Ever since I read The New Prophets of Capital by Nicole Aschoff (one of the first socialist texts I've ever read, the journey into a full-blown leftist and a better writer has been long lol) I have been skeptical of so-called "reluctant billionaires" who claim to manifest a different breed of capitalism aimed at doing both well and good. So as soon as I read the recent news of Patagonia owner Yvon Chouinard giving the company ownership away to an environmental stewardship trust and all future profits to a non-profit network I knew precisely what would come next.
The letter to his customers - more accurately described as a press release - by Chouinard claims to "turn capitalism on its head by making earth our only shareholder". This phrase was published unchallenged into headlines at outlets like CNBC, Fortune Magazine, and People. Other major news outlets like NPR, the NYT, and the BBC are also all but lauding the move, parroting the company's talking points about responsible business practices. Not a single media company even vaguely questioned the premise that a billion-dollar garment company could possibly reverse the damage it's done to the environment.
We would all like to believe that if massive corporations simply behaved the way Patagonia behaved, we wouldn't be facing the existential crises of climate change. It's very pretty to think so, however one of the best things you can do for the environment as a human being is to not create a massive garment corporation. I would argue that every person who doesn't create such a company is far more worthy of celebration than Chouinard, who still set his company up "to operate as a private, for-profit corporation based in Ventura, Calif., selling more than $1 billion worth of jackets, hats and ski pants each year".
The fashion industry is responsible for almost 10% of carbon emissions and is the second largest consumer of water. The industry is also heavily responsible for microplastic pollution, pesticide use, and waste. While Patagonia often tries to ride the high horse over many of these problems - shirking the label "fast fashion" as though cheap poor people's clothes are the real culprit - the truth is you can't become a billion-dollar clothing company without contributing to these issues.
Microplastic pollution is a great example. Patagonia helped fund a major study on this issue, showing that synthetic jackets are releasing a massive amount of this pollution into the water system with terrible ecological effects. While Patagonia and many outdoor companies use recycled synthetic materials to reduce waste overall, the microplastics still wind up in water ways, food supplies, and the ocean. One might applaud Patagonia for funding the study on this issue, but given their market share of synthetic outdoor clothing, we should not be lauding the company for leading the way on this issue.
That's just one illustrative example of the issue with these relatively ethical operations. Under capitalism, what Patagonia is doing with sustainability and its new ownership structure might seem relatively good and ethical. Yet it's clear that Patagonia still operates on a destructive model of commerce and continues to prop up and legitimize an industry with even worse practices.
At best, Chouinard is worthy of praise relative to other billionaires. Relative to the rest of us, his damage as a billionaire clothing manufacturer has been done. Rather than singing his praises, we should expend our media bandwidth questioning whether or not billionaires can even exist alongside a healthy and sustainable planet. As David Sirota put it in his Lever News piece titled To Save the Planet, We Must Choose;
"[Those in power] insist we can have billionaires and shared prosperity, legalized corruption with democracy, lower inflation plus corporate profiteering, and a livable planet alongside a prosperous ExxonMobil. You name the crisis, and we are infantilized to believe the world is an all-you-can-eat buffet and that either/or choices aren’t necessary."
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