Matt Warshaw interviewed Yvon Chouinard in Fall 1993, for a Los Angeles Times profile titled "A Man and his Planet," which ran on January 28, 1994.


Surfing is my favorite sport, and that really pisses off climbers and kayakers. Like they think I'm a traitor. I've been involved in all those things, passionately involved.


Climbing, at first, was what I was known for. I've been involved in all aspects of climbing. For a while, I just did crack climbing. Then ice climbing. Then mountain climbing. But I'm kind of an 80% guy. I take it 80%, then where it comes down to having to get really weird, really anal, about getting to the last stage—I back off. I think it's bad to go that last bit. You become a bore. When you get into conversations with the really great triathlon athletes, or the under-two-hour marathon runners, there's not much to talk about. You talk about whatever muscle twinge they had the day before, or what condition their knees are in. To me, that's extremely boring. So I stop, hopefully, before I get to that point, then go off in another direction and do that thing 80%. But meanwhile, I don't give up on all the other things.


I have no interest in sports. Nothing. Not a bit. I have no interest in viewing sports. I like football because it clears the water a bit. I always try and go surfing on Super Bowl Sunday, because of that. Less crowds.


I'll be in Japan this October, then surfing in southern Chile in November. Jackson Hole after that—my son is finally going to teach me how to snowboard. Then back to Chile early next year to climb, then Christmas Island. I love Christmas Island. I'll fish for two-thirds of the day and surf the other third. People think these trips are holidays, but they're not. It's research. It's studying lifestyles. I feel absolutely no guilt whatsoever. That is my job. I'm the outdoors man. I can't do my job sitting at a desk. 


I see all problems as environmental problems. I mean, AIDS—is AIDS a social problem or an environmental problem? It's environmental. AIDS has always been there; it's been in the jungle, hosted on monkeys, and when you cut down the jungle, the virus loses its host, mutates, and jumps over to humans. There are a hundred more viruses in the jungles that could do the same thing. Inner city stuff—those are environmental problems too. Those kids have never seen a field of grass in their lives, and they're totally alienated from the planet. They live in a completely artificial environment; just concrete, asphalt, plastic, metal—that's it.


No, it’s hopless. Completely hopeless. I've become a Buddhist over the whole thing. I just know that we're not the final product of nature or God. We're just another species. We're trying now to accommodate five-and-a-half billion people on this planet. That's where you have to start. The root problem, the fundamental question, the one that comes before all other questions, is whether you can have five-and-a-half billion people on earth. The answer is: you can't. Technology can't save us; I'm convinced of that.

Out-of-control cell growth in a living body is called cancer. A civilization, when it grows beyond its resources, destroys itself. And that's what we're doing. The rich and poor will continue to grow further and further apart, and there will be tremendous imbalances between societies, and nature hates imbalance. It will eventually sort itself out, somehow. But we're stuck in this kind of anthropocentric thinking where we believe we're going to somehow control all of this. Anyone who really thinks we're in control, that we can honestly change the course we're on, well, they're mistaken.

The earth itself, fortunately, ultimately, is above and beyond what we do. It's a living organism, and it's going to continue, and millions of years from now there won't be a trace of us. The sad part is that when we go, we're going to take a lot of species down with us.


So, yes, I've just accepted the fact that it is all over. And I've found perfect peace with myself. I think my kids will be living in terrible times, though. 

That said, I haven't given up trying to do something about all of this. To be an activist is to live a much healthier life. You can take that kind of doomsday scenario too much to heart, and just give up, and that's just no way to live at all. In other words, I don't see myself as a good guy, particularly. All I've done is quit denying a lot of things. I quit denying that we have huge, huge problems in this country, and around the world. I happen to think that all the problems are environmentally-based. And I quit denying that I have some responsibility for those problems. So now it's a question of doing what I'm supposed to be doing.


That's why I'm running this company the way I do. I have no interest in being richer than I am. There is nothing whatsoever that I need, in terms of material things. I can only ride one surfboard at a time, you know? If I didn't feel that I could do some good with this company, I'd be on Christmas Island year 'round.

I talked to Ted Turner recently, and he's a pessimist like I am, he thinks its all over, but he told me he spends half his time managing his company—or his 37 companies, whatever it is—and half his time trying to save the world. He says, "What else am I going to do?" All his assets when he dies are going into a foundation. That's what I'm going to do; same thing.

I was in an avalanche in Tibet, in 1986, and it was a pretty long, drawn-out experience. I thought I was going to die. I got rolled for 1,500 feet, went over 40-foot cliffs, with a 300-foot cliff at the end that would have been it for sure. The guy next to me died, another guy broke his back, both were close friends. I died on the way down and came back. Because of this, then, I have no fear of death whatsoever. I see it as completely natural, and when it comes time for me to eat it, I won't fight. Death's not going to have to tear me away. I'll go.

That's also my attitude toward this business. This company is an incredible experiment right now. I'm breaking all the rules. And I break all the rules because I've got nothing to lose. I could walk away tomorrow and not look back. But I am enjoying myself, don't get me wrong. We're taking all these risks, in part, just to do things differently; just to show that they can be done. That part I really like. 


I see government as being evil. I see corporations as being evil. But I'm not going to take on government, or corporations, directly. I'm going to try and change consumers. The consumers will then change corporations; corporations will then change government. That's the only way it can be done. Politicians are all just pawns of the corporations, so why try and change the laws? You have to change the mentality of corporations in order to change the government. And to achieve that, you have to show corporations that they can make more money being responsible and efficient, and to do 

 you have to get consumers thinking more about how they spend their money. 

So, for example. I need gas, and I pull up to an intersection with four gas stations. One is Exxon; well, I don't want to go there because of the spill in Alaska. One is Union 76, and I'm still mad about the Santa Barbara spill back in '69. The third station is Chevron, and they're just destroying everything as far as I can tell. Now, the fourth one is this imaginary station that doesn't advertise too much, and instead gives 1 or 2% of sales to different causes. And on your receipt it says, "You just bought $12 of unleaded; 12 cents is on its way to . . . " and you have a little list there of groups who are helping the environment. I'd pull into that station every time.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I want to stay at Patagonia and prove that being responsible to the environment is good business. 


When you're buying stock in the market, you're paying anywhere from 10- to-70 times what that stock is really worth. It's usury. The only way to make money is for the company to grow. So what's fueling all this growth, all this insistence of growth, is private ownership of corporations. What I mean is: when you buy $10 of stock, you're not buying $10 worth of inventory and machinery and infrastructure. You're buying one dollar's worth, and nine bucks  of blue sky. You're gambling that the company is going to grow. You're 

It's absurd to think we can grow forever, endlessly. It's absurd and it's arrogant. But it's become part of the fabric of this country. Westward expansion, Manifest Destiny—I mean, these are the holiest aspects of our history. No limits! We can do anything! And look where that got us. 

I'd like for this country to think of itself in terms of where it will be in 100 years. Government ought to be doing that; society ought to be doing that. And as soon as you start down that path you realize how ridiculous perpetual growth is. I've slowed growth down to a trickle [with Patagonia], purposely, and I'm making more money than ever before. Furthermore, I can sit down one-and-one with the president of any company, anywhere, and convince them that growth is evil. You can make more money, have a healthier company, a healthier life yourself, by not chasing this ridiculous idea of sustained growth. President Clinton's going around saying "We gotta pump up the GNP, we gotta create more jobs, be more competitive." But all that's assuming that people out there and around the world are going to buy more stuff. And what are we going to make? Every single catagory catagory you can name, we have overproduction. I mean, five ski companies right now could make all the skis for all the skiers in the entire world. 


So how do you create jobs in America without making more bullshit goods that nobody really needs? I think the only thing you can do is agriculture. You have to ban all chemicals for growing. Better for the soil, cancer rates go down, the food tastes better. The cost of course goes way up. But put people to work in agriculture, and pay them, the way you'd pay a guy on the line in Detroit. The best thing we could do for the world is organic agriculture. 


I'm doing all I can to try and make things better. But I firmly believe things are not going to get better. So what do you do with those two ideas? A few years ago, I was getting depressed. I was bumming out my wife, I'd go on a tirade and my kids would leave the room, I'd get in the car and go surfing and say, "Oh, Christ, here I am, by myself, selfish as ever, burning all this fuel." 

I was driving myself crazy with this shit. I mean, I've gone through so many grant proposals, funded projects, donated money, adjusted the way I live. And nothing really changes. It really is depressing. You win now and then but there are no final victories. You stall 'em for 10 years, they're back at you. It's hopeless. And I really like to see things done; I like completion. I love painting houses. The results are right there, in front of you, right away. I could never be a full-on environmental activist, I could never get up in the morning just from being bummed out. 

So like I said earlier, I just accepted that it is all over. I accepted the idea not just that I'm going to die, but that humans may have evolved about as far as they're going to go. And that acceptance brought me a lot of peace. I became calm. So now I get in my car and say, "Screw it, I'm going surfing." I'm doing enough. I don't need the worry.

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