The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Eco-pandering Pepsi

Text Size

As an investor in PepsiCo, National Legal and Policy Center's Peter Flaherty had something to say today at the annual shareholders meeting, where he proposed that the company disclose its lobbying priorities. The eco-pandering execs rejected the idea, despite his appeal.

PepsiCo is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership a coalition of corporations and environmental groups. USCAP’s mission is to “quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” The House of Representatives has obliged in the form of the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the Heritage Foundation, this bill would destroy over 1.1 million jobs, hike electricity rates 90 percent, and reduce the U.S. gross domestic product by nearly $10 trillion over the next 25 years.

If consumers have to spend all their money on their electric bills, how are they going to buy potato chips? [PepsiCo owns Frito Lay]...

PepsiCo distributes Aquafina, reportedly the largest-selling brand of bottled water in the United States. Bottled water has come under attack by the same people who push global warming. They argue that Aquafina is just tap water anyway, so it needlessly adds to carbon emissions to bottle it and truck it around.

Instead of defending the rights of its own customers to buy its product, PepsiCo seeks to appease these critics by jumping on the global warming bandwagon. It has even come up with something called the Eco-Fina bottle that uses 50% less plastic, saving an estimated 75 million pounds of plastic annually. Of course, the activists aren’t fooled, accusing PepsiCo of “greenwashing.”

So for PepsiCo, it’s a slippery slope. Once you accept the dubious premise that your plastic bottles made from petroleum are destroying the earth, you end up having to support grandiose plans to save it, which of course necessitates massive government intervention in the economy.

Flaherty's entire remarks are worth a read, which further reveal what a bunch of politically clueless clods are running the company. And just whose bright idea was it to make consumers think Sierra Mist is nothing more than carbonated swamp water?

topics:
Global Warming, Environmentalism, Climate Change

View all comments (8) | Leave a comment

m| 5.5.10 @ 3:32PM

No surprise here. This was the Pepsi CEO's commencement address at Columbia Business School in 2005, with its infamous middle finger analogy:

http://www.businessweek.com/bw.....0_9852.htm

Nick| 5.5.10 @ 3:53PM

Too many corporations are run by limousine liberals.

This is why they give away their profits to bleeding heart causes. Like the Ford Foundation and Planned Parenthood.

They also lobby congress, to rig the system to their advantage, so they won't have to compete in a free-market.

It's about time stockholders started making a stink about the squandering of their profits.

JP| 5.5.10 @ 4:06PM

If US shareholders are still in the biz of getting the best value for thier buck, perhaps it is time for them to look elsewhere. That, or fire these over credentialed MBAs who appear more concerned about earning PR browny points with the Times and Orpah Winfrey than improving thier bottom line.

BP is probably one of the worst offenders. Thier performance has been average at best; yet, BPs leadership seems to have been too focused on going Green and satisfying the AGW proponents. It is ironic that one of the worst enviormental disasters in history occured on thier wells.

Cottontail Mather | 5.6.10 @ 12:12AM

Advocates of carbon dioxide sequestration need look no further than Pepsi- filling the nation's basements with unpopped cans of this quality product will hermetically secure the satanic gas until it can be safely injected into formations four miles under the Gulf Of Mexico.

Ask your BP filling station attendant to fill your Hummer whenever you gas up.

Bob Miller| 5.6.10 @ 9:04AM

Pepsi needs to get beyond fizzy thinking.

Sheila| 5.6.10 @ 10:44AM

I stopped buying Pepsi products after 9/11, when the female CEO (I believe a Pakistani) suggested the fault was our "insensitivity," not Muslim terrorism. Just another effect of globalization, which I utterly reject. Too many consumers won't put their money where their mouth and principles are, so I don't expect any of this to ever have an impact. Instead of stockholders making a stink, how about SELLING?

Jack Kinch(1uncle)| 5.6.10 @ 1:28PM

Eco-pandering Pepsi? That is spelled Pelosi.

Susan Grant| 5.6.10 @ 2:13PM

Tip#1. DON'T buy Aquafina in the Eco-Fina bottle.
The bottles are SOOOOO thin they split and break and water goes everywhere.
Tip#2. I sold ALL OF MY stock in PepsiCo because I'll be damned if my money will go to support these global warming/climate change idiots, enviro-terrorists. I DON'T drink Pepsi and any of the other Pepsi products and that is just fine for me and my family.