Fukushima and after

I remember sitting on steps near the Elephanta Caves during a school trip and gazing across the water at the Trombay research facility where India’s nuclear programme was born. The nation’s first reactor, a gift from the French, was framed against a thickly forested hill, but no matter how graceful its dome looked -- and it did look serenely elegant -- the name Apsara seemed a bad fit. I had recently seen the Jane Fonda / Jack Lemmon starrer, The China Syndrome, about the near meltdown at Three Mile Island, and felt keenly how catastrophic Trombay could prove for the millions who lived close by.
One of the reasons I approved strongly of the civil nuclear agreement between the United States and India was its mandate of international monitoring. While Left and Right bewailed our supposed loss of sovereignty, I figured the more inspectors we had the less likely a Chernobyl-style disaster would be, and hoped the relatively minor leaks that have been reported now and again would be curbed. In the final agreement, India separated defense facilities from civilian power plants, and Trombay, the primary production centre of plutonium used in India’s atomic weapons, was placed in the first category. Which meant no external inspectors would get a look inside, and it would be a prime target for bombing in case of any war.
A year ago, Fukushima happened, and every nation in the world that had nuclear power in its mix of electricity generation, or was considering adding it, did a rethink. Germany appears to be giving up on nuclear power entirely, and other nations are cutting down. In India, there’s a strong protest against the Russian-built Koodankulam plant in Tamil Nadu which is ready to start operations, and the proposed Jaitapur plant to be built by Areva SA of France in Maharashtra.
I understand why protests have been concentrated in Koodankulam and Jaitapur: the fear of the unknown weighs on the minds of those in the region, while the same isn’t the case among people who have lived for years close to existing nuclear reactors, Trombay included. The protests, insofar as they focus on the issue of safety, are deeply misguided. It stands to reason that state-of-the-art nuclear plants will be safer than old ones. Many have suggested that the proposed Jaitapur facility relies on ‘untested’ technology, but it will have been very well tested by the time it is completed, since a number of similar plants will have gone critical in other countries by then. If activists are truly worried about nuclear safety, they ought to demand the decommissioning of old power plants, for an accident is far more likely to happen there than in Koodankulam or Jaitapur.
A few environmentalists supported nuclear energy in the past, but most viewed it negatively, and whatever ambivalence any of them felt has been eradicated in the past year. Their major grouse is, of course, that nuclear plants and spent fuel storage facilities are potential epicenters of utterly horrifying accidents. Their safety record, though, is pretty good, all things considered. Even Fukushima ended up costing just two or three lives. We’ve had nuclear tech for seventy years, and in that time there’s only been one accident anywhere in the world that claimed a substantial number of casualties. When the tsunami of 2004 hit the Tamil Nadu coast, parts of the Kalpakkam nuclear power plant were flooded. The Emergency Control Centre built for such an eventuality remained shut through the crisis. But, despite this predictably pathetic response, the reactor itself stayed stable. Which is why anti-nuclear activists raised no alarm in Tamil Nadu after 2004 the way they have done over the past twelve months.
The reason a few environmentalists favoured nuclear power in the past was because it's pretty clean energy, especially compared to the alternative: coal-fired plants. Coal burning doesn't kill people as dramatically or decisively as nuclear radiation, but cancer hotspots near thermal power plants have been observed around the globe, suggesting that many thousands of deaths can be put down to pollution from coal burning.
Indian Greens, unfortunately, live in a dream world where they pretend to themselves that we can find an alternate development model that does not require increasing electricity output, or else that sufficient power can be generated from the wind and the sun (even the former isn’t particularly clean). To understand what will happen as a consequence of closing down our nuclear programme, one can look at Germany. Easily the world’s most ecologically sensitive large nation, it has decided to phase out nuclear power by 2022, but hasn’t increased its renewable energy targets to compensate. Germany aims to have 35% of the nation’s electricity coming from renewables by 2020, which is very ambitious. The new gap created by the shortfall in nuclear supply will have to be filled by squeezing an extra 10 GWh from burning fossil fuels, mainly coal. That's what environmentalists need to face head-on when they make arguments against nuclear energy.
The Indian government’s response to the Koodankulam protests, meanwhile, has been typically ham-handed. It has blamed American-funded NGOs; expelled a German for financing anti-nuclear demonstrations, though the poor chap barely had enough money to house and feed himself; and labelled activists anti-national instead of mounting a positive education campaign to counter the democratic agitation. It's difficult to take sides when one has a demagogic administration on one side and an irrational protest movement on the other.

NDTV's false propaganda about ports

Anybody who has watched NDTV down the years knows that Prannoy Roy (who appears to have instructed correspondents to highlight his educational achievements: Yesterday one of them said, "Prannoy... I'm sorry, Dr.Roy") loves liberalisation and the stock market. Every February 28, he suggests the best way of judging the budget is tracking the market's intra-day movement.
But there's one business Prannoy Roy seems to abhor: ports.
NDTV has been conducting a drive to Save India's Beaches. Perhaps because of worries this would be regarded as elitist, this has now morphed into a campaign to Save India's Coast. Roy emphasises it's not about people tanning themselves on golden sands but about the livelihoods of poor communities. The programme is sponsored by Toyota Etios. It stands to reason that the manufacturer of machines that cause massive amounts of pollution is chosen to fund an environmental crusade.
Perhaps the problem is with the medium itself. Is television well equipped to handle complex issues while maintaining ratings? TV programmes depend on assigning blame to easily identifiable targets. But there is no single predominant cause of beach erosion. Factors that can influence such erosion include dams on rivers, ports that don't dredge adequately, rising sea levels resulting from global warming, sand mining and catastrophic events like the 2004 tsunami. Of all of these, Roy has elected to concentrate almost exclusively on ports as the culprit threatening beaches.
Beach erosion, in turn, is blamed for all kinds of ills for which it's not responsible. In last night's programme, a correspondent from Madras spoke of salinity of water, and Roy annotated this by saying that, as beaches are destroyed, sea water tends to get further inland and contaminate wells. This is not false as an abstract statement, but is absolutely not the reason why Madras's wells have turned more saline. The cause of that is overuse of groundwater, leading to depletion, leading to tubewells being sunk ever deeper, until groundwater levels fall below sea level.

"We have far too many ports. We have a 180 odd ports, that's nuts", Roy complained last night. Well, we have over 180 television channels, and that's nuts too. But wouldn't it be worse to forbid the entry of new channels? Wouldn't that be against the free market principles Roy otherwise espouses? Of course, he has never suggested markets ought to be unconstrained by regulation; but then, there ARE regulations governing ports. Ports are required to ensure they do not block the drift of sand, so beaches continue to be replenished. The point is not to disallow ports but ensure they obey the law of the land, and punish them if they fail to comply. It would help if NDTV did an investigative report on ports that skirt regulation and harm the environment as a result.
NDTV's normal go-to person for environmental causes is Sunita Narain. You can read what I think of her operation, the Centre for Science and Environment, here. Among a series of platitudes on the programme, she indicated it's important that our development move inward. So should we set up a harbour in Chattisgarh next? A dockyard in Sikkim? And is the CSE supportive of any large extant industrial projects in the hinterland?

China, by the way, has 2000 ports.

Thoughts on Bhopal

The TV channels have worked themselves into a lather about Warren Anderson, and I don't see why. The then Chairman of Union Carbide need never have stepped on Indian soil after the gas leak. He obviously came with some deal having been struck in advance. Even without such a deal, he'd have been bailed after a few days of custody.
It's always convenient to blame the foreigners. So what if the Bhopal plant was entirely under Indian management, as required by Indian law? So what if we don't yet know what triggered the leak? So what if we've put no measures in place to cope with another such accident?
We've never been too fussed about safety. I remember being part of a crew filming a corporate documentary a few years ago. The person assigned to help us was from the safety department. His primary job during the shoot was ensuring that everyone in the frame had hard hats on. As soon as the camera stopped rolling, the hats would come off.
What sense does it make to press charges of culpable homicide when what happened was clearly negligence? Criminal negligence, no doubt, but nonetheless negligence. Unless, of course, we accept the Union Carbide theory that it was sabotage.
Intention is central to culpability. Absent an intent to kill, it makes no sense to put people away for ten years, even if their negligence resulted in 10,000 deaths. The problem lies not with the sentence but the delay in getting to this point. It has made India an international laughing stock.
The other issue relates to the compensation of 470 million dollars. I don't believe it was such a trivial amount as is being made out. The government should've accepted the initial offer of 350 million dollars and used it to build health care centres, and disbursed it quickly to victims. Instead it demanded over 3 billion and finally had to accept the 350 million plus interest. And after it got the 470 million, it kept most of it in a bank account, like it would do any good there.
It's true Exxon paid more for the Exxon Valdez leak. But that was in the United States. It makes no sense to demand we be treated on par with the US in such matters. People earn more in the US, they will naturally be compensated in accordance with their earning power.
We deal with such disparities all the time. When I write for a foreign publication, I get paid significantly more than when I write for an Indian one. Time Out, London would pay me far more for an article than Time Out, Delhi. That's just the way it is. It would be stupid of me to ask for equity in payments here in India. Union Carbide's multinational status didn't oblige it to pay the same to Indians that it would to Americans. If such conditions were laid down, no foreign companies would come to India in the first place.

Responsible leaders, unreasonable public

The BBC World Debate this week featured the heads of state of Mexico, Australia and the Maldives, plus a South African minister standing in for Jacob Zuma. Since it was broadcast from Copenhagen and not Delhi, Suhel Seth failed to make the panel.
The debate highlighted the recent split between threatened island nations and the heavyweights of the developing world, which has put a new spin on existing tensions between industrialised and emerging countries.
After an Indian-African activist in the audience condemned the baby steps being discussed at the Copenhagen conference, the presenter Stephen Sackur asked if politicians could do more than their constituencies allowed. The man replied that the public was eager, but politicians were letting citizens down. As I've pointed out in a previous climate change post, surveys tell a different story. In most countries, the majority is skeptical about anthropogenic global warming, and is willing to go along with emission cuts only if they're relatively painless.
In nations like the US and India, administrations are currently ahead of their citizens in their willingness to commit to sacrifices, small but significant, that might help contain AGW.
The presumption that common folk are invariably wiser than their elected leadership can be refuted by the recent example of Swiss citizens voting to ban the erection of minarets. It is hard to imagine a government that would enact such an idiotic measure. In California, voter initiatives have paralysed the budgetary process, leading a number of commentators to dismiss the state as ungovernable.
Despite being wrongheaded, the environmental activist's comment drew the loudest applause of the evening in that Copenhagen auditorium. Nothing gets people united like bashing political leaders. It's the default option for lazy thinkers.

Climate of Opinion

A piece that was to appear in a newspaper this morning, but was spiked.


In Bombay in the 1970s, the rains would fade at the end of September and return only in June, at least that’s how I remember it. The pattern’s been disturbed in recent years. Heavy showers surprise the city in odd months, as they did a few weeks ago. That downpour barely inconvenienced office-workers, but had serious consequences in rural Maharashtra, where tomato farmers saw their year’s profit washed away in hours. Across the globe, people in traditional occupations, from watermelon growers in the Mekong delta to reindeer herders in Finland, their livelihoods threatened by unseasonal rains, are finding the old certainties no longer apply. Anecdotal evidence is insufficient ground for concluding a significant change is upon us, but in this case it is aligned with data which most experts consider unequivocal, and which suggests that higher temperatures recorded in recent decades cannot be ascribed to normal climatic fluctuations.
We know for certain that atmospheric carbon dioxide traps heat. Considering that human activity has led to an almost 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 within a short span of time, it stands to reason that this has played a role in warming the globe. Yet, even as the science of climate change has gained an ever firmer footing, public belief in the hypothesis has slipped significantly. Only 36% of Americans now agree carbon emissions are making the earth warmer, down from 47% a decade ago. A similar downtrend is visible in Europe and Australia. In India, only one in three adults has even heard of climate change.
The figures are bad news for leaders who've gathered in Copenhagen to settle on a plan to spew less CO2. They have to sell a prescription of higher taxation and stricter regulation to increasingly skeptical electorates. Their cause has not been helped by the release of hacked emails from a few climate scientists that imply data was being fudged to fit a preconceived conclusion.
I’m not surprised that wariness about the climate change hypothesis has grown as nations move to implement potential solutions. The shift to political action brings science into an arena where it is judged primarily on ideological grounds rather than on its own terms. Right-wingers in the United States, who dislike big government and multilateral agencies, find it easy to say, “The science is shoddy, misleading, incomplete”, rather than, “Our actions are altering the climate and will hurt hundreds of millions of vulnerable people, but that’s no reason to pay more for emitting CO2”. The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, both right-wing media outlets controlled by Rupert Murdoch, have led the attack on the science of climate change.


In 1859, John Tyndall demonstrated that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and thus helps keep the earth warm and habitable. That same year, Charles Darwin published his monumental On The Origin of Species. In the hundred and fifty years since, the ideas of Darwin and his followers have become the basis of all biological science. We now possess mountains of evidence that humans descended from other animals. Despite this, acceptance of the theory has dropped in the US in the past two decades. A recent survey concluded that a mere 14% of American adults agree evolution is ‘definitely true’, while a third say it is certainly false. The number who are unsure has jumped three times since 1985, to 21%, thanks to attacks on evolution by conservative Christians.
Like any scientific advance, evolution has attracted its share of hoaxes, from Piltdown Man to Archaeoraptor. These are seized upon by ‘creation scientists’ to discredit the entire discipline, just as the hacked emails have been gleefully publicised by climate change deniers as proof that the whole notion of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is fake.
Those questioning the broad consensus on AGW see themselves as underdogs, champions of free thinking battling an entrenched establishment. They remind me of people who, in the 1990s, rejected the relationship of HIV to AIDS. The HIV virus was isolated in 1983 and understanding of AIDS progressed rapidly enough for the first antiretroviral drug to be produced by 1987. In 1988 the Institute of Medicine of the US Academy of Sciences stated, “The evidence that HIV causes AIDS is scientifically conclusive”. Even as the disease was brought under control in the developed world, it exploded in poorer countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa.


One of the most prominent leaders of the region, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, was drawn into the orbit of AIDS deniers. He grew convinced that the disease afflicting Africa was not the same as the one the West was battling. Antiretroviral treatment, he claimed, was toxic, and the whole notion of an African AIDS epidemic a conspiracy hatched by racist whites and multinational pharmaceutical companies. He obstructed the sale of drugs that could counter HIV and prevent its spread from mothers to infants. The result, according to a Harvard School of Public Health report, which compared South African infection rates with those of neighbouring countries that put in place antiretroviral treatment programmes, was that at least 330,000 more deaths occurred thanks to Mbeki’s embrace of unconventional ideas.
Climate change deniers are entitled to express their views freely, but South Africa's AIDS tragedy demonstrates there can be a dreadful cost attached to rejecting the scientific consensus. If misrepresentations by the Wall Street Journal and Fox News impact public opinion enough to wreck attempts at reversing global warming, Rupert Murdoch will have blood on his hands as surely as does Thabo Mbeki.

Food Exports and Carbon Footprints

At a wedding reception last evening I was seated next to a Danish journalist who looked at everything around him with an anthropologist's eye. Is this traditional wedding food? Is using forks and spoons traditional? Are these traditional dresses? Would you traditionally greet me with folded hands or a handshake?
Traditionally, shaking your hand would defile me, I considered saying. It would necessitate a long bath and a few extra prayers.
He told me he specialised in writing on food. Not reviews of new restaurants, but the impact of globalisation on eating habits and the environment. As if on cue, a waiter stopped by our table and offered us kiwifruit juice.
"Ten years ago, one couldn't get kiwifruit in India", I told him, "they only become available after food imports were liberalised".
He asked me where they were grown. I said I wasn't sure.
"New Zealand, perhaps?" he suggested.
"That's what the name indicates, but maybe it's from somewhere closer".
Back home after the reception, I looked it up, and found kiwifruit originated in China. They were was first planted in New Zealand about a hundred years ago by a returning missionary, and named Chinese gooseberries, though they are not berries. In the 1950s, an American company importing the fruit suggested a name change because anything Chinese was suspect in those days, and because there were high tariffs on importing berries. After one or two failed renamings, 'kiwifruit' was settled upon.
The Danish journalist did not like the idea of food travelling great distances before being consumed. He even expressed displeasure at butter cookies being exported out of his home country. I've come across this attitude often enough since the issue of food miles became a hot topic about five years ago. Brits in particular have gone bonkers over the idea that food transportation contributes massively to global warming and responsible individuals, therefore, are duty bound to eat local produce.
Studies published over the past twelve months reveal that the hue and cry over food miles is a lot of ado about nothing much. Christopher Weber and H Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University found that, for American households, 83% of diet-related greenhouse gases were created during the production of food. Only 4% were emitted during the transport of foodstuff from producer to retailer.
Mere facts, of course, aren't going to turn devotees of local food away from a cause that offers them opportunity to feel morally superior.
But consider the Dane for a minute. If he is an average European gent, about 1.5 tons of CO2 will be spewed into the atmosphere to keep him fed for a year. Presuming the Webers-Matthews formula works for Europe, 60 kilos of this will involve shipping and trucking from place of origin to location of sale. Meanwhile, his personal CO2 account has been inflated by 1.5 tons solely as a result of a return flight to Bombay for a friend's wedding.
I am not arguing that food transport ought not to be an issue at all. There's been at least one instance in the past when the lengths the trade will go to shocked me. Eight or nine years ago, on a trip to Delhi on the Rajdhani, the last time I used that relatively environmentally friendly mode to get to the capital, I was in a compartment with three businessmen. One of them peddled Amway, the second was in real estate and the third, a kid, was partnering his uncle in an ice cream operation. The kid outlined his business plan: since tariffs on food products had just been revised downwards, he would import ice-cream from the US and sell it in India. Crazy idea, I said to myself, they'll never get it off the ground. A few months later, at the end of dinner at a friend's home, the host produced a tub of Blue Bunny ice-cream. That was the brand the kid had spoken of.
As we dug into dessert, I said, "Funny, they're actually managing to sell American ice-cream in India."
"Baskin Robbins is American too, that's been here for a while", the host replied.
"No no, Baskin Robbins manufactures ice cream locally, Blue Bunny is made in the US and shipped across in a giant freezer."
The laden spoon the host was directing to his mouth stopped in mid-air. With his other hand he picked up the tub and examined it. A label stuck on it said, Imported Feb 2001, or some date like that. Looking ill, he put the spoon back down. Both he and his wife are very environmentally conscious. In fact, she's recently left her job in software to run an organic food store. I'd just managed to ruin their evening.
Blue Bunny didn't last long in India. Priced at the top end of the market thanks to shipping costs, it never achieved the scale it needed to be viable. I'm happy about that. Food miles skeptic I may be, but I wouldn't buy ice-cream made half-way round the globe.

Sunita Narain Hoodwinks the Media and Public Again

The Centre for Science and Environment periodically comes up with sensationalist 'studies' that are lapped up by the media, create confusion and panic among consumers, and garner loads of publicity for the organisation's head, Sunita Narain. I put the word 'studies' in quotes because the CSE's aim is not to produce useful information, but rather to attack multinationals and further its anti-globalisation agenda.
A previous scare they manufactured related to pesticides in carbonated beverages. At the end of this post, I've written about the duplicity involved in that report. For the moment, let's focus on the current kerfuffle. It concerns trans fats, and features prominently in the dailies this morning. The front page of the Hindustan Times asks: "How edible is your cooking oil?" The article, written by Chetan Chauhan and Sanchita Sharma, begins with the line, "You may be better off using butter than cooking oil, suggests a new study". The Hindu's headline reads: "Most edible oil contains harmful trans fat, study shows". The paper quotes Sunita Narain as saying, "The study found that if all oils are compared against Denmark standard, then no edible oil in the market could claim to be healthy".
That is NOT what the actual study found. On page 28, section 13.2, titled Trans Fatty Acids, the CSE's report states: "In 21 refined edible oil samples analysed for trans fats; trans fat content was in the range of 0.08 to 3.3%. Most of the samples were within the trans fat limit of Denmark of 2%... except Saffola Gold... and Shalimar's Classic Basmati."
Sunita Narain says no edible oil meets Danish trans fat standards; her own organisation's study says that 19 of 21 refined edible oils DO meet that standard, and 2 have trans fat levels slightly above the allowable limit. What's going on?
CSE has created the confusion by fudging two different categories of product: refined edible oils on the one hand, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils on the other.

A QUESTION OF CATEGORIES
The first of these categories consists of any oil you can buy in shops: sunflower, peanut, coconut, mustard, olive and so on. These oils have been used in cooking for millennia. The second category, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (PHVOs), refers to margarine, shortening and, in the case of India, vanaspati. PHVOs are created through an industrial process that was invented a little over a century ago. It involves taking liquid vegetable oil and modifying its chemistry so it turns solid. The higher melting point of PHVOs makes them easy to use in baking, and because they don't get rock hard in the fridge, they are convenient breakfast spreads.
PHVOs grew popular because they mimicked animal fats like butter while being much cheaper to produce. In India, Unilever marketed a PHVO which mimicked ghee, the country's favourite animal fat based cooking medium. Such ghee-mimicking PHVOs were given the wholesome sounding name vanaspati. Unilever's vanaspati brand, Dalda, became the cheap ghee-substitute of choice in most Indian homes, particularly in the north.
Until the mid 1990s, PHVOs were actually considered healthier than their animal fat counterparts. Margarine was supposedly better for you than butter, and Dalda preferrable to ghee. That's because, at the time, the main division health professionals made was between 'bad' saturated fats with large amounts of cholesterol and 'good' low-cholesterol unsaturated fats. PHVOs had lower levels of saturated fat than butter and ghee, and contained no cholesterol, and were therefore marketed as healthy substitutes for animal fat based mediums.

THE EVIL TRANS FAT
Over the past decade and a bit, a more complex view of fat and cholesterol has come to dominate dietary thinking. We now speak of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, good (HDL) cholesterol and bad (LDL) cholesterol, essential fatty acids and so on. At the same time, the health industry has found a new super-villain in the form of trans fat. Trans fat occurs naturally in small quantities, but it is mainly created in the process of hydrogenating vegetable oil. PHVOs are chock-full of trans fat, and therefore, far from being healthier than animal fats, they're considerably worse for your heart. They are also, apparently, carcinogenic.

CSE's OBFUSCATION
The CSE study repeatedly confuses edible oils / cooking oils with vanaspati / PHVO. Section 6.2 is titled: Major Players of Edible Oil, but lists a number of vanaspati brands. In its conclusions in Section 14, however, the study makes a distinction between edible oils, which, as remarked upon earlier, contain very low levels of trans fats, and vanaspati brands, which have high levels of the same.

TAUTOLOGY
The central conclusion of the CSE report, then, is that vanaspati has unhealthy levels of trans fat. But that is true BY DEFINITION. Trans fats are created in the process of hydrogenating vegetable oil, and vanaspati is made by hydrogenating vegetable oil. To tout this as an unusual finding is a bit like printing a front page headline screaming, "Large Scale Tree Felling Can Deplete Forests", or, "The Oil You Cook With Contains Fat". My guess is that CSE began its investigations hoping to find high trans fat levels in refined cooking oil. Having failed to do so, and recognising that a report about high trans fat in vanaspati would get little attention, they decided to mix up the two categories, so a bewildered media would spread the word that refined cooking oil was dangerous.

THE COLA CONTROVERSY
A few years ago, Narain cooked data in similar fashion to 'prove' that fizzy drinks contained dangerous amounts of pesticides. The actual amount of deadly chemicals the study found in Coke and Pepsi was vanishingly small, so tiny that no lab could have detected it ten years ago. But that was still acceptabe science. Bad methodology was introduced when CSE compared the pesticide levels in these fizzy drinks with European Union norms for WATER. Water standards are particularly strict because people drink a lot of it. If Pepsi and Coke had been compared with, say, EU norms for pesticide levels in vegetables, they'd have fallen well within allowable limits. So problem one was that the study involved a false comparison.
Since Pepsi and Coke are made from water and sugar, and no pesticides are introduced during the manufacturing process, it stands to reason that at least the same concentration of pesticides resides in our water or sugar. And since every Indian drinks water in far greater quantities than Coke or Pepsi, and ingests sugar in many different forms, it's clear that, if there is a health issue here, it relates not to fizzy drinks but to our water and sugar. But this fact was entirely ignored during the weeks of discussion that followed the release of the CSE's cola 'study'. This was problem two. Indian consumers were given no comparative data regarding pesticides in water, vegetables and other substances, and therefore could not make up their minds about how relatively safe or dangerous the targetted beverages were.
The public relations departments of Coca Cola and Pepsi did a horrible job of conveying their own viewpoint. After weeks, they framed a coherent response, pointing out that dozens of products like apples and cauliflowers contained pesticides in much higher concentrations than what the CSE found in colas. The CSE's reply? " You can't take pesticides out of apples, but you can clean up colas".
This, of course, is entirely false. Pesticides do not occur naturally in apples, and can therefore certainly be removed from the production process. But that is a fight CSE doesn't want to take up, because it involves farmers rather than multinationals.