Maybe I'll start, because I'm quite familiar with Mr. Roberts' work.
It's a fairly simple thesis: if you want to know where people are going to make money, you've got to ask where scarcity is going to be. Is it going to be in PhDs and engineers? I don't think so, because China and India can put them out at a much faster rate than the current industrialized world can produce them. Scarcity is going to be in natural resources, and the greatest scarcities are going to be in land for fibre production, in energy, and in water.
My colleagues with very modern mills in South Africa are being told by their government that they don't want any expansion, because growing the trees is taking water away from agriculture. My colleagues in Brazil are looking at transforming their plantations from eucalyptus to sugar cane to feed what's going to be a huge demand in the United States for biofuels in order for them, when they come up with a new political regime, to try to meet any type of climate change target.
There's no doubt at all that there will be a demand. We'll be well positioned, but it's quite possible to blow it. We don't own this; other people are figuring out the same thing. International Paper, one of the world's largest forest products companies--I don't know if it is the world's largest, but it is certainly the biggest in North America--now has 40% of their company in Russia. Why would they go to Russia, where there's a huge problem with gangsterism, no infrastructure, and an unreliable business structure? The answer is that Russia has exactly what Canada has: fibre, water, and energy. International Paper has figured out that those are the critical success factors, the scarcity factors in the future.
Our job in industry is to make certain we are structured and positioned to take advantage of what will be a tremendously growing market and a shrinking capacity of others to occupy it, and the job of governments is to create conditions that help us get there. It's primarily our job, but spending on things like research and technology, spending on market reputation, and creating an investment climate that draws investment will position us to take advantage of this opportunity. If we don't do the job--if we don't transform to be ready for this opportunity--someone else will grab it.
Can we compete? Yes, but we've got to actually do it.