May 17th, 2010
Food & Water Watch officially filed a lawsuit in a Houston federal court today. The suit seeks a temporary injunction to halt BP’s Atlantis operations in the Gulf of Mexico. As oil from the Deepwater Horizon continues to leak off the coast of Louisiana, we are reminded that BP continues to operate Atlantis without critical safety documents. In the meantime, we have launched Spill the Truth, a special website created to warn about the potential dangers of Atlantis and to ask people to take action to help prevent another BP disaster. Read the full article…
May 11th, 2010
[This is the third of a three-part series exposing the truth about several American companies that have been depicted as leaders of environmental sustainability.]
Finally, let’s turn to Chevron Corporation. Diamond says he toured several Chevron-managed oil fields in Papua New Guinea, and “not even in any national park” has he seen “such rigorous environmental protection.” I’d venture a guess that he hasn’t yet visited the Ecuadorian Amazon. Read the full article…
May 4th, 2010
[This is the second in a three-part series exposing the truth about several American companies that have been depicted as leaders of environmental sustainability.]
Now let’s take a look at Coca-Cola, a company whose survival Jared Diamond claims is “deeply concerned with problems of water scarcity, energy, climate change and agriculture.” People in India probably don’t think that Coke cares about their agriculture or water rights.
Author Jared Diamond counted Coca-Cola in his personal list of company role models for corporate sustainability. Residents of India's northeastern city of Varanasi and the Palakkad district in the southwest might disagree with that sentiment. Photo by Meitene.
In Varanasi, a city in northeastern India, thousands of villagers have been actively protesting the presence of Coke in their community, complaining that the company has drastically reduced the water tables in the region by over-extraction of groundwater for their bottling plants. This has been taking place in a time of intense drought. In 2009, India had its worst drought year in 40 years, and the situation is especially bad in the northeast since the monsoons failed to come last year.
The India Resource Center has been working hard to challenge Coca-Cola’s presence in drought-stricken regions. Says Amit Srivastava, “Operating water-guzzling bottling plants in drought hit areas where the communities and farmers do not have access to water is highly unethical and criminal. Read the full article…
