Of course, Coca-Cola had no problem sucking up local water supplies around the world and exacerbating the problem, but hey, bygones! I guess we should be grateful that they’re raising concerns now, in effect, asking the feds to stop them from hurting themselves (and incidentally, others):
WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.
Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.
“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”
Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change.
The Egyptians love Coca-Cola. Lots of them were sipping on Coke’s when they went to the polls last week. Well, at least the one third (38%) of Egyptians who actually voted were. They were voting on a new constitution which passed by 98% to 2%. That total seems a little odd doesn’t it? We can conclude from this lopsided victory that the Egyptians are very pleased with their military dictatorship. Then again three big bombs did explod in Cairo this morning. So maybe not. Please note that the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t any more responsible for all of the bad things going on in Egypt as Obama is for all of the bad things going on in America. Although that’s what the Fascist warmongers would have us believe.
When H2O gets to be in short supply, it becomes expensive to water down the sodas.
Im, where does the 38% figure come from?
What is this, Seabright? Are you wimping out? What is this talk about droughts, and floods, and unpredictable variability? You can’t be in Corporate and be worried about sugar supply from your no doubt monoculture cane and beet fields, can you?
My God, man. Buck up, wash your mouth out with some high fructose corn syrup, go stand in a corner, and don’t come back until you repeat 100 times out loud “the market always provides, the market always provides, the market always provides”.
You damn hippie.
“as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force”
I know it’s gallows humor, but I laughed out loud when I saw this.
Give ’em a couple of hundred more years (which the planet doesn’t have) and they may even realize that actions have consequences.
Quixote, I think they realize actions have consequences. What they will never realize, until Mother Nature snuffs them, is that actions have consequences FOR THEM TOO and not just the 99%.