The drinks trade’s big environmental conference, the Climate Rally for Alcohol Producers (CRAP21) says the industry needs to do far more if it is to combat climate change.
‘Global yawning is a very real problem for the drinks industry,’ said conference organiser Mel Ting-Ice. ‘Indifference levels are rising as consumers give up on booze and drink coffee or mocktails instead.’
Boozone layer
Drink scientists have already observed a major thinning of the ‘Boozone Layer’ – the invisible credibility barrier which stops consumers making disastrous drinks’ choices.
Climatologists claim that without radical changes in industry behaviour destructive trends such as Frosé, Hard Seltzer and ‘people telling us that wines stuffed with faults are ok just because the winemaker wears a crystal and has a tattoo’ could become irreversible.
‘If we act now we might be able to stop the worst of it,’ said Boo Zissgrate of the Global Organisation of Beverage Alcohol (GOOBA).
‘Though sadly, we think it’s too late for Celebrity wines. Rising C-Levels are probably here to stay.’
She also said that the whole industry ‘needed to look at its levels of toxic emissions – particularly on Twitter’.
Clean-up operation
Delegates said that the conference had already delivered some big wins in tackling climate change. Earlier this week some of the biggest drinks companies put their names to an agreement to stop pumping marketing effluent into the mainstream.
‘From next year Diageo, Pernod Ricard and the like have promised to confine any fatuous and inaccurate statements to the trade press,’ said Sonne Souffre of Extraction Rebellion.
‘Obviously it would be better if they didn’t produce this toxic drivel at all. But at least here the impact is minimal since nobody will read them.’
Kindred Porcupine Jr of Megabooze said this was ‘just a first step’ and his company was ‘fully committed to being Crap-on negative by 2030.’
Saving retailers
Elsewhere there were strong words about the need to address the mass cutting down of retailers.
‘Some of these businesses are tens, even hundreds of years old,’ said environmental campaigner, Greta Thunfisch.
‘They might look a bit strange and have odd creatures living in them, but they are the lifeblood of the drinks industry and a key element in combating climate change.’
Irresponsible blogging and the exploitation of Amazon would, she said, ‘have a dire impact both on consumer choice and also on surging levels of tax avoidance.’
Greener sources
Extraction Rebellion’s Sonne Soufre said the drinks industry needed to move away from old tasters and journalists – so called ‘fossil fools’ – and embrace different sources of power.
Influencers, she said, are ‘brilliant at changing angles to produce paid-for copy whichever way the wind is blowing’.
Sceptics warned, however, that the world couldn’t dispense with traditional experts altogether.
‘On days when the conditions aren’t good for selfies, they’ll need something more reliable to keep people talking,’ said energy analyst Solah Power.
‘Nobody likes the way that journalists gas on, but they can at least be relied on to produce something unpleasant and combustible whatever the conditions.’
Carbon neutral… ish
Environmental campaigner Greta Thunfisch is just one to have questioned whether it was hypocritical to fly industry figures in from all over the world when ‘it could just have been done on Zoom like every other bloody thing is nowadays.’
However, GOOBA’s Boo Zissgrate said the investment was worth it.
‘The accumulated flights, accommodation and energy consumption of the several thousand delegates and attendant media is obviously significant,’ she told Fake Booze.
‘But we ran the numbers and it’s no worse than shipping a dozen cases of Argentinian Malbec across the Pacific.
‘And frankly, listening to eight hours of speeches is a whole lot more palatable.’
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