Who is John Mackey?

John Mackey started his original health-food store, Safer Way, in a garage in Austin, Texas, in 1978. Local farmers would drop off produce from junky old pickups, and hippie bakers would supply nut loaves and 20-grain bran muffins. Originally selling only fresh fruits, vegetables, and bread, Whole Foods now offers everything from beer to fresh steaks at more than 150 stores throughout the U.S. and a handful in Canada and the U.K. Mackey has led the fight to put organic on the mainstream map and make it more available to average folks. For this, he has been considered a hero of part of the environmental movement. He is also extremely forward thinking in the realm of employee benefits and is personally incredibly philanthropic. He has reduced his salary to $1 a year and donates his stock portfolio to charity. He has also set up a $100,000 emergency fund for staff facing personal problems. He wrote, “I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart.” Mackey prefers to take a longer view of financial health than the quarterly model favored in the corporate world. He does this to accommodate forward-thinking projects like humane animal-treatment standards. This, coupled with Mackey’s vegan lifestyle, would seemingly make him exactly the kind of person that could help lead the environmental movement. However, Mackey is sometimes loosely defined as an antihero of the environmental movement. He makes no apologies for running what has now become a large, consolidated operation that imports produce and displaces local farmers and small vendors. He has also stated his support of the book “Heaven and Earth: Global Warming—the Missing Science”. In an interview with the New Yorker from February 2010, Mackey stated that he agrees with the book’s assertion that “no scientific consensus exists” regarding the causes of climate change. He added that it would be a pity to allow “hysteria about global warming” to cause us “to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty”. What might be his train of thought be here? How is it that a smart entrepreneur with a rather “raw” vegan lifestyle doesn't believe in global warming? Are we missing something or is he?