Whole Foods has established strong brand recognition as your local organic food foraging, pesticide and GM-food criticizing grocery store.  It’s sustainable values  attract a clear market segment of “foraging foodies” and “vivacious vegans” who are more than willing to pay premium for a bag of high quality granola.  But in an ironic twist, WholeFood’s CEO, John Mackey, is not your average “Green” CEO.  Despite having lived on a vegetable commune (oops, I mean co-op) and maintained a vegan lifestyle, he does not share the same liberal views as most sustainability advocates.  In fact, he doesn’t believe in climate change.

In an interview with ABC News, Mackey described climate change as “not a big deal.”  In fact, climate change is “perfectly natural and not necessarily bad.”

This blog post is not intended to lay waste to Mackey’s views; however, skeptical they may be.  The question is how will Mackey’s views conflict with the Whole Foods brand?  Mackey has already ticked off progressive grocery store go-ers, by comparing Obama-care to Fascism.  It’s his views on climate change, however, that conflict with the values of Whole Foods.  Surely, if Whole Foods values are centered on sourcing sustainable opportunities of growing and distributing food, it must hold some opposition towards climate change.  Perhaps it just goes to show that “hippie companies” aren’t really as liberal as you might think.