Light Brigade

"No Tar Sands!" That's the message the activist light brigade delivered to attendees of the Sustainable Brands conference in San Diego this week when they crashed the corporate beach party -- via kayak flotilla. You read that right: light brigade via kayak flotilla. The activists weren't invited to the corporate beach party at the conference, but they came anyway because the message is so important. America's biggest corporations are also America's biggest consumers of oil -- meaning that unless they institute policies to avoid the dirtiest sources of oil, they're also the largest consumers of fuel derived from tar sands. Mining, refining, and transportation of tar sands -- one of the dirtiest and most destructive sources of oil on the planet -- is an environmental and human catastrophe. But some companies, it seems, have not yet gotten the memo. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, as owner/operators of some of the largest private carrier vehicle fleets in North America -- with more than 100,000 cars and trucks combined -- haven't yet made the commitment to do the right thing and say no to tar sands.