Oil Industry Goes Bananas Over 'Boycott'

The country's hypersensitive oil sands apologists cry foul over a banana company's effort to decrease its carbon footprint.

EthicalOil.org has launched its latest attempt to stay relevant by urging Canadians to stop eating Chiquita bananas due to the company's recent move to urge its partners to use the most efficient fuel sources possible. Unfortunately, extracting bitumen from Alberta's oil sands is the least efficient way to get the black stuff, as it creates 10 per cent more carbon emissions per barrel of oil than any other oil site on the planet. Indirectly, this means that Chiquita would prefer that its partners and suppliers not use fuel derived form the oil sands. EthicalOil.org has concluded that this means Chiquita is boycotting the oil sands, even if the international produce giant has explicitly said that they're not boycotting anything, they're just encouraging people to lessen their carbon footprint. So, EthicalOil.org, along with Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, have come out swinging against Chiquita, saying that they won't be buying any more Chiquita products until the "ban" is reversed.

Now, it's not as if Chiquita's record of human rights is exactly sterling. Before the company was rebranded in the 1980s as "Chiquita," the United Fruit Company played no small role in getting the democratically elected government of Guatemala toppled by U.S. forces in 1954. Their history before that point was similarly awash in massacres, strike-busting, corruption, bribery, and general third-world exploitation. Just as well, many of the companies that have operations in the oil sands, notably Suncor, have extensive dealings with the likes of the Syrian government and, until his rather timely death, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. So no, no one's hands here are all that clean. None of these companies believe in "ethics" beyond how they can use the concept in advertising campaigns. This entire tiff is probably the dumbest business-related story of 2011. We're just going to leave it at that and worry about more important things, such as what Raffi thinks about hockey violence.