For those of you who haven’t yet found a reason to be worried about the effects of climate change, maybe this will work.
You may lose your precious Starbucks coffee. Anything? How about now?
“What we are really seeing as a company as we look 10, 20, 30 years down the road – if conditions continue as they are – is a potentially significant risk to our supply chain, which is the Arabica coffee bean,” said Starbucks Sustainability Director Jim Hanna in a phone interview with the Guardian.
In addition to Central America’s farmers already feeling the effects of global warming on their crops, Hanna told the Guardian of his plans to visit Washington to speak to members of Congress at a Union of Concerned Scientists event to speak about climate change and coffee.
Of course, this is Starbucks we’re talking about so they’re not exactly scrounging for nickels. Nope. There’s even a rumor that the coffee chain is considering opening up a line of juice bars which is being seen as a possible attempt to get away from the potentially devastating effect that global warming may have on their world famous —love it or hate it— cup of coffee.
The Starbucks website addresses climate change, writing, “In addition to increased erosion and infestation by pests, coffee farmers are reporting shifts in rainfall and harvest patterns that are hurting their communities and shrinking the available usable land in coffee regions around the world.
Just add this to the list of awesome things that may disappear due to global warming —I’m looking at you, chocolate, peanut butter, French wine, and pasta.
Starbucks Fears Climate Change Could Harm World’s Coffee Supply [HuffingtonPost]