way and work that in.

"Right. I may do more children's books now that I've had kids."

You've written two?

"Two."

When was the last one?

"Like 10 or 12 years ago."

Do you see the environment being one of the leading issues for the upcoming election?

"I don't know why it's not now. That's gonna be my thrust. Sustainability is gonna be one of the issues that I hammer on the most."

When you see people talking -- it's not just toward global warming, but a lot has been toward hybrid cars. Are people looking in the right direction?

"I went out and bought a hybrid and it's not getting the gas mileage I was hoping for, so I'm thinking, 'OK, well, I'll stick with this until the hydrogen fuel cell cars come around.' Still, I ride a bicycle when I can. Of course, I live way the hell up a very steep hill and sometimes I just don't have it in me. (laughs)"

To get back home?

"Right. There's now a human ... I think I'm gonna buy a human/electric hybrid bicycle and if that works for me, then maybe I'll get a cart and do my grocery shopping and stuff like that, weather permitting, with that rig."

It seems like the way we've created our living structure -- if you go to Europe, you can walk everywhere. You can't do that here.

"Right. That's true."

That's one of the problems.

"China is trying to build their new cities that way, as well."

Going back to that -- do you see that people are looking in the right direction, or do you see, with all the work you're doing, that we should be looking elsewhere?

"There are lots of places to look. Solar technology -- there's going to be a third generation coming out. Even now, I have a friend who has a box you can put on the back of a solar panel that will double its output. It's a cute little bit of electronics slight-of-hand. I've got a roof full of solar panels that I'm sitting under right now. I'm going to be installing all of that and it's relatively cheap, too. So there's a lot of technology that exists that will help and there are new things coming down the pipe with dizzying volume and speed. One of the things that I'm going to be doing with my new project is trying to sort through all of those and pick a few of the best and then try to install production in economically depressed areas. I'd love to see places like Iraq and Afghanistan lead the world out of its environmental difficulties. I'd like to see the shadowed areas of the planet lead the rest of the areas to the light. I'd like to replace the absurd unemployment rates those areas with peace and prosperity. Replace the economic depression ... I think it can be done. It's something that I'll be trying to architect with the group that I'm working with."

I know you said you weren't ready to talk about the new project, but is this something that you're looking at getting going next year?

"It's gonna take a while to get it up and going. There's a lot to it. It's in the organizational stages. It's going to have to be for-profit in order for it to be sustainable. There isn't enough money on earth to be given to make a project like this sustainable. So, it's going to be for-profit and we'll have to start relatively small and attract venture capital and give ownership to the people who do the work and maybe skim a little off the top and make another installation somewhere else."

Obviously, I don't know much about it, but I do wish you luck with it.

"Well, thank you."

And briefly, musically, is all of your focus right now on RatDog?