Man-made global warming has "affected Kenyan coffee production through unpredictable rainfall patterns and excessive droughts, making crop management and disease control a nightmare." Joseph Kimemia, director of research at Kenya's Coffee Research Foundation (CRF), told reporters that hotter temperatures and unpredictable rainfall are damaging his nation's ability to grow coffee.... Global warming-related droughts, heat waves, and climate change are also damaging coffee production in top exporters such as Uganda, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Nicaragua, as growers are "being forced uphill to higher altitudes, at a rate of three to four meters a year on average, as temperatures rise."
So, you still don't believe in the reality of global climate change? You still think that Al Gore is a fat, bitter blowhard angry that he was never able to be President? Well, kimosabe, the reality of global climate change may be able to hit you where you'll notice the difference- in your coffee cup.
Our addiction to greenhouse gases is creating a situation that's, besides having such mundane effects as disturbing weather patterns, impacting surface temperatures and sensitive crops...like coffee. As average temperatures rise, growing conditions change, and crops that require a very specific range of conditions become ever more problematical. Wine grapes and coffee are two that come to mind immediately, and both produces products that the deniers enjoy in no small amounts.
Perhaps when our coffee tastes like Folger's and our Riesling tastes like cold moose urine, the deniers will finally admit that something's amiss. Of course, by the time that happens, it may well already be too late. The deniers continue to fiddle while Rome burns, and the end result may be a planet so completely out of whack that there's no way to restore the balance. An Inconvenient Truth, if ignored long enough, will quite likely become an immutable reality. When the bills come due, will Newt Gingrich and James Inhofe be willing (or able) to pay?
Then what?
WE DESERVE BETTER.
