Have you ever imagined a world out of coffee and chocolate?
Believe it or not, climate change may prevent us from enjoying many of our favorite meals in the next years. Some crops may go extinct, while others may become scarce and expensive. Who does not enjoy chocolate? The cocoa plant may be completely wiped out by 2050. Who doesn’t drink coffee in the morning? By 2100, 50% of the land will be unsuitable to grow coffee. Human activities have been the primary cause of climate change due to burning fossil fuels.
When fossil fuels are burnt, significant amount of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere and these gases trap heat in our atmosphere and contribute to global warming. Methane is greenhouse gas that is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures and as you can see, methane emission has increased rapidly over the years all around the globe.
Nitrous oxide is the third most major greenhouse gas, accounting for around 7% of global warming. Coffee production has declined mostly as a result of rising yearly temperatures in coffee-producing countries such as Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Colombia. This map visualizes the precent of Nitrous Oxide, the darker the color, the higher the percentage.
There is no planet B, so we shouldn’t need another reason to act and try to prevent climate change from getting worse or risk the extinction of our favorite food. The question is, what can we do? We start from ourselves. There are a lot of things that we can do as individuals to help in reducing climate change effect. We should work on generating electricity from wind, solar and other renewable sources, as opposed to fossil fuels, which emits little to no greenhouse gases or pollutants into the air. We can also help by following the rule of reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle in our everyday activities. We can also pay attention to throwaway less food, save more energy, and speak up about the issue to raise awareness.
What else can be done? Some coffee beans generally grown in hotter climates, and we should investigate more about and encourage farmers it to plant more of it in the future. We can also develop technologies to enable the adaptation of coffee production to future climatic change conditions. One of the initiatives being pursued by scientists at the University of California is to utilize new technology to help the plant survive. The team at Berkeley is working with the Mars company on gene-editing technology, to help the plant to survive in the uncertain years to come.
In 2020, emissions fell by 5.8 percent due to COVID-19 and the resulting economic crisis. Therefore, our individual efforts count, and we can make a difference!