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Whole Foods and Global Warming

An odd paradox of the green movement
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by Dale Y The Green Guy
March 17, 2010

Have you ever heard of Whole Foods? It is a market that brings some of the finest organic and natural foods to communities across the nation. Perhaps the first ever mainstream market to do so, it has expanded tremendously and markets are now in or near virtually every major city.

Widely considered to be one of the best solutions for anyone who does not have access to organic farmers markets, Whole Foods bridges that gap and provides wholesome natural foods to anyone at nearly anyplace around the United States. It has become one of the best ideas out there for getting organics to the masses, and it has become so prosperous that the CEO, John Mackey, is on the prestigious Fortune 500 list of entrepreneurs.

Here is where the record skips, and it goes like this.

In an odd contradiction to the apparent message of Whole Foods, Mackey is a denier of global warming denier essentially does not believe in man-made global warming. Furthermore, he is in good company. Former Vice President Dick Cheney doesn’t believe, and neither does former governor of Alaska and former VP candidate and author Sarah Palin. In fact, 54 percent of Republicans don’t believe in man-made global warming and like I stated before, neither does John Mackey. (Incidentally, 85 percent of Democrats do believe.)

This presents an interesting paradox that comprises one of the greenest ideas on the planet, coupled with one of the least green people on the planet. Furthermore, by buying from Mackey’s markets, we are in essence, allowing him to propagate his own views on global warming. Is this right?

If you are a regular reader of Because Action and have any doubts about global warming and whether it is man-made or not, this is the place to learn the facts. This not hearsay, not conjecture, not a bunch of unsupported ideas, but honest to goodness real live scientifically proven facts. Anyone can choose to argue with supported facts about global warming, but unless they are able to bring their own supported facts to contradict it, there is no argument. Man-made global warming is real, it is happening, and we are experiencing the beginning of it right here and right now.

Global warming has become almost religious in its fervor for the believers and non-believers, the deniers and the fence-sitters. But that doesn’t make anyone a bad person, and some of these people have good ideas. John Mackey is a case in point. He almost revolutionized the organic food movement by bring its availability to everyone, and no matter what his beliefs are, this is one heck of a good idea.

Not only that, but Whole Foods, on all other aspects of being green, is a very conscientious company and gets the word out on such things as rainforest preservation, carbon footprints and waste reduction. Their CEO may have slightly skewed ideas about global warming, but the business that he created, and I would be willing to bet that most of the employees are right on.

Organic food, and making it available to those who might not have access to it, is one of the best ideas to come around in a long time. And if there was no such thing as global warming, Mackey would have started this business anyway, Because Action speaks louder than words, and in this case, beliefs as well.

Source: BecauseAction.com

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COMMENTS & DISCUSSION
by Don Davidson
There are two points of view on Global Warming, one fact NO ONE can dispute, Global Warming has made Al Gore Rich !!!
by Dale Y the Green Guy
The message is this. Believe what you so desire, but if someone has a good idea, it's still a good idea and needs to be supported. Obviously, I myself support local markets more than I would a national market like this. But if I had no local market, I would shop here. Why? No matter what the CEO thinks about the world around him, his employees don't agree with him, his idea keeps people employed, and the food is good!
by David Nelson
All you have to look at are the retreating glaciers around the globe!
by John Reilly
Whole foods sells organic products from CHINA, we know from past experience with China's products that this is probably not organic as stated. How did Mackey verify that it is organic? What happened to organic food from local stores???
by Richard Tucker
Donald Davidson, so your contention is that before we even heard of Al Gore he was quietly tweaking scientific date that goes back 50 years to influence today's concern for global warming/serious climate change? Wow, Don, my hat's off to Al for being such a big planner from what must have been his junior high school days at most. Well, of course I'm not buying that, and unless he went up and manually melted all those ice sheets and glaciers with a the world's biggest blow dryer all he's guilty of is getting people to listen to what was all too evident from academia and scientists from around the world. If he's profiting from spreading that news he's still not raking in the profits -as well as tax breaks- that oil and coal industries enjoy while still funding large efforts to deny scientific fact. By the way, I'm a registered independent and have been for 14 years. I'm also married to a long time meteorologist, with a masters degree in that science, and retired USAF Lt.Colonel who also researched global warming data from '91. I'll take her word and the data over your misguided rants against Al Gore, who I never voted for.
by Richard Tucker
I know for a fact that in '85 the meteorology department at Penn State University pish poshed the idea of man made global warming. By '91 most universities were teaching it based on the evidenced accumulated in the five years between '85 and '91. Now, according to a study I wish I'd saved for reference, even the cold snap in the late sixties and early seventies (any one else remember the coal and oil shortage in '71) is now part of the bigger studies regarding that period. Instead of the old models indicating a cooling the severe weather was an indicator that we now know was likely attributed to serious climate change. How can all of this evidence still be refuted? Even as the the NE and SE had a recent cold snap everyone ignores that the the much farther north regions like Vancouver are having to truck snow in for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Both polar caps are still melting for longer and longer periods, their glaciers shringking at rates never seen before and not recovering in Winter months as well as larger and larger ice sheets are breaking off to flow to warmer water as those ice sheets continue to melt at unprcedented rates. And it's estimated that for the first time since snow was seen on Kilimanjaro centuries ago, that its snows will be gone within the next ten to twenty years. Denying these facts are not some clever ruse. It's purely political. We have to change the way use fuel and we need to change the fuel. The people who profit from this should be leading the way to produce less man-made heat. Instead they deny the facts in order to rake in as much profit as possible. It's a shame that such industries choose not to be innovators bringing us a cleaner future but instead climb into their opulent shells and hire idiots to write missives, wrought with lies and denials, and paint themselves as victims of progressive intentions created by paranoid reactionaries. Ironically we're not likely to stop the problems with the weather that are already manifesting themselves. But we can bring about changes that will lessen the impact and hopefully prevent the worst from occurring at all by changing our ways.
by Pat Bell
SO, whats your point. To me Whole Foods is like Walmart...Its making the mom and pop s go out of business. Its the ultimate in GREED.
by Sherri
the message of this article is not clear. Are you proposing boycotting Whole Foods because Mackey doesn't believe in manmade global warming or supporting Whole Foods for all the other good it does? I am siding with the latter rather than the former, myself.
by Therese
John Mackey is one of the most corrupt individuals there is. Here in Colorado, Wild Oats Markets was his main competitor. He commited libel regarding Wild Oats on a national blog by posting untruths as "Harobed" which is his wife's name, Deborah, backwards. Yet he was never criminally charged because of this. It was a nasty, hostile takeover, and John Mackey is a nasty, hostile, close-minded man. He wanted Whole Foods to become the Wal-Mart of natural foods stores, and to our peril, it appears he has succeeded. I support local and regional natural foods markets.
by Don Davidson
The person who has helped to make Global Warming a house hold word, is the same person who has benefited greatly from Global Warming.....Al Gore !!!!! He has found that it pays much better than elected office !!!! PS I'm an Independent.

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