Question: Why does a major grocery store chain need a “comprehensive policy addressing climate change”?
Answer: They don’t.
The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that one of the nations oldest and largest grocery firms, Kroger Inc., based in Cincinnati, OH rejected a shareholder proposal which called for the company to develop a comprehensive policy addressing climate change.
Having shopped at many a Kroger store myself, I’m glad I won’t be bombared with climate change messages while I shop. I really don’t need to know what the carbon footprint is on a can of soup or a head of lettuce.
Cincinnati-based Kroger (NYSE: KR) operates more than 2,400 supermarkets and multidepartment stores in 31 states.
Actually, the price increases that would attend such a policy are, by far, more irksome.
To give an example of how we are being bombarded by this stuff, I was listening to KCBS radio in San Francisco when I was on the freeway on an errand. They had a fellow on the air being interviewed about the smoky air and the question of health impact came up. He was the perfect propagandist saying all the right things like:
“While wood smoke isn’t as bad as vehicle emissions, the health impacts are similar”
Translation: While both kinds of particulates are just as bad for you, wood particulates aren’t nearly as “evil”.
Then he started into:
“Oh, and I want to remind people that wood smoke from wild fires is going to become more common with climate change …” that’s when my finger hit the button to another station.
Warmer = wetter
Cooler = dryer
There would be a lot more fires with a cooling climate than with a warming one.
Good for Kroger.
Did the loon mean that forest fires stay about the same, but that their smoke gets more common, or that fires get more common?
I’m glad he said “wood smoke from wild fires”, otherwise we wouldn’t know what kind of smoke wildfires generate.
Grass smoke wouldn’t be something they’d want to limit in California, thus the qualifier.
I too am sick and tired of being bombarded with the “green” message. Hopefully this is a sign that some of these companies are realizing that most of their customers will realize that they are being patronized, and just roll their eyes and move on. Like me.
Good for them!
A company’s objectives should be about providing value {preferably increasing value} to their customers and increasing value to the shareholders {their owners}. This is just another example of the environmental movement run amuck, trying to force their belief system on everyone without offering any value in return.
Just for that I’m gonna run to Kroger and pick up a few big fat steaks, some charcoal, mesquite chips and a 12er.
Noticed Wal Mart is starting to sell a lot of “Green”foods..Problem is the costs are on the average higher than traditional foods. Campbell Soups is a big one…Haven’t bought any yet and probably won’t until costs come down or We have no choice but to buy!
Wattsup: Is that prairie grass smoke or weed grass smoke?
“Problem is the costs are on the average higher than traditional foods.”
That is pretty much typical across the entire economy. It is called “greenwashing” or “environmental entrepreneurs”. They slap a “green” label on it and jack up the price because in many cases the ones who feel the most enviro-guilt and think they can make a difference simply by spending money on the right things are pretty well off. Rich white urbanites, mostly.
Thank you, Kroger!
Glad they still know what business they are in, and still know how to do that well.
SHOCK CLAIM: NO ICE AT NORTH POLE THIS SUMMER
http://drudgereport.com/
Good for Kroger. If they develop a “green” policy, might as well start flushing hundred dollar bills down the toilet for all the good it would do.
One of the old jokes (that may be true more often that it should) is that the best way to sell days old, beat up produce is to jack up the price and slap the “organic” label on it.
Here’s a GW policy for ya: links on the Kroger website to Watts Up With That and Climate Audit.
DR – Did something strike you as odd that the ice at the North Pole would disappear this summer because it is all first-year ice and more prone to melting? If it is really first-year ice, then there was no ice at the North Pole in 2007 and we know there was. Yet another AGW logical fallacy I would suspect.
Back on topic – good, I’ll shop at Kroger when in the U.S.
ZZMike, wasn’t it this past winter that some San Fran councilmember proposed banning all residential chimney fires? Pretty soon the wingnuts are going to pursue the bbq industry like Weber and Kingsford.
Various media do not seem to understand that we can and will change channels and/or use the off button.
I’m still ticked off that Discovery Home ditched some great building shows in favor of “green” programming which is amazingly lame. That channel no longer exists for me.
Wow, I can see it now, no freezers and no lights in the store. Of course the gas station would need to be shut down. Horses and carriages would deliver the products that are all packaged in new green materials. Anything that uses energy to produce anything would be banned. Hum, I wonder if China is doing this?
There is a million km more ice today than there was on this date last year in the Arctic.
All we are missing in this country is the “goose step”.
Where will all this silliness lead?
Way to go Kroger. I shop there every week, and I don’t need a bunch of climate change crap in my face. Its annoying enough at my own company which changed all the lamps to flourescents over this nonsense. All the people that are worried about climate change shop at Whole Foods anyhow, let them do the climate change nonsense in their store.
I wonder if Ol jimmy hansen is going to call for their arrest too? Probably not, he’s too busy not speaking as George and friends keep shutting him up. Must have been his evil twin brother in front of Congress.
I shop at King Soupers which is a sister company of Krogers. In the winter they keep the large front doors open and the heat on high near the doors. Thus, the climate changes dramatically as soon as you step in the store. Very welcome climate change, thanks!
Nevertheless, keeping the doors open seems incredibly wasteful. They should really stop doing that.
I was just going to google up Vaclav Klaus, because one of his essays from the occupied era of Czechia applied rather well to this. It was about quiet submission to the lie of communism.
But on the way to google somehow my browser got highjacked to this page,
ie 7 downloads.
“Plant a tree in the Carbon Grove”, it says, “Learn how to reduce your carbon footprint. To plant a tree, download internet explorer today!”
Bill Gates isn’t even retired officially yet and already Microsoft is going to hell in a handbasket.
Seems it’s official. The Arctic will be ice-free this summer.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,372542,00.html
We are getting closer to last year’s levels.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
Noticed Wal Mart is starting to sell a lot of “Green”foods..
I don’t eat green food other than green vegies. It will make you sick.
Good for Kroger. I think that I’ll do my weekly shopping exclusively at Kroger stores even if it means driving from my home outside suburban Washington DC to Atlanta.
Question: Would driving from DC to Atlanta weekly to shop be antithetical to the “green” movement? I wouldn’t want to rock the boat….(Maybe private Lear jet would be a better choice of transportation for weekly grocery shopping as the Goracle does?)
I have to stop taking those sarcasm pills.
Keep up the good work Mr. Watts.
Lubos has an interesting post on Greenhouse gas chemistry…and RC deafness.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/06/phytoplankton-surprisingly-destroys-lot.html
Concerning the ozone study:
Professor John Plane, University of Leeds said: “This study provides a sharp reminder that to understand how the atmosphere really works, measurement and experiment are irreplaceable.
Got that! Talking to you…you deniers at RC and GISS!
Further links:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003203.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140656.htm
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/06/phytoplankton-surprisingly-destroys-lot.html
Regarding the Artice Ice story, I noticed that the sea ice graph starts at 1979, so did the history of Earth apparently.
Re: the ice discussion; bear in mind that thickness is just as important as 2D spatial extent, and that prevailing weather patterns have a strong effect on the precise amount of melting experienced (such as wind patterns bringing ice last year to warmer waters, encouraging melt). Last year might be an anomalous point, it might not – time will tell. One can’t use two points of data to define or refute a trend.
Back to the topic at hand, I’ve never liked Kroger. That’s all we had back home in Kentucky; up in New York, though, we have Wegman’s which is a FAR superior supermarket. Kroger should worry about fuel costs impacting the prices of their goods before they worry about global warming.
REPLY: Looks like you are stuck with Krogers though, since the IP that WordPress automatically places next to your comment approval form is from the State of Kentucky.
Betcha these guys could, for example, find a half dozen different ways to keep their meats/fresh veggies cool more efficiently.
REPLY: I don’t think there is anyone here that would disagree with that. But an “efficiency policy” is somethign entirely different than a “climate change policy”.
I overheard the term “carbon footprint” used in conversation in the doctor’s waiting room yesterday. I gagged when I heard it, so they took me to a room right away.
Patrick Henry
You might notice that King Soupers uses an air curtain at the entrance that provides a barrier against not only insects, but also a barrier against air circulation between outside and inside. That would be the “heat on high” that you feel. This works rather well, except on the very windiest days, when they will close the doors.
I’d switch to Kroger but we already shop there.
statePoet1775 said, ‘All we are missing in this country is the “goose step”. Where will all this silliness lead?’
Good question. I think it leads here:
http://depriest-mpu.blogspot.com/2008/04/iwo-jima-global-warming.html
I wish there were a Kroger near here!!!!!! Our local market “Foodland” you can hear all about the “climate change effects” . The owner works at the store every day and you can here him talking to the customers having to explain the price increases that happen every week. Yep his energy bill went up nearly 200% in the last 6 months and is still increasing. The wholesale cost of his products both prepared and fresh have gone up about 40% and he is worried about this fall. Yep get rid of carbon and divert grain to bio-fuel. Oh well it would do me good to lose a few pounds of weight. ( a few kilos for our European friends).
By the way Dan T. they are already going after the BBQ folks both charcoal and gas especially in areas where there might be smog problems. One city that I know of is Birmingham Alabama.
Swampie I do agree with you the discovery Chanel isn’t what it used to be and I don’t watch it nearly as much as I used to.
Having said that I read the bible and in there it says you reap what you sow. I have a feeling we are going to reap what some one is sowing.
Only last week we had the pleasure of not having any tomatoes available in the local grocery due to the type fertilizer used in our neighboring country that grows lots of our produce. Yep green type, natural. collected regularly and spread evenly. I wish they would at least let it go through a heat.
The long term effect was that we now have tomatoes but they are 40% higher than before and now is the time when local producers are coming in to the market and prices should be dropping .
During WWII they had Victory Gardens, I think it is a good time to start growing them again.
uggghhh makes my head hurt.
Bill Derryberry
(poster formerly known as counters)
Yeah I’m spending this summer with my family back in Kentucky but I attend school in New York, which allows me access to the godly facility known as Wegman’s. That place is just simply amazing.
In this economy of rising fuel and food prices, Kroger’s has a bit more to worry about than climate change.
REPLY: Welcome to the light, Daniel.
Well, i used to be of this camp: “what’s the harm of one can of soup?”
But they add up. Take electricity –
How much electricity share does the internet take up?
The figures used most often are “about 1.5%.”
By itself, that does not sound like a very high figure, or one we can easily toss off as “our grandkids can worry about that one, it’s gas we have to consider.”
Google doesn’t think so. Google is investing in alternative energy; the future of the internet might be tied to future of alternative energy. GE also thinks so. Why?
How much of our electricity is going to access the internet? About 3-5% – also not a huge concern until you consider the rate of growth. There are 6B people on this planet, 1B have access to internet. China alone doubles each year. In a decade, you are no longer at 3-5%..you are at 15% total electricity, 2 decades, this is a very big deal. Who is thinking about this – and do they get together ever?
I went to a Peter Senge lecture a while back where the following quote opened the discussion:
If I reflect on what many organizations have been going through, the whole awareness of sustainability is growing because systems thinking in different forms is enabling us to see interdependencies that we have not seen in the past.
It is those interdependencies which make you conclude that it is more than stupid, it is reckless to think of commercial sustainability in isolation of either social or environmental sustainability.
–Andre van Heemstra, Unilever Management Board
More info on the talk here: http://socialventurelabs.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/no-fish-no-fishsticks/
Christine, the issue is: a major grocery store chain proposing (or some shareholders proposing it) to have a “comprehensive policy addressing climate change”, and rejecting it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with energy use, or alternative energies, or “sustainability”. Now, if they felt they needed to have a comprehensive energy use policy, then that would at least make some sense. Addressing climate change is utter foolishness, since we’re not causing it, nor is there anything we can do to stop it – climate never stopped changing, and never will.
What if instead the proposal was to have a “comprehensive policy addressing the Right To Life, or Intelligent Design? Perhaps they could also have policies on World Peace, Justice, Liberty, Disease,
Hunger? Where does it end?
I think they should address the unfair distribution of solar energy. The equatorial regions are receiving and largely wasting an unfair amount of solar radiation, while the rest of the world is not getting their fair share. We have months at a time of relatively weak and ineffective, sunshine, while the tropics are warm and sunny all year long.
How will Kroger’s address this unfair and devisive issue?
Did someone mention Ky? I live within 15 miles of 3 Coal Burning Electric Plants that Gore and Hansen wants to shut down. I bet that Ky does not use all that power, just shut em down and watch DC and the NE go dark.
It appears that U.S. “intelligence” analysis now is placing its eggs in the global warming basket, basing its prognostications on IPCC’s research.
http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20080625_testimony.pdf
Addressing the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and
Global Warming, Dr. Fingar, Chair of the National Intelligence Council says the forecasts are for temps to rise, and (a tendancy for) destabilizing effects around the world to follow, including potentially, regime changes.
There’s a section on grain and other commodities which suggests that those rising temps will actually increase North America’s grain harvest. And, in any case, the developed powers’ “coping mechanisms” will stand them in good stead.
To me it’s fascinating that government intelligence analysts are reading from the same crystal ball as the climate modelers, apparently making policy decisions based on predictions out as far as 2030.
If I can merely go on record with a short-term prediction… The forecast for tonight: dark.
Well it’s a 50-50 shot of no ice at the north pole thast ‘not excatly good odds either way so I would rather go with the 50% chance of ice.
[…] Anthony Watts points to a story about Kroger (a major food store, for those unfamiliar) saying “not going […]
As soon as I see or hear the word GREEN my brain shuts down. I cannot listen to this dribble anymore without having a brain seizure, so I have just stopped listening to the “end-of-the-World” nonsense. Day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, the in the tank media drills this into our heads. Our local newspaper her in Orange County, NY has let go about 6 columnists. But they have retained a “sustainable artist” to harangue and hector each Sunday with a nearly full-page regurgitation of every cliche of the doom and gloomers. Do this, don’t do that, drive this, buy local, eat this, stop living, stop breathing…yada, yada, yada.
The backlash is coming peeps! If you think that you are the only one sick and tired of the constant “Greenie Weenie” mantra, you are grossly mistaken. The intelligent segment of the population (definition: you and me) are already tired of Algore’s idiotic and highly flawed philosophy being shoved down our throats. Everywhere you turn, some pinhead .. even Fox News Channel has jumped onboard .. is talking about “climate change”/”Global warming”/”Climate Crisis,” etc. When in fact, there IS NO CRISIS! That is unless you want to worry about the “Climate Crisis” on Mars, and just about every OTHER planet in this solar system. The problem you see is .. THE SUN! Not your SUV.
All of this nonsense is perpetrated to separate YOU from more of YOUR MONEY! It is already having its effect, in higher gas prices, higher food prices (converting food grains to ethanol to “save the planet”). It will only get worse, especially if you people keep letting the Dimorats have their way! Meanwhile, Algoron — the dumbest man on the planet — is getting rich and laughing his way to the bank. Especially if they keep insisting that we must convert to “alternative fuels” today, instead of drilling for oil IN THIS COUNTRY NOW! At best .. even with an “Apollo program”-type commitment to alternative fuels, we are 15-20 years off. Meanwhile, the car in MY driveway (I don’t know about yours) won’t run on solar or windmill power which is what the Algorons regurgitate ad nauseum on all of the news programs!
DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW!!
Swampie:
I’m with you. The day Discovery Home changed over to “All Green, All the Time” is the day that I stopped watching them. I even sent them an email telling them that they were idiots, and that the Green fad will soon be over — the closer we get to $4.50/gallon for gas, and the price for bread/milk/meat. etc keeps getting less affordable because of this nonsense, the faster this “Save the Planet” crap will come to an end!
Besides .. they axed “Holmes On Homes,” and that is unforgivable!