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It’s also a challenge for the company to claim the environmental high road given the transport trucks that haul its frozen doughnuts across the country — let alone all the customers idling their cars in its drive-thru lineups daily — emit a lot of greenhouse gases.

“We want Timbits® and honey crullers with our coffees, not bitumen and climate change,” stated the petition from New York-based SumOfUs, which bills itself as a global movement of consumers, investors and workers holding corporations accountable for their actions.

“We love our Iced Capps™ but we love the polar ice caps more,” it said,

And its members in B.C. and Ontario — two provinces where Enbridge has contentious pipeline projects — don’t want Big Oil’s propaganda disrupting their morning cuppa joe.

Disregarding the role of consumers in contributing to climate change is an inconvenient truth for many in the environmental movement. Those coffee beans were all shipped overseas from Africa or South America. It’s the same for wine imported from France, Italy or Australia. Your reusable mug and recycling aren’t going to get it done if you’re committed to averting the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Giving up morning coffee entirely — and the worldwide agrarian-industrial complex that sustains the global addiction — might help lessen the demand for oil.

That petition hasn’t gained as much support among latte-sipping consumers. And don’t expect it ever will.

To be fair, Albertans are hardly any better when it comes to passing the buck on environmental responsibility. Public opinion polls in the province suggest a majority of people oppose a broad-based carbon tax that would hit consumers as well as business in favour of a system that only targets industry.

However, they’ll still get together for coffee at Tim Hortons to gripe about all of it. And the price of gasoline too.

Stephen Ewart is a Calgary Herald columnist

sewart@calgaryherald.com

twitter.com/stephen_ewart