Yvon Chouinard
Dear Commons Community,
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has given away his $3 billion business, redirecting its profits toward the fight against climate change.
The news caps a fitting end to the trail-blazing rock climber’s unconventional business career. As one of the best-known outdoor clothing and gear brands, Patagonia could easily go public. Chouinard could also find a willing buyer. Or, he could simply retire, retain his ownership and keep the business in the family.
Instead, Chouinard, 83, and his family are shifting their stake in the company to Patagonia Purpose Trust and a nonprofit called Holdfast Collective, which will redirect the company’s annual profits toward environmental causes. As reported by various news media.
“Earth is now our only shareholder,” Chouinard wrote in an open letter published yesterday. “Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth.”
Holdfast Collective is organized as a 501(c)4 corporation, according to The New York Times, which first reported the news. That structure has attracted wide criticism in recent years because it allows nonprofits to spend untaxed donations to influence politics while concealing donors’ names.
But the decision also reflects Chouinard’s open disdain for politicians he dismisses as “climate deniers.” During the 2020 election, Patagonia sold clothes with tags reading “vote the assholes out,” referring to politicians who downplay the threat of climate change.
“You’ve got the Koch family and the fossil-fuel companies: They’re going to be influencing the elections,” Chouinard told Fast Company in a 2019 interview. “We’ve got to do the same thing.”
Born to a French-Canadian family in Maine, Chouinard grew up aspiring to become a fur trapper. He learned to navigate the mountains while hunting coots and rabbits with falcons. As a young man, he joined a trail-blazing group of big wall rock climbers in Yosemite National Park, gaining notoriety for a nine-day first ascent of El Capitán’s North American Wall.
He entered the world of business as a self-taught blacksmith making hand-forged pitons – the spikes that climbers at the time used to support themselves while climbing up vertical walls.
Despite a self-proclaimed anti-capitalist streak, Patagonia – his second major company – catapulted Chouinard into the billionaire class.
In recent years, however, he has increasingly sought ways to use the company and its profits to champion his lifelong love of the outdoors. Patagonia has bankrolled documentaries and books extolling the virtues of wild fish and casting an unflattering spotlight on the hatcheries that dilute their genetics.
Arguing that organic doesn’t do enough to offset the extractive damage of industrial farming, Patagonia has embraced regenerative agriculture for both fiber and food products. The company set an aggressive goal to become carbon neutral by 2025.
Chouinard’s political bent often impacts the company in ways that extend beyond environmental causes. After the Supreme Court rescinded the federal right to abortion this summer, Patagonia trumpeted its policy of bailing out workers who get arrested at protests.
What an example he sets for other billionaires!
Tony
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