Tar sands, bananas, and Charlottesville greenies

The Wall Street Journal is happy to see that the House of Representatives is playing hardball with the President over the Keystone XL pipeline. It’s an article of faith that this construction project will create thousands of jobs while bringing new oil supplies to America’s refineries. It’s a combination of jobs and energy security, the stuff of which conservative dreams are made.

And it’s possible it could happen, but this hardly means the only players are in Washington. In the watermelon patch that passes for the environmental movement, activists are leaving nothing to chance when it comes to the hydrocarbons waiting to be plucked out of Alberta’s tar sands. One such group, which calls itself ForestEthics, has been campaigning for some time to shame companies into shunning all manner of environmentally dreadful products and practices, including oil from the tar sands. And their most recent convert to the cause is Chiquita Brands, harvesters of the rock-hard bananas that are found in supermarkets across the nation:

Chiquita has committed to identifying all the fuel suppliers for its own trucking fleet and dedicated fleets provided by contractors, so it can stop buying from any that it believes sell diesel made from tar sands oil.

It wasn’t a willing conversion, as measures that raise costs are rarely looked upon favorably in boardrooms:

ForestEthics, an environmental group based in Washington state, had run a targeted campaign against Chiquita and Dole, another fruit company, using press advertisements, protests at stores and consumer petitions.

It also encouraged activists to bombard the companies’ Facebook pages with criticism of their oil use, forcing Chiquita to close comments on its page for a time.

Aaron Sanger, US campaigns director of ForestEthics, said the group had first written to Chiquita in November 2010 and then in the spring of this year set a deadline for a response, after which it launched its campaign.

Any company that cracks under the pressure of Facebook blackmail deserves whatever consequences come its way. But, encouraged by this and other successes, the forest ethicists intend to subject Walmart and Safeway to similar treatment.

The kicker in all this, however, is that oil is a fungible commodity, It carries no labels or brand names. How do the activists intend to guide the craven capitalists into purchasing only ethical oil (presumably from such garden spots as Venezuela, or Gabon)?

Identifying the original sources of road fuel is difficult because of the complexity of the distribution system. However, ForestEthics is working to identify refineries that source crude oil from the tar sands, so it can advise companies not to use fuel from those suppliers.

A thorny problem, indeed. it will take any number of man-hours, studies, field surveys and powerpoint presentations to tease the tar sands oil out of the global pool. The grant proposals almost write themselves…which means that Virginia’s own WestWind Foundation, which gave ForestEthics $191,000 according to the group’s 990 form, can look for just such a proposal in their mailbox.

For the curious, the WestWind Foundation was created by nefarious carbon exploiters:

In 1987, Edward and Janet Miller created the WestWind Foundation as part of the sale of Mr. Miller’s express shipping company to Federal Express Corporation (FedEx). The company, which included operations throughout 22 countries in the Caribbean region, became the Latin America-Caribbean Division of FedEx.

The maneuvering over the pipeline in Congress, then, is a sideshow. The real action is happening in the fever swamps of the environmental movement…in the board rooms (and on the Facebook pages) of craven corporations…and, in part, on High Street in Charlottesville.

So let the House stand for what it thinks is right. Let the President pushback, too. The real fight is happening well outside the reach of both.

Contribute for Conservatism!

About the author

Norman Leahy

Norm Leahy has written about Virginia and national politics online since 2002, beginning with One Man's Trash (OMT), and continuing through Bacon's Rebellion (both the blog and the e-zine), Sic Semper Tyrannis, NBC12's Decision Virginia, Richmond.com and Tertium Quids. He is the chief blogger at "The Score" and a producer of "The Score" radio show as well as being a Washington Examiner contributor.