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Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey is not only delusional about healthcare, it turns out he’s also a first rate climate change denier.

Mackey upset many Whole Foods customers, employees and shareholders last summer with his Wall Street Journal op-ed trashing [7] President Obama’s health care reform efforts.  Now he’s back with a new bone to pick – “hysteria about global warming,” will “raise taxes and increase regulation” and lead to “socialism.”  Boo!

Mackey, “a vocal libertarian, an orthodox free-marketer, an admirer of Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and Ayn Rand,” spoke candidly [8] with The New Yorker’s Nick Paumgarten about his climate change denial.  Wacky Mackey reveals that one of the books on his nightstand is “Heaven and Earth: Global Warming—the Missing Science,” [9] a skeptic screed authored by Australian climate denier (and director of three commercial mining companies) Ian Plimer [10]. 

According to The New Yorker [8]:

“Mackey told me that he agrees with the book’s assertion that, as he put it, “no scientific consensus exists” regarding the causes of climate change; he added, with a candor you could call bold or reckless, that it would be a pity to allow “hysteria about global warming” to cause us “to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty.” One would imagine that, on this score, many of his customers, to say nothing of most climate scientists, might disagree. He also said, “Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures.”

Paumgarten probes many of Mackey’s wacky views, and notes how the “right wing hippie” and “unrepentant foot-in-mouther” is as much a liability as an asset to the company he co-founded.  Mackey admits that many of Whole Foods’ 54,000 employees “occasionally” consider him to be “more like a crazy uncle” than his self-described title as their “daddy.”

As disturbing as those descriptions are, the “crazy uncle” one rings true.  Mackey is bizarrely candid, as evidenced by his admission to the Wall Street Journal last August that at Whole Foods, “We sell a bunch of junk.” [11]

Climate change denial is a perfect example of the junk Mackey sells. 

Can we get a cleanup in Aisle 1 please?