THE GREAT FOSSIL FUEL HYPOCRISY
There’s an ongoing debate around the death of fossil fuels and how they contribute to global warming which eventually leads to climate change. Unknown to many, more than 6,000 products are estimated to be made from fossil fuels. Clothing is a good example of a product made from oil and gas. In fact, most of the fabric used in “Fast Fashion” is made from petroleum. Synthetic fabrics such as Polyester, Acrylic, Nylon, Spandex, and Acetate are all made from non-renewable fossil fuels.
Outdoor Clothing/ Equipment
This leads to The North Face, an outdoor recreation products company that produces outdoor clothing, footwear, and related equipment. For many years, The North Face has made billions of dollars by billing itself as an environmentally conscious eco-friendly company. However, a careful analysis of the company’s products tells a different story.
In one of the environmental hypocrisy stories of our time, late last year, North Face refused to make jackets for a small business in the oil and gas industry. In December 2020, Innovex Downhole Solutions, a West Texas oil- and gas-well developer, wanted to buy 400 North Face jackets customized with the company’s logo as a Christmas present for its employees.
However, to the company’s surprise, North Face refused to put the company’s logo on North Face jackets. North Face said it would not sell the jackets to Innovex, even though the small oil and gas business had previously purchased clothing directly from the North Face in the past without issue. North Face claimed Innovex did not meet its brand standards.
In an open letter to The North Face’s parent company, VF Corporation, Innovex CEO Adam Anderson in an open letter wrote: “North Face would not sell us the jackets because we [are] an oil and gas company.”
Now the fossil fuel industry is fighting back with a new campaign. In a video posted on YouTube, Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright “thanks” North Face for using so much petroleum in its products. Wright said he went to North Face’s website and searched a range of products. To his surprise, Wright was unable to find a single product that wasn’t made out of oil and gas. Wright added that a great majority of North Face products–jackets, backpacks, outdoor pants, shirts, shoes, hats, tents, and others–are predominantly made out of fossil fuels.
According to Wright, 60% of global clothing fibres are made out of oil and gas. For North Face, the figure is 90%. You can watch the rest of the video below.
4 Comments
When are we going to stop this silliness?
They are now climbing Everest in record numbers thanks to the survival gear made from fossil fuels. Tents and raincoats etc.. are made from light breathable Nylon. Renewable energy such as solar and wind are joke when you weigh up the intermittent energy they actually produce against the energy required in the mining of their components, their manufacture, transport, replacement and disposal every 15-20 years.
There was no global temperatures published until 1988 when NASA’s James Hansen testified before the Senate hearing. Dr.Hansen, who records temperatures from readings at monitoring stations around the world, had previously reported that four of the hottest years on record occurred in the 1980’s. Compared with a 30-year base period from 1950 to 1980, when the global temperature averaged 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature was one-third of a degree higher last year. In the entire century before 1880, global temperature had risen by half a degree, rising in the late 1800’s and early 20th century, then roughly stabilizing for unknown reasons for several decades in the middle of the century. 59 F + 0.33 F= 59.33… New York Times
The British readings showed that the average global temperature in 1988 was 0.612 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long-term average for the period 1950 through 1979, which is a base for comparing global temperatures. The average worldwide temperature for that 30-year period is roughly 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the British researchers said. The 1988 average temperature was 0.018 degrees higher than the average for 1987, the previous high year.
i.e. 59.612 F for 1988 and 59.594 F for 1987. New York Times. According to NOAA the 2020 global temperature was 58.78 Fahrenheit!! ….Cooling?
The exaggeration did not end there. NOAA, in 1997, released a graph showing the global temperature for the year at 62.45 F and the 1900 temperature at 61.50 F!
This is at odds with their “archived” temperature data which was filled in sometime after 1998!