Hi, this is Hank Green.

I am at my friend Dave Loess' apartment because, as some of you may know, I don't have a television. Makes it somewhat difficult to watch debates. But for the occasions in which I do need to watch television, Dave is always here for me.

He says he doesn't wanna be on camera. I'm just leavin' him over there. I spend most of my time thinking about the environment, slash, about young people, because for some reason I've gotten myself into both of those camps.

I'm the founder and sort of chief editor of ecogeek.org, where we talk about clean technology, so obviously there was a lot of good stuff in this debate for me. But, for some reason, I kinda wanna talk about the young people today. I run this video blog called Brotherhood 2.0 where we talk about being nerds, and it's watched by lots of young people and they're emailing me all the time.

And one of the things that I hear, and is sort of extraordinarily encouraging, is young people saying, "Man, I wish I could vote!" And you know, I never remembered thinking anything, anything... near that patriotic when I was a young person; I was like, "Man, I wish I could drink more Mountain Dew!" Tom Brokaw asked a question that was sent in via the Internet by a 78-year-old woman. Interesting that a 78-year-old woman can use the Internet when John McCain... can't. Asked an incredibly good question, basically saying "Why is it that America never asks for any sacrifice from its people, except from young men and women who have to go die somewhere?

Why can't they ask for a sacrifice that doesn't involve guns?" And John McCain answered this question by saying, [as John McCain] "Sacrifices I'm gonna ask from you is maybe cutting spending... on something." That's not a sacrifice for me! And then Barack Obama says, "Yes. Yes, I am gonna ask for sacrifices from the American people.

I'm gonna ask for people to use less energy. I'm gonna increase the amount of people that will enroll in the Peace Corps. I'm gonna do these things where people, especially young people, are going to be able to do things for their country instead of, you know, after 9/11, go out and shop." So as much as there was a huge amount of vitally important stuff going on in this debate, that was the question that sort of rang true to me the most, especially hearing from so many young people who just don't know how they can serve their country... aside from with a gun.