GQ recently published a lengthy (and great) interview with Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard, who has emerged as a hero in the Trump #resistance.
“What pisses me off about this administration is that they’re all these ‘climate deniers’ — well, that’s bullshit,” he told GQ. “They know what’s happening. What they’re doing is purposely not doing anything about climate for the sake of making more money… That is truly evil. That’s why I call this administration evil. They know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it to make more money.”
And Chouinard has spent the better part of the last 18 months turning that anger into action (as he explains it, “I’m totally a pessimist. But you know, I’m a happy person. Because the cure for depression is action.”)
Since Trump has taken office, Chouinard has sued the federal government after it announced it would be rolling back protections for national monuments, led a trade-show boycott that cost a republican-held state $20 million, donated $10 million in Black Friday revenue to grassroots environmental organizations, and repurposed his company’s home page to read “The President Stole Your Land, and You Were Lied To,” among other things.
For his efforts, “the federal government, run by allegedly pro-business Republicans, basically called for the boycott of a privately held company — provoking a former director of the Office of Government Ethics to label the action ‘a bizarre and dangerous departure from civic norms.’”
And while some claim that Patagonia is just parlaying a morally bankrupt presidency into a marketing strategy, Chouinard disagrees. “What we say we’re doing, we’re actually doing,” he told GQ. “A lot of companies are just greenwashing, and young people can see right through it. Kids are smart, so we don’t talk down to them. Our marketing philosophy is just: Tell people who we are. Which is, tell people what we do, and don’t try to be anything more than that.”
You can read the full interview – and we highly recommend that you do – at GQ.
