Part 2: Why you should care what Jeff Rubin thinks & winner of Part 1 giveaway
Congratulations to Kristy Smith who has won the first of three autographed copies of Jeff's book. Read Part 1 of this series and her comment here. You can win a copy too! All you have to do to be eligible is leave a comment on this post, sharing your thoughts about this issue: If you are concerned or encouraged, agree or disagree, etc. We will then randomly select a winner and send the copy. The deadline for Part 2 (this post) is next Sunday, August 23rd).
Isabelle: Do you think that such a rapid change will cause civil unrest?
Jeff: Whether is causes civil unrest or doesn't, we will have to change nevertheless. I'm quite confident that people will change. I believe that people will respond to prices. We're going to have to change our diets. We're not going to be able to eat avocadoes in February in Toronto because the cost of flying them in from Southern California or Mexico is going to make that avocado too expensive. But we'll end up eating more local produce and that means that we'll have to restore land back to farm land.
Isabelle: It also means that in Canada we're going to be eating a lot of potatoes!
Jeff: We'll eat potatoes, we'll eat corn. I'll tell you something, when I was a kid growing up in the sixties in Toronto, there were no fresh blueberries and raspberries in January, there were no avocadoes and I survived. I'm sure others will too. People will change their minds because at the end of the day, people will have no choice.
There are people who believe that we should go back to local because it cuts down on the carbon trail, and there are people who believe that we should go back to local because it will put us more in touch with our environment, and that's all fine. But I'm saying, even if you don't believe that, you're still going back to local because the whole model of a global economy doesn't work on triple-digit oil prices.
Isabelle: This is the best news I've heard in many, many months. Because what we do here at Buy Canadian First is help Canadians find goods made in Canada.
Jeff: Well, this is right up your alley because you're going to find more and more made in Canada. Of course, this is every bit as true in China as it is in Canada. Distance costs money for everybody. But in the Canadian economy that I see in the future, more and more things we consume will be made in this country.
Isabelle: That is certainly welcome news for a lot of our manufacturing members here who are struggling!
Jeff: I think the big surprise will be that triple-digit oil prices are going to breathe new life into our rust belt. And it's going to lead to more farms, as well.
Isabelle: That's an interesting subject, because suburbia is replacing farmland almost overnight in many parts of the country. That's certainly the case here in Montreal.
Jeff: Those houses will be abandoned. And what we'll see is farm land re-claim those sub-divisions. And not in 20 years. In 4 to 5 years. In 4 to 5 years, you're going to see land starting to be reconverted back to agricultural use. And that will be as a result of soaring food prices and plunging suburban real-estate prices.
Stay tuned for more good news for Canadian manufacturers in Part 3!
In the meantime, tell us what you think about Jeff's theory by next Sunday, August 23rd. We will then randomly select a winner who will receive an autographed copy of "Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller."
Image source: Flickr Creative Commons: Dan Zen
