"A Parasite on Public Health and the Planet"

"Protests in the Indian desert state of Rajasthan failed, despite studies showing Coke operations were even more of an environmental drain in dry areas with strained aquifers. Coke bottling persists in Rajasthan, Elmore found, because its politicians didn't want to risk losing their jobs. 'This was the brilliance of Coca-Cola capitalism,' he writes. 'By not owning its many distributors and by relying on native intermediaries in foreign nations, Coke could claim that it was a critical component of the local economy. . . . Once embedded in host communities, Coca-Cola became very difficult to dislodge, even in places where it caused serious environmental problems, because killing Coke meant killing jobs. In impoverished communities, . . . the argument of dollars and cents won the day.'"


Beth Macy in The New York Times reviews Bartow J. Elmore's Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism.


Salon runs an excerpt from Elmore's book.