Whole Foods CEO Takes on Climate Change

[BallardWA]

Source: The New Yorker


Mackey is an example of what you might call the auteur C.E.O. Like Steve Jobs’s, his personality is entwined in his company’s. He doesn’t bother with day-to-day operations; he’s not a technician or a face man.

He sits in a recliner, surrounded by stacks of books. He gives them a good working over, marking them with underlinings, highlighter, and Post-its. He is, as he says, an intuitive-thinking type, on the Myers-Briggs scale. When I asked him recently what he was reading, he named half a dozen books and then a few days later had a press person send me a list of thirteen.


One of the books on the list was “Heaven and Earth: Global Warming—the Missing Science,” a skeptical take on climate change. Mackey told me that he agrees with the book’s assertion that, as he put it, “no scientific consensus exists” regarding the causes of climate change; he added, with a candor you could call bold or reckless, that it would be a pity to allow “hysteria about global warming” to cause us “to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty.” One would imagine that, on this score, many of his customers, to say nothing of most climate scientists, might disagree. He also said, “Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures.”



Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all#ixzz0baVWuHq0

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So the guy that was against the Public Option has just come out against the theory of climate change. Can he really be that dumb? I know he's stepping down as CEO of Whole Foods, but this is yet another reason to continue my boycott...

[alstephenson]

1. No Whole Foods for me. eom

[Doremus]

2. He'll still be Chairman of the Board. (IIRC)

The guy is either an idiot savant or too rich to care whether he keeps his job.

Amazing.

[onehandle]

3. They forced him out of Chairmanship. Obviously that wasn't enough. Depose him as CEO...

...and I will return to Whole Foods.

[Warpy]

4. OK, now I'm really starting to wonder about that guy

He kept a pretty low profile for years, although people close to him knew he was a libertarian nut.

One has to wonder why he's unable to shut his trap now, especially after the fallout the last time he said something really stupid and counter to the beliefs of most of the people who shop there.

A medical workup might be in order.

[SpiralHawk]

10. Poor dude seems to have caught a wicked bad case of republicon homelanderism

He is sounding more and more like one of The Latter Day Pharisees.

[Robb]

5. I'm starting to think he must be pulling our legs.

I mean, really. No one is that tone deaf.

[beac]

6. More proof that the POS is all about the money and doesn't give a d@mn about

'whole food' or the planet. He's a greedy capitalist and might as well be the CEO of Exxon. :puke:

[Blue Owl]

7. In heaven, everything is fine

So glad he has brought the science of heaven to help us figure out what's going wrong on earth.


:eyes:

[Orsino]

8. So he hates planets as well as people. n/t

[rucky]

9. Will he ever learn?

I wonder how else he can insult his customer base?

[stanwyck]

11. What I found out about no longer going to Whole Foods

don't miss it at all and have more money to spend at the farmers markets.

[LynneSin]

12. This asshole really wants to destroy his own business it seems

I mean Red-Staters are probably grocery shopping at their local Wal-Mart; whereas us progressives are more likely the types to shop at stores like Whole Foods.

I use to shop at Whole Foods when I lived in PA. There are no whole foods in Delaware which is fine with me. I'd rather do the local farmers market or Trader Joe's.

[Javaman]

13. the further nut buggery of wacky mackey...

he was voted off the board, don't let anyone tell you different. He is not "willingly stepping down".

It pretty much common knowledge to anyone that has been paying attention.

He has become a liability to the company and they can't jettison him soon enough.

Under his "leadership" Whole Foods stock lost 30 percent.

He's a mildly smart business man who wasn't able to work in the big leagues.

His half witted libertarian views were finally enough for the stock holders. He pisses off his main demographic by coming out against national health care and now he further pisses them off by claiming there is no climate change.

mackey is the consummate spoiled rich kid. He started whole foods with his daddies money (at the time he was the hippy austinite who claimed to be a democrat), then he becomes "famous" and more wealthy and now doesn't want to share his blocks.

And as a result, I think he's going public with his, very obviously, controversial stands to piss off the other board members as a grand "fuck you" for pushing him out.

well, mr. wacky mackey, if you had just done your fucking job instead of posting anonymously on a whole foods board to pump up your stock and bad mouth your competitors so you could take them over, or posting a half witted moronic screed regarding national health care or your latests foray into the depths of tea baggery, perhaps you would still be in charge of your company, but alas, like most control freaks who reek of narcissism, wacky mackey can't keep his mouth shut so he chooses to bury his foot up to his hip in it.

Honestly, I wouldn't be the very least surprised of this jackass becomes the new cheerleader for the ball lickers.

His brand of ultra libertarianism is ripe for those misspelling fools.

at the end of the day, moron mackey will be looking upon as nothing more than he already his: a rich buffoon with too much time on his hands and too little brains in his head.