Woke companies insult their customers to appease the Green

With his early rollout of sweeping executive orders aimed at the forced transformation of the U.S. energy sector, President Joe Biden will receive a helping hand from companies eager to be seen as thoroughly committed to saving the planet from climate change.

A month before Biden was sworn in, outdoor outfitter The North Face struck a blow for the climate by denying an order for 400 jackets from a Texas oil-and-gas services company. Adam Anderson, CEO of Houston-based Innovex Downhole Solutions, wanted to distribute the jackets with the company’s logo on them to his employees as a Christmas present. But The North Face turned down the order because Innovex is part of the petroleum industry.

In an act of hypocrisy stunning even by today’s standards, The North Face’s product line is heavily dependent on the industry it publicly disdains. The company’s hoodies, coats, gloves, snow pants, and other apparel along with its tents and back-pacts are made with nylon, polyester, and polyurethane – all of which come from petroleum.

“Counter-Productive Virtue-Signaling”

“The irony n this statement is that your jackets are made from the oil and gas products the hardworking men and women in our industry produce,” Anderson said in a letter on LinkedIn to The North Face CEO Steve Rendle (Washington Times, Dec. 18). “I think the stance by your company is counter-productive and virtue-signaling, and I would appreciate you reconsidering this stance.”

Anderson’s request went nowhere.

Instead, in a statement to the Financial Times, The North Face said it, “thoroughly investigates product requests to assure they align closely with our goals and commitments surrounding sustainability and environmental protection.”

The North Face is not the only petroleum-dependent apparel company that bashes the industry that helps keep it in business. Patagonia has long funded anti-fracking groups. On its website, Patagonia acknowledges that some of its products are made from polyester and nylon but then shifts gears and calls for ending dependence on fossil fuels and embraces a shift to renewable energy, including wind, solar, and geothermal.

In his letter to The North Face’s CEO, Innovex’s Anderson added:

The work of my company and our industry more broadly enables humans to have a quality of life and life expectancy that were unfathomable 150 years ago … We should be celebrating the benefits of what oil and gas do to enable the outdoors lifestyle your brands embrace. Without oil and Gas there would be no market for nor ability to create the products your company sells.

Change in Corporate Culture

Much has been written about the hostility of Big Tech, Hollywood, and the legacy media toward ordinary Americans. But it doesn’t stop there. The smugness extends to The Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, NFL, NBA, and scores of big-name companies like Walgreens, Target, Starbucks, Whole Foods, and on into the night. The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out that the shift in corporate culture can be explained in part by today’s corporate headquarters being increasingly located on the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts instead of the Midwest as in yesteryear.

On a deeper level, the capture of corporations by the left confirms the strategy of the “long march through the institutions’ laid down by Italian communist Antonio Gramsci in the first half of the 20^th century. Ultimately, it aimed at changing public policy be getting the private sector to do the left’s bidding. The strategy is bearing fruit in the U.S., with corporation and activists, eagerly joining forces with the Biden administration to transform the country into a green utopia.

You’re not going to like what you get.

• Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

  Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.

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