No, you read that right. Chiquita Bananas just announced that they would avoid the use of dirty tat sands in their transportation vehicles. And trust me, there are lots of reasons to boycott Chiquita Bananas, but this is not one of them but it is if you are Canada and you are desperately attempting to sell your dirty energy to the world.
Several high-profile government MPs, including Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, have urged Canadians not to buy bananas distributed by Chiquita Brands International after the Ohio-based company said it would avoid using fuel for its trucks derived from Alberta’s oilsands.
And now the pro-oilsands group EthicalOil.org is taking the fight to the airwaves with the launch of a new radio ad this week urging consumers to stop buying bananas or premade salads from Chiquita, a company the group calls a “foreign bully.”
Treehugger
Publicly denounce our tar sands and we will urge our citizens to boycott your products! The site itself is pretty jarring, Chiquita Conflict
EthicalOil.org is calling on all Canadians to boycott Chiquita brands until they reverse their boycott on Canada’s ethical oil!
Canada’s oil is the most ethical in the world.
It’s produced in Canada, where workers enjoy the highest standards and rights, women and minorities are treated as equals and environmental standards and regulations are strictly enforced. Chiquita should take a stand against conflict oil from oppressive regimes that abuse human rights and have no concern for the environment.
By rejecting Canadian ethical oil, Chiquita will be relying on conflict oil from some of the world’s most dubious regimes – countries with serious human rights issues like Iran, Saudia Arabia and Venezuela.
They fail to mention the fact that tar sands can be the dirtiest and most environmentally damaging.
Chiquita brands are not the only company to do this, Forest Ethics has a list if 15 companies to "clean up their transportation footprints".
Producing transportation fuel from Canada's Tar Sands is more destructive, polluting, and carbon intensive than other ways of producing transportation fuel. With the help of ForestEthics, 15 large businesses and one US city have publicly announced actions they have taken to reduce the environmental and social impacts that come from fossil-fueled transportation.
Here are some facts about the newest examples of the accelerating corporate shift toward a cleaner energy future:
- Walgreens1 has clearly decided to eliminate Canada's Tar Sands from its transportation footprint.
- Chiquita2 has committed to identify any connections between Chiquita’s fuel providers and Tar Sands refineries and to pursue the goal of eliminating fuel from those providers that is connected to Tar Sands refineries.
- Whole Foods3 has committed to the elimination where possible of its use of fuels produced by refineries that use feedstock from Canada’s Tar Sands.
- Trader Joe's4 has asked its transportation providers to eliminate fuels from Tar Sands refineries where possible and adopt a strategy of continuous improvement toward elimination of these fuels.
Will Canada ask its citizens to boycott these brands?
Canada knows that their tar sands future is in trouble.
Imagine if there is no demand for this environmentally damaging dirty fuel here in the US? This is to me so important that part of the equation is reducing demand!
But this is just one part of the story for me.
What is most alarming to me is the over reach that the Canadian Government is taking to strong arm companies that are going against their dirty energy future. Canada is building their economy on a dead fuel and a dead technology. And this is just another sign that their Government will go to to extremes to push their own agenda to the detriment to progress made here in the US.
Canada's Oil Ambitions and the Interference with US and International Progress on Climate Change
Salon has a damning piece entitled, Big Oil and Canada Thwarted US Carbon Standards with hundreds of emails to back up their claims, emails obtained by the same kind of law we have here, freedom of in formation. It shows how there was a concerted effort to interfere with State and National carbon standards by pouring millions of dollars of money into a supposed "grassroots" organization called the Consumer Energy Alliance to lobby against these new standards as the usual job killers. They push for, "Balanced Energy for America" and it has nothing at all to do with America but with Canada's burgeoning tar sands industry.
Interfering with State, National and International carbon standards and now pushing for boycotting companies that dare to avoid using tar sands in the transportation of there goods.
Free market or undo market influence? This is the advantage that the gas and oil industry has had for decades and why we have made so little progress in getting ourselves off of oil and gas.
It is about time that this ended.