Patagonia is planning to take the $10 million it saved from what CEO Rose Marcario calls the Trump administration’s “irresponsible” tax cuts and donate it to environmental groups.
“Instead of putting the money back into our business, we’re responding by putting $10 million back into the planet,” Marcario said in a statement on LinkedIn. “Our home planet needs it more than we do.”
The California-based outdoor apparel company said the money will go toward groups defending the planet’s air, water, and land as well as those involved in the regenerative organic agricultural movement.
Marcario argued that the 2017 tax cuts, which reduced corporate taxes from 35% to 21%, benefit the oil and gas industry “at the expense of our planet.”
The company’s announcement comes amid a series of devastating reports detailing the effects on climate change and the progress of the global response to lessen its impact.
Trump has gone back and forth with his statements on whether he believes climate change is real, going as far as to say he didn’t believe the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s recently released National Climate Assessment.
In her LinkedIn statement, Marcario said that “the denial is just evil” and called the political response “woefully inadequate.”
“Our government continues to ignore the seriousness and causes of the climate crisis. It is pure evil,” Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard said in a press release. “We need to double down on renewable energy solutions. We need an agriculture system that supports small family farms and ranches, not one that rewards chemical companies intent on destroying our planet and poisoning our food. And we need to protect our public lands and waters because they are all we have left.”
Patagonia has a long history of environmental activism. Since 1985, the company has committed 1% of its sales to fund grassroots activism geared toward the preservation and restoration of the natural environment.
It’s not the company’s first time taking a stand against Trump. Last year, Chouinard announced plans to sue Trump after the president shrunk the size of two Utah national monuments.
