Back: In Black

The Solutions Tour was a collective idea. We wanted to do a tour, and Lati said, "We should take a biodiesel bus!" It grew from there into the Solutions Tour as the idea took off.

There is not really a relationship. We were a jazz band that wanted to do a tour, and it just evolved into an environmental cause. So we play music, interject some solutions, and talk a little about the problems of climate change in between songs. It works pretty effectively, although sometimes the most we can do is talk about our website and condense what we have to talk about in order to give as much information as possible in a short time.

We have not yet had a problem with someone who did not take us seriously. We've played about 10 concerts for the Solutions Tour now and we have received enthusiastic responses everywhere we went. If we ever were confronted by someone who did not take us seriously, we would try to hold a civilized conversation. Some people you simply cannot change, and we accept that.

It seems to us that the poor and less educated are taking public transportation because they cannot afford a car, or carpooling, like many immigrants in California. The problem comes from the educated, who have the most wealth and therefore the largest amount of emissions. The poor are not causing most of the problem in America, so whether or not they know about the problem is really not important. They behave as if they do know.

We all can pretty much agree that being homeschooled or doing independent study has not boosted our awareness of environmental issues (Langston went to traditional high school for the past two years, so we do have an idea of what we're talking about). However, we do believe that we have been much more encouraged to be active in the problem, like doing the tour, rather than agreeing that there is a problem and expecting other people (or the adults) to fix it.

Lati says: I haven't been back to Indonesia since I was eight months old, so I wouldn't be able to tell you my direct experience. But my father has been back several times, and my mom has told me stories, and I can tell you this: they lead very simple lives. When my dad was 16 years old, he'd never been out of Java. My grandfather made a dollar a day climbing palm trees to get sap to boil down to palm sugar. Although Western culture is finding its way into their lifestyles, most Indonesians still lead simple lives.

Lati says: Yes, there are downsides to biodiesel. My family uses recycled biodiesel (made from used fast-food grease), but if you buy virgin biodiesel it often means that the producers clear-cut forests (like the Amazon) in order to grow the various oil-producing plants. Biodiesel is not the ultimate solution to the clean-fuel issue, but it is one step closer. Biodiesel produces 70 percent less carbon emissions than regular gasoline, which is very important in combating the problem of climate change.

We believe that art is communication. Although we do not use music as a direct medium in this case (e.g., environmentally conscious lyrics), we still make our presentation much more interesting than if we merely gave lectures on climate change. Instead, we want people to feel uplifted by our music and believe that there is hope to solve the problem. We simply want to inform people about the individual contributions they can make to help: taking public transportation, lobbying the government to increase research into clean alternative fuels, supporting such bills as California's SB72 (which would require school districts to purchase biodiesel-powered buses), etc. We use our music to help communicate that message. So yes, there is definitely a connection, although not as obvious because our music isn't environmentally oriented.

Well Lauren did some research on this subject and came up with this: