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A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

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Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#41

Post by simion314 »

mtgx wrote: post #7

While Coca-Cola deserves a great deal of blame for this (obviously), surely the bigger part of the blame should go to the local government for allowing them to do this? Isn't the people, and therefore the government, sovereign? Or are there some laws/constitutional issues that would prevent the government from restricting Coca-Cola in taking all the water? By the way, this is why corporate-written and corrupt treatie…

This reminds me about the banana industry, I read about governments being changed by US but I can't find anything now on google since there are tons of articles about the "banana wars" where poor countries are exploited by big corporation that are aided by US gov(because politician get lot of donations from banana industry. My point is that even non-corrupt countries could be fed by companies.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#42

Post by conanbatt »

3pt14159 wrote: post #39

Water is a tricky thing. Take almonds for example. One almond takes about 4 liters of water to produce. With 1.6 billion pounds of almonds grown per year we're looking at almost 2.5 trillion liters of water. This is just one nut. Pistachios and walnuts use similar amounts of water, so do other things we eat like broccoli. I blame Coca-Cola and their ilk for the obesity epidemic, but water shortages are more caused by…

Are the 4 liters of water being shot out to space?

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#43

Post by conanbatt »

pdog wrote: post #33

Water is a scarce resource. A market system is the objectively the best mechanism for allocating scarce resources. (Of course, if you object to a pure market system, the government can regulate the market and subsidize residential tap water.) Why isn't water priced accordingly?

> Water is a scarce resource.

Water is not scarce! We got plenty. The model of water being a limited resource we have to save does not represent an economic reality.

We have an entire planet worth of water and we are not shooting it out to space. We know how to use it, how to clean it, etc. We will never run out of water. We might run out of 'free' water, but thats the whole point of using a resource, consuming it.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#44

Post by Alex3917 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #39

Water is a tricky thing. Take almonds for example. One almond takes about 4 liters of water to produce. With 1.6 billion pounds of almonds grown per year we're looking at almost 2.5 trillion liters of water. This is just one nut. Pistachios and walnuts use similar amounts of water, so do other things we eat like broccoli. I blame Coca-Cola and their ilk for the obesity epidemic, but water shortages are more caused by…

> Pistachios and walnuts use similar amounts of water, so do other things we eat like broccoli.

What does this really mean though? In New England we have Walnut trees growing everywhere, and no one is watering them. If anything they're locking water into the soil that would otherwise just evaporate.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#45

Post by conanbatt »

_h_o_d_ wrote: post #20

Why did somebody just change the title here on HN from the original 'Coca-Cola Sucks Wells Dry in Chiapas, Forcing Residents to Buy Water'?

Hopefully because its a gross title. It should be more like "Local government sells to coca-cola most of its water forcing residents to buy water"

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#46

Post by corpMaverick »

conanbatt wrote: post #42
3pt14159 wrote: post #39

Water is a tricky thing. Take almonds for example. One almond takes about 4 liters of water to produce. With 1.6 billion pounds of almonds grown per year we're looking at almost 2.5 trillion liters of water. This is just one nut. Pistachios and walnuts use similar amounts of water, so do other things we eat like broccoli. I blame Coca-Cola and their ilk for the obesity epidemic, but water shortages are more caused by…

Are the 4 liters of water being shot out to space?

Neither in the case of Coca-Cola. Somebody is going to pee that back to the earth.

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#47

Post by clarkevans »

wyc wrote: post #34

> ...the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total. So the government gave Coke the permits, Coke used under 80% of the agreed amount, and now it's a crisis? It has the markings of some severe utilities planning blunder. > "The city has been growing significantly since the…

In many cases, getting a government permit doesn't necessarily mean assent of the population. This divergence of representation is a pretty important problem. How could we use technology (and/or novel organizational structures) to help... without making things worse? Could we, for example, have a "PolicyBook" that connects people to their representatives in a way that gives responsible politicians (who aren't corrupt) credibility, and makes those who play for private benefit of their friends easily recognizable?

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#49

Post by CoreXtreme »

This is exactly, why I use functional programming language and prefer Pespsi even tho it tastes bit worse.

The facadian distance between Pespsi and Cocola water molecules is about 10nm which makes Pepsi efficient in terms of water requirements.

If only Coke fans got that right, maybe one day...

Re: A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

#50

Post by koolba »

clarkevans wrote: post #47
wyc wrote: post #34

> ...the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total. So the government gave Coke the permits, Coke used under 80% of the agreed amount, and now it's a crisis? It has the markings of some severe utilities planning blunder. > "The city has been growing significantly since the…

In many cases, getting a government permit doesn't necessarily mean assent of the population. This divergence of representation is a pretty important problem. How could we use technology (and/or novel organizational structures) to help... without making things worse? Could we, for example, have a "PolicyBook" that connects people to their representatives in a way that gives responsible politicians (who aren't corrupt…

> In many cases, getting a government permit doesn't necessarily mean assent of the population.

That's the real problem in a lot of these situations and really with any long term obligation or resource grant bestowed by a government to a private entity. It doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the people in the future or, in many cases particularly in the third world, the present.

Short of restricting the maximum duration for such a grant, I don't see many ways to avoid this situation. Even that may have negative consequences as a company wouldn't want to invest in a municipality if the resources it'll be leveraging may not be available in the future. The uncertainty may make it a non starter.

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