Patagonia Donates Itself To “The Earth”
In a move certain to induce cringes among many of its loyal customers but warm fuzzies among others, Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s billionaire founder, announced this week that the giant outdoor apparel and gear company he started in 1973 will be “going purpose” instead of going public. Chouinard is donating the majority of the company to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to environmental concerns.
Chouinard loves our planet, and he loves to engage it at the edges of human capacity. Through surfing, mountaineering, and rock climbing all over the globe before it was cool, he and his friends (like Doug Tompkins, the founder of The North Face) had to literally create in backyard workshops the tools and equipment they needed to Never Stop Exploring™.
They had to become blacksmiths, tailors, and board builders to push the sports to new levels and fuel their curiosity and insatiable spirit of exploration. In his book, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, Chouinard describes how his company gained in popularity and demand, but he did not want to lose track of being ethical to the planet he served and the people that worked for him. At every turn, from sourcing dyes for clothing that wouldn’t pollute waterways, to offering high quality schooling for the children of its employees, Patagonia claims to have gone above and beyond to ensure that the various conditions in which their products are made don’t make them hypocrites.
Ignore the part, of course, about how some of their products are made in China, where slavery and unfathomable pollution are the norm. Or that, like The North Face, Patagonia’s catalog is full of products made with nylon and urethane – petroleum-based materials the use of which constitute a sin against Mother Earth.
The story is one of the American Dream: pursue what you are passionate about with everything you’ve got, do not give up, and success is inevitable. Patagonia ought to be a full-on capitalist success story.
Except…
In the film 180 Degrees South, we can watch Chouinard and Tompkins relive their incredible explorations of Patagonia from their youth, now as gray-haired men with more money than time left. They discuss how they have saved millions of acres of land across the world with their philanthropy, conserving for the public what may have otherwise turned to dust under the advancement of energy production through things like dams, or to condos and shopping centers under the private sector of resorts.
There is no doubt Chouinard loves the earth and is an inspiring leader to many.
And this week he gave his company away for climate change.
Aside from not being able to provide the four basic prerequisite points about climate change put forth by RVIVR publisher Scott McKay in his book The Revivalist Manifesto (climate activists should prove that global warming is happening, anthropogenic, bad for us, and that turning our domestic economy upside down to respond to it would actually make a tangible difference with the major polluters of the world not participating in the same effort in order to have a convincing argument), what is the problem, exactly, with the decision this private company made to perform what may be the most expensive act of virtue-signaling of all time?
The problem is that this move is literally funding the core of The Great Reset and advancing the globalist takeover of our planet that plans to strip us of our options and personal liberties faster than Europe can strip its own ancient forests.
Chouinard may as well be the oldest of Klaus Schwab’s Young Global Leaders in how this kind of influence affects the public. While sovereign-minded people all over the world are digging in their heels for when the oligarchs’ next round of authoritarianism comes bearing unconstitutional mandates and restrictions, this kind of mother-earth-worship prioritizes our planet over our people.
It goes completely against the intentions of the patriotic among us, and worst, encourages SJWs to pursue their insatiable agenda of oppression and unfairness. Karl Marx is smiling from his bronze bust across the pond.
Has Chouinard ever heard the term “climate lockdown” before? If not, he will soon – as his efforts are pushing us closer to that dystopia. If asked, what would Patagonia’s, or, excuse me, Holdfast Collective’s, opinion be on climate lockdowns and travel or purchasing restrictions based on carbon footprint limitations?
Does this man know that encouraging ideologies that undermine the foundations of human liberty to save “the environment” actually destroys the potential of current and future generations to be able to enjoy this environment?
If so, then he is no saint. If he doesn’t know, then it might even be worse – Chouinard is then a Useful Idiot with money to burn.
You can already hear the Hollyweird celebrities, woke politicians, and neo-marxist SJWs with no money or hobbies claiming, “if Chouinard gave his entire company away for the planet, surely you can just give up your car, or beef, and pay these extra taxes. It’s the least you can do to save Earth.”
One is reminded of the story from the Bible called The Widow’s Offering. Jesus, after watching a poor woman give her last coins in offering, says to the crowd, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
Patagonia is trying to be the widow and the wealthy at the same time, a tightrope walk that requires balance no one has. Perhaps Chouinard means well, but this move isn’t likely to end well at all.
