This week LUSH, makers and marketers of “fresh handmade cosmetics” launched a surprising, uprovoked attack on Canada’s oil sands industry. Check it out at http://www.lush.ca/shop/tarsands/
In typical holier-than-thou language of environmentalists, they call the oil sands “the most destructive project on earth”, citing a litany of innacurate and unfounded accusations, claiming they just had to take “a loud and proud LUSH stand”. Their video uses a combination of frightening images, driving music and vulgar language to deliver a call to action to their idealistic young customers.
LUSH displays the same core belief system as those driving today’s environmental movement. They sell only “handmade” cosmetics, suggesting that mechanization is somehow evil; the founders of modern environmentalism held to the view that todays problems began with the industrial revolution and that man’s manipulations of nature are the cause of our ills, completly ignoring the incredible prosperity and quality of life it has brought to humanity. Nature, we are told, is pristine and beautiful and man is ruining it; earth would be a great planet if only mankind were not around to ruin it.
As the driver of the Canadian economy and the single most important, secure source of oil for the U.S., the oil sands industry can take credit for doing far more for humanity than LUSH. It is bringing prosperity and a qualityof life unprecidented in human history. Does this mean they can do whatever they want with the environment? Of course not; but, thankfully the industry is making great strides in moving forward with consistent GHG emission reductions, reduced water usage, new technologies to reduce or eliminate tailings ponds, and faster land reclamation. These facts will never appear in LUSH’s videos because theirs is not an attempt to debate this issue but one to further their own cause.
Which raises one glaring issue; what is LUSH’s pupose in launching this vicious attack?
Unlike others tauting the religion of environmentalism, LUSH has a core belief that “we should make a profit”. Now that’s quite inconsistent with the high moral ground upon which they try to stand. I wonder just how they get their lovely “handmade” products to their stores across North America? I’ll bet they have trucks, using gasoline or diesel coming from the oil sands. And what rpovides heat for their numerous retail outlets? I’ll bet it’s either natural gas or electricity generated from coal (at least their U.S. stores) – all made possible because the hard working men and women of our energy industry provide the fuel to drive businesses like LUSH.
When push comes to shove, LUSH is like any other business; they exist to make a profit. And they are doing so by making a fashionable attack on Canada’s oil sands, in order to sell more product to their idealistic young customers.
They should stick to bath bombs lest they get hit with some of their own shrapnel.
