Q: In response to the temporary spike in oil prices, we’ve started buying different cars and slowing down. Doesn’t that give you some faith that people are adapting?
A: No, as I said, I’m with the spirit of Earth-Day-yet-to-come. Nobody can really predict the future, all you can do is look at trends, and that could change at any moment. Everybody was going along thinking that it was a day like any other day, and bang, down went the Twin Towers. Changed everything. So you can’t really predict the future, but you can say, “Boy, are those glaciers ever melting.” You can measure that, and you can say, “When they’re all melted there won’t be any Athabasca River,” and you can say, “What will happen to the oil sands then?” because you need a lot of water to make that oil. “Where’s that going to come from?” You can say things like that.
Q: What’s the solution?
A: Why aren’t we investing more in alternate tech? The Saudi Arabians are, Scottish Power is. I was just there. Could it be that we’re counting on the oil going on forever and ever and ever and us having all of it and getting very rich?
Q: Well, we make a lot of money on it.
A: So far.
Q: Demand is strong.
A: Right now. Wait a bit.
Q: How long?
A: We actually don’t know how long. There are a lot of variables. But I would say it’s a rickety house if that’s all you’re depending on. We should take a lesson from the Irish potato famine: monocultures are vulnerable. Monocultures of any kind are very vulnerable, because one change and you’re cooked. So we should be diversifying, wouldn’t you say?
Q: I think we are.
A: You think we are? Not enough. I read a piece by a guy out in Alberta that said Canadians are lazy because they’re not patenting enough new inventions. I disagree. Canadians invent a lot of stuff. Actually patenting them is expensive.
Q: More expensive here than anywhere else?
A: It’s not money that the ordinary inventor has. Northrop Frye said, “Americans like to make money, Canadians like to count it.” It works in our favour at moments like this, we haven’t plunged into subprime-mortgage-empty packages. But in other times it works against us because we’re too cautious.
Q: We’re in the midst of an election campaign and the environment is fairly central.
A: Right now the economy has trumped it. But the two are related, that’s what people forget, they think it’s one or the other.
Q: Do you support the Green party?
A: I support Elizabeth May being in Parliament.
Q: Why that distinction?
A: It’s not that I don’t support her. I haven’t made up my mind, to tell you the truth, I really haven’t.
