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Coffee Is Climate Change's Next Victim
By
Nell Casey
Published Sep 22, 2016
Modified Sep 22, 2016
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By
Nell Casey
Published Sep 22, 2016
Modified Sep 22, 2016
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First, climate change came for our lobsters. Then, it started threatening the crops. But it can pry coffee from our cold, dead hands. Which is fitting because most of us will be dead from climate change in the very near future.
A new report by The Climate Institute has combined several studies that link climate change with the depletion of the world's coffee supply. The troubling report points to disappearing farm lands and the rise of diseases and insects that compromise the coffee plants. Just let the sea waters sweep us away.
Caffeine-deprived zombies aren't the only downside, of course. The report notes that over 125 million people rely on the coffee industry to survive and coffee is a huge player in certain economies where the beans are a major export.
"It's a severe threat," Peet's Coffee vice president Doug Welsh, who's also a board member of the World Coffee Research, affirmed to the Times. "It's anecdotal, but I don't know any coffee farmers who don't believe that their weather, and with it their disease and productivity issues, have changed dramatically over the last decade."
So there you go, we're all pretty much screwed. Drink while you can and use that last jolt of energy to pressure world leaders to do something now.
Tagged
climate change
coffee
Nell Casey
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