Words of wisdom culled from a Feb. 9, 2003 interview with Yvon Chouinard:

Would the world be a better place if everyone traveled?
Absolutely. First of all, you’d realize that we’re screwing everything up, that’s for sure. All you have to do is go to Africa now—it’s pretty grim. The whole continent is being written off by the rest of the world. When I first went there, Kenya was a pretty cool place. Now Kenya is a desperate place. That’s the value of traveling: you get a pretty good idea of where things are these days. Americans are so naïve—they’re running around with their finger in the air saying We’re Number One and everything. That’s absolute bullshit. I’ve seen studies that say for the quality of life, we’re like 14th in the world. Maybe for quantity of life, we’re number one, but for quality of life, we’re 14th. And that includes safe drinking water, safe streets to walk on, railroads that work instead of going 30 miles an hour…being able to afford a house.

What is your number one priority?
Having a healthy planet. David Brower says there’s no business to be done on a dead planet. Well, there’s no anything to be done on a dead planet, and that’s what we’re doing—we’re killing the planet. That’s the bottom line. All these other social issues that we have are just symptoms of how we have to live because of how desperate things are. Just go to Indonesia, go to Africa, go to a lot of places in Asia, and you’ll see what a desperate life people have, trying to scratch a little livelihood out of a patch of ground. It’s pretty desperate. We’re immune to seeing all that stuff in America. We don’t want to see it.

Any inspirational characters from surfing?
God, I don’t know. (pause) I’ve got a lot of old friends, like Mickey Muñoz and stuff. Somebody’s got to write a book on this guy, because he’s an unbelievable waterman. He dives, he’s a sailor…one of the first guys to ride Waimea, still surfing every day. Great guy. He’s a year older than I am. There’s a book to be written. He’s a real waterman, you know. A lot of the pro surfers, that’s all they do—they do absolutely nothing else (but surf). Or maybe they golf or something. That doesn’t tell me much.

Read Michael Kew's interview with Chouinard in its entirety on his blog, Peathead.blogspot.com.