Soft drink big Coca-Cola is sponsoring subsequent week’s COP27, an annual United Nations local weather convention the place international leaders collect to debate options for local weather change. This 12 months’s occasion is hosted in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

The Egyptian organizers cited the corporate’s efforts to cut back greenhouse fuel emissions to justify Coke’s presence on the local weather talks, the Associated Press reports. In the announcement, COP27 organizers applauded Coke for its plans to achieve internet zero in its European provide chain by 2040 and internet zero emissions globally by 2050. But that effort—if it even pans out—hardly makes up for the truth that Coca-Cola produces 3.3 million tons of plastic packaging annually, all whereas firm leaders have made bullshit excuses for not phasing out single-use plastics. And but by some means, this isn’t even Coke’s first participation at a COP: It was a “platinum” sponsor at COP22 in Morocco in 2016.

When the UN introduced the head-scratching sponsorship in September, it sparked outrage and impressed a petition calling for Coca-Cola to be eliminated as companion, which has garnered greater than 236,000 signatures. “The infiltration of corporations into the conference was sickening – the collected CEOs of the world’s biggest polluters, brazenly lobbying politicians to protect their interests and inflate their profits, telling us how we could save the planet if we bought more of their stuff,” petition organizer Georgia Elliott-Smith wrote on the webpage.

Corporate Accountability, a nonprofit that focuses on difficult companies and elevating consciousness about how giant corporations are destroying the atmosphere and eroding democracy, argued that main local weather talks shouldn’t have any company sponsors in a recent statement. The group warned that permitting corporations like Coca-Cola to sponsor local weather talks permits problematic companies to greenwash themselves within the public eye, as an alternative of being held accountable.

“Somehow, Coca-Cola fits the mold for Conference of the Party (COP) sponsor, even though its unhealthy products play an indisputable role in fueling the non-communicable disease epidemic across the world, its extractive practices continue to undermine people’s basic human right to water in the Global South, and its political giving advances voter suppression policies further disenfranchising Black people in the U.S.,” the Corporate Accountability assertion mentioned.

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“They spend billions of dollars every year, lobbying aggressively to advance their polluter-friendly and anti-climate policy proposals. It’s Coke this year, but every year, you can just fill in the blank,” Rachel Rose Jackson, the director of local weather analysis and coverage at Corporate Accountability, informed Earther.

Jackson argued that permitting corporations like Coca-Cola to be concerned in these talks simply offers them a possibility push for their very own finest pursuits, as an alternative of being held accountable.

Last 12 months’s COP26 in Glasgow was awash in company sponsors. Big Oil was technically not allowed on the 2021 convention, however its presence was felt. Fossil gasoline big BP was rejected as a Glasgow sponsor, however organizers nonetheless allowed the fossil gasoline big to take part in pre-COP conferences. Earther reporter Molly Taft attended COP26 and famous the numerous kiosks and bulletins from company sponsors like Amazon, automobile corporations, and airways. COP24, held in Poland in 2018, was sponsored by a large number of coal and fossil energy companies. Organizers additionally thought it was a good suggestion to fill the convention’s exhibit heart with literal coal shows.

These inappropriate company sponsors have angered inexperienced teams and local weather activists for years. Greta Thunberg, who known as final 12 months’s UN local weather talks a “failure”, just lately mentioned she wouldn’t attend COP27 because of the company greenwashing, The Guardian reported.

“This tells you everything you need to know about how compromised the climate talks’ integrity has become. There’s so much at stake; yet no round of talks will ever deliver until governments protect climate policy from the manipulative agenda of Big Polluters once and for all,” Jackson mentioned.