The Consumer Expectations that Southern Corporations Built

"What consumer practices that we’ve come to accept as normal formed long before anyone knew about the costs of climate change?" asks Professor Bart Elmore, an environmental historian.

Good morning, Skippie!

Amid the torrent of news over the last few weeks—don’t get me started on the murder of Jordan Neely or Clarence Thomas’ corruption—I haven’t had a chance to mention the giant elephant in the universe: climate change. Specifically, in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report, scientists warned that the world is on the brink of catastrophic global warming.

And yet, scientists added, apparently sensing us all pulling the covers up over our heads, “it does not mean we are doomed” if swift action is taken. In our latest interview, Professor Bart Elmore, an environmental historian and member of the Sustainability Institute at the Ohio State University, echoed the scientists’ sentiment as he revealed the environmental history behind some of the US’ largest corporations.

Professor Elmore is the award-winning author of Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism; Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future; and coming very soon, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet. Professor Elmore’s newest book, which traces the history of five southern companies—Coke, Walmart, FedEx, Delta, and Bank of America—was the subject of our conversation. We touched on each company before Professor Elmore reflected on how they’ve come to shape consumer expectations today.

A condensed transcript edited for clarity is below. You can also listen to the audio of the conversation here:

The Consumer Expectations that Southern Corporations Built

The audio includes more on Professor Elmore’s southern roots, his love of environmental history, a tangent about Leland Stanford (whom you’ll recall from our post on Palo Alto!), a reference to me definitely not eating morning glory seeds in high quantities, and more of Professor Elmore’s ideas on holding corporations accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions.

I’m up to walking five blocks a day on my healing Achilles, a distance that doesn’t bring me to the best birding spots in Inwood Park but I’m getting closer! I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts on today’s interview from the benches where I take a little rest.

Your skipper,

Ben

There were some literal headscratchers when Bank of America entered the convo

Ben: Professor Elmore, thank you so much for being here.

BE: Oh, thanks so much, Ben. 

Ben: Today I’d like to explore how southern corporations shaped the economy, the world's ecology, and consumer mentalities. I guess there's no better place to begin than by discussing Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta.

Can you talk a bit about the early history of Coca-Cola?

BE: Of course. I find it really important to look at the larger history of Coca-Cola from an environmental standpoint. How did they get all the stuff they needed, and at what cost?

The Coke drink—the formula itself—was created in 1886, but the business was incorporated in 1892 in Atlanta amid Jim Crow, one of the darkest times in the history of the American South.

Coke didn’t own much of the infrastructure that produced the beverages it sold to consumers, whether that be sugar plantations, decaffeination plants to produce the caffeine it needed, or what have you. The company became the ultimate outsourcer in a way. For example, Coke originally sourced sugar from the Hershey Chocolate Company, which grew sugar in Cuba, which in turn denuded the forests there.

Ben: —which reveals American companies’ international ecological impact from the get-go.

You point out that Coke’s largest emissions would ultimately come from refrigeration. Can you talk about this development, and related, the “within arms reach” mentality that developed at the firm?

BE: “Within arm's reach of desire” is a phrase coined by Robert Woodruff, who took over the company in the 1920s and would be called “the boss” of Coca-Cola. I imagine him almost like The Godfather. In fact, I went to the same high school as him in Atlanta (several decades later), where there was a statue of him smoking a cigar. 

Ben: Have a smoke and a Coke!

BE: And no health problems from there. Woodruff’s “within arms reach” mantra embodied his goal for the company to make Coke available on every corner so that people could drink it immediately.

The problem with keeping Coke “within an arm’s reach of desire” was that, as the drink spread around the world, Coke was refrigerated 365 days a year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day across the planet—it had to be kept cold to stay carbonated (and refreshing). So, refrigeration became by far the largest footprint of the company in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

Ben: And as you point out, Coke became available 24/7 even in some of the remoter parts of the planet.

Going off of that, a central argument of your book is that the five southern companies you cover—Coke, Walmart, FedEx, Delta, and Bank of America—thrived because of their focus on rurality; because figures like Woodruff wanted Coke to be available in rural areas.

Can you discuss how this strategy also intersected with emissions from cars? Maybe here we can shift to Walmart, the world’s largest corporation.