the dharma blog

A little reading round-up this Tuesday morning. The first of three posts. 

I just got done reading Fortune’s profile of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of über-green outdoor clothing and equipment maker Patagonia. Most of the article is about the history of the non-traditional company and its enigmatic founder, but it also talks about where they are headed. It is there that I found not only a pretty frightening prognosis from Chouinard, but also what I thought was a nice turn of writing by Susan Casey:

“He has an easygoing persona, and he’s a California guy,” says Casey Sheahan, Patagonia’s 51-year-old CEO. (He got the job in March 2006.) “But he does demand excellence. People in this company would run through walls for him.”

That would be a shame. The walls are gorgeous, filled with nature photographs and paintings, including many of Mount Fitzroy, the South American peak that inspired Patagonia’s logo. The images evoke the solidity and timelessness that Chouinard has tried to instill in his brand, which makes it startling to hear what he has to say next: “We’re in the middle of a revolution. Every ten years we have to blow this place up.”

The reason for the upheaval? Climate change. “We’re getting into the surf market, because it’s never going to snow again, and the waves are going to get bigger and bigger,” Chouinard says. “I see an opportunity.” In response, he is opening Patagonia watersports shops along the coasts and in Hawaii. The first, in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Calif., opened in June 2006.

Frightening, yes, but Chouinard isn’t the first person I’ve heard say that the climate change fight is basically over (others include Will Steger and Dave Foreman) and that all there is to do now is make the most of the bad situation. That’s not quite my style, but I can appreciate the message he is trying to get across, and the fact that it is in the pages of Fortune says something in itself.

Much of the article focuses on how Patagonia has led the way in green manufacturing, single-handedly creating the market for organic cotton and even having a direct influence on the mighty forces of Wal-Mart. Hopefully the article will only spread Chouinard’s words even further through the ranks of America’s business leaders and help them realize a company can be socially and ecologically conscious and turn a profit. As the article begins by noting, etched on the front door of Patagonia’s headquarters is this quote from David Brower: “There is no business to be done on a dead planet.”