CALLISON: OK, I guess the first question is just like a general why are research, environmental research and development programs important. I'm kind of getting at the angle of, you know, "Why should our average viewer care about these issues, or should they care about these issues?

MacKenzie: Because, because environmental problems can be very damaging to the health and to the environment. And most of the problems stem from the use of energy and per capita growth and as the number of people increases and economic growth increases the number of sources increases. So we have to continue to work at reducing pollution in order to make the overall impact bearable.

CALLISON: On the phone yesterday, you were, you mentioned a little bit about energy in relation to the United States defense. Can you explain how renewable or alternative energy is related to defense?

MacKenzie: Let me first give you a little bit of background. Energy is absolutely essential to the perf, to the value of a society like ours. All you have to do is watch what happens after a storm hits and the power lines go down and see that within a few days, we're back at the gathering stage. So energy is truly important. In fact, it's sufficiently important to go to war.

In 1991, the U.S. fought a war in Kuwait and Iraq. That was not about democracy. It was about oil. And the Persian Gulf has about three quarters of the oil... and we are importing half of our oil.

So the problem stems, gets more and more serious everyday. And for this reason we need energy, we need energy sources, such as renewable energy rather than just solely a military approach to this problem and so far no demonstration of it, of either side has been willing to address this problem in terms of the energy changes that have to occur.

CALLISON: When you say that the problem gets more important every day, how does it become more important?

MacKenzie: Well, because the world is consuming more and more oil. And the amount of oil that comes from the Persian Gulf is increasing. And that's number one. No matter who you are, you're going to be relying on an unstable part of the world for you oil.

Secondly, as a country ourselves, we are although a large producer of oil, supplies are declining, and have been declining since 1970. So we, in particular, are growing more and more dependant on foreign oil sources. And these can only increase into the future.

So that, I'm not talking about economic embargoes. I'm talking about wars and all kinds of other things that happen in that part of the world which could jeopardize the worlds oil supply. It really behooves us to start looking for alternative sources.

CALLISON: To your knowledge, what are some of the programs, if they exist, that are starting to address this problem?

MacKenzie: The United States funds a very major program of research and development on alternative energy sources. For example, wind machines have received a lot of work under the department of energy. And as a result, wind machines which used to produce electricity at 25 cents a kilowatt hour, which is about five times what we pay for it now, is now competitive with other sources at 4 to 5 cents a kilowatt hour. That was largely due to government research and development. That plus, state initiatives particularly with California. Photovoltaics is another examples where, these are solar cells, which produce electricity by direct, without any moving parts. This, these two have received a lot of research support from the government.