If you aren’t familiar with Dow Chemicals’ history of environmental and human catastrophe, perhaps this may not resonate with you. Personally, I find the following Time Magazine interview with Dow’s CEO, Andrew “Darth” Liveris (pictured), absolutely incredible. Bravo to Time’s Wendy Cole for setting this bastard up so neatly. My favorite excerpts:

TIME: You’re eager to shed Dow’s longtime image as an environmental pillager. How can you reclaim credibility?

ATTILA: A vocal minority believes that we’re bad guys and all we do is pollute. That’s totally inaccurate. Dow Chemical in the last two decades has been a leader in sustainability. I make the case that if Dow weren’t around, clean water would be an impossibility.

TIME: Yet isn’t Dow still dealing with litigation related to its use of dioxin?

POL POT: The legacy issue of dioxin is 80 years old. Eighty years ago, standards were very different than those today. There were no notions of pollution. Smokestacks were everywhere. Look at the steel industry, the car industry. We had to be there to get to here–all of us as a society. There’s a framework under which this can be remediated and repaired. We don’t need anyone’s involvement other than the people who’ve been trespassed on.

TIME: Dow is an enormous energy user. Why hasn’t the development of alternative sources become a priority?

NERO: There’s a lot of noise about wind, solar and ethanol. We’re working on these too, but they won’t be ready to meet escalating global demands. Eighty percent of what we use today is fossil fuels; 80% of what we’ll use 20 years from now is fossil fuels. The carbon molecule and combusting it is the only way we’ve figured out to economically move people and generate power. Diversity of supply is the answer. That means nuclear energy and investing in clean coal technology.

TIME: Have you personally sought out ways to conserve energy?

CALIGULA: We’ve built a new home with what I call space management, so we don’t heat or cool all the house at once. I want to buy a hybrid, but a U.S. company doesn’t make one I want. I’m driving a GM car, so I’ve got lots of pressure on Mr. [Rick] Wagoner [GM's CEO] to develop a hybrid for me. For now, I’m driving a fuel-efficient Caddy.

Tags: environment, Profiles, Ruminations

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