Don't Buy Coca-Cola Plastic Promise - Jim Hightower, Humor Times

It’s only an attempt to squirm out of a promise to curtail the contamination of our planet with Coca-Cola plastic waste.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King was renowned for his frequent malapropisms and contorted logic, and now Coca-Cola wants to borrow his tactic to get out of their previous Coca-Cola plastic waste reduction promise.

For example, the Governor once refused to back a bill pushed by loan-shark lobbyists — but he pledged that it if the legislature passed the thing, he would sign it. Well, the bill did pass … but Bruce vetoed it! The lobbyists swarmed him, crying that he had given his promise. Yes, the governor conceded, but “we all know that a promise is not a commitment.”

Apparently, Coca-Cola executives have been studying Gov. King’s verbal backflip, for the multibillion-dollar corporate behemoth suddenly announced this month that it was adopting his “a-promise-is-not-a-commitment” ploy. The beverage barons are using King’s dictum to squirm out of the widely ballyhooed promise they made just a few years ago to curtail the corporation’s contamination of our planet with Coca-Cola plastic waste.

Coke has been the world’s No. 1 plastic polluter six years in a row, so its previous pledge to cut its plastic trash in half by 2030 would’ve had a major impact. But, oops, the honchos now say that was never a commitment — just a “voluntary environmental goal.” That goal, they explain, has “evolved,” so now they’re focused on imposing “efficient resource allocation to deliver lasting positive impact.”

You don’t need a BS detector to translate that corporate gobbledygook. Coke’s “resource allocation” will defund its environmental efforts to further enrich its wealthiest shareholders, delivering a “lasting positive impact” for those few. And for the many who will continue absorbing the deadly petropolymers that Coca-Cola carelessly discharges into our air, water, soil, food and bodies — well, tough luck.

Don’t be fooled by voluntary anti-pollution requirements. I promise you, they are hoaxes.

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Jim Hightower

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow," Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower is a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, spreading the message of progressive populism all across the American grassroots.

He broadcasts daily radio commentaries that are carried in more than 150 commercial and public stations and on the web.