On this blog, two guys from different generations -- X and Y -- try to figure out how to get green. They need your help. So read on and chime in.

GREG: I'm curious. When do you think this awareness of really being green started?

BILLY: The hippies! When I was five, back in the '70s, my folks took me to an outdoor concert in Wisconsin. This long-haired band was playing protest music. Their big hit went like this: "Water pollution ... Sing out the chorus ... Water pollution ... Sing a little louder ... Water pollution ... Hurts the Earth and makes me want to throw up!" True poetry. My parents say I was up dancing, singing and throwing the peace sign. It was the hippies who got the ball rolling. Water pollution still makes me want to throw up. And I've still got a thing for righteous women with tambourines.

GREG: Yes, I will admit the hippies most certainly laid the ground work for the idea of peace, love and distaste for personal grooming, but how do thousands of people congregating for a concert, who are all like minded, actually accomplish anything? I think you can trace the whole push for sustainability, eco-friendliness and social responsibility we see so rampant today to one year...1989.

It was the combination of the Exxon Valdez disaster and the release of one of the greatest movies of all time that created an entire army of greenies. I am speaking of course of "The Little Mermaid." My generation has been horrified for nearly 20 years at the chilling memories of the idea that Ariel, Sebastian and Flounder could be somewhere covered in oil. To this day, I won't buy gasoline from Exxon.

Read more, America's Largest Spill

BILLY: No doubt, Aerial awash in oil was a shock (though Sebastian went on to a lucrative career in litigation). But before your fishy friends arrived, there was Woodsy Owl. Come on people, you know who-who I'm talking about. Woodsy was a sort of Smokey the Bear wanna-be whose slogan -- "Give a hoot, don't pollute" -- played over and over during the weekly Saturday morning cartoon binge. I believe Woodsy's retired now and sharing a small apartment with Hong Kong Phooey.

Yeah, I can see the Valdez disaster as a kind of kick-off. I was in college and affixed a homemade "Exxon Mucks" sign to my Jeep. The pictures were so powerful. Like music, visuals move people. Words do, too. Which means we have to shout out to Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring and the seminal work of that original hippie, Thoreau's Walden.

More recently, Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" seems to have brought nearly everyone together. I think it inspired a lot of teachers, because my kids started talking green. Do you think it made a big difference?

GREG: Yes, "An Inconvenient Truth" is one of the greatest uses of the Keynote program ever and has done a lot to bring the global crisis to the forefront in a digestible and accessible way. Certainly, the celebrity of Al Gore and folks like Larry David and Leonardo DiCaprio have helped in recent years to bring the issue to the forefront, but what made them respond? Where did the inspiration for all of this come from?

Enough of our gabbin'. What inspired you? What do you recommend to others looking for inspiration?

Billy Warden carries the flag for Gen X. Billy learned civics from the Clash. He spent a decade contributing to L.A.'s smog. Now he's trying to raise a green family in Raleigh.

Greg Behr champions Gen Y. Greg learned civics from Radiohead. His carbon footprint expands whenever a cool rock show requires a road trip. When not road tripping, he's a contender for the title of Cary's greenest twenty-something.

To see more of these guys' work, check out www.raleighquarterly.com."

(Photo courtesy of CurtisBrownPhotography.com)