Everything is still based on oil. I drive an electric car and what I think is going to happen is that the less oil there is, the more people have to use these technologies. And I think that people will do less. They'll realize there are other ways of getting around and communities less based on mobility.
I'm hopeful about the young generation. There are all kinds of young people farming. I pulled into La Posada Hotel in Winslow, AZ, and there was all this non-GMO corn growing out front, and amaranth and stuff. This a great way to live. You can do it. People are saying, "I'm gonna grow my own corn! I am not gonna eat GMO corn. I'm gonna make my own Fritos! This is fucked."
You don't have to drink out of plastic bottles. You might consider it inconvenient to drink out of a metal bottle that you fill, but to me it's the height of convenience. I know it's my bottle. I don't have to open a new plastic bottle because I might not know which one was mine. You've got a choice.
The problem is not the things we like, it's the way we do business. It's the way huge corporations handle distributing goods, maximizing profits. We absolutely have the power to turn this around, to whatever extent that we really want to turn it around. Read Wendell Berry -- he lives in a barter community in Kentucky. You can too if you really care to.
Art is one of the ways you can depict these choices. It's a little hard to write a song about plastic. I tried to, but it's hard to bend people's ear about it even though it's a subject people know. The younger generation understands this. It's the older generation that doesn't get it again and again and again.
This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and Station to Station. Station to Station is a public-art project conceived by Doug Aitken. This series will feature artists from the project sharing their thoughts and ideas related to Station to Station. For more information about Station to Station, click here. And to follow the conversation on Twitter, see #TrackSTS.