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Why there’s trouble brewing for your coffee habit

by Larry Daichea Posted on May 23, 2014

Why there’s trouble brewing for your coffee habit

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Coffee lovers beware: Those miracle beans just got all the more precious. Coffee rust, a fungal disease, and Brazil’s epic drought are driving up the cost of that vital morning fix.

As NPR reports, wholesale coffee prices have jumped by more than 60 percent since January, from $1.25 per pound to $1.85. And traders suspect that the worst is still to come. Some predict that during the main harvest next month, prices could shoot up to $3 a pound. The long-term forecast looks even grimmer: Global warming is only making it easier for the fungus to spread, and some studies even suggest that our favorite blends will be wiped out by 2080.

Will you need a savings plan just to cover your morning cuppa joe? Well, it’s really the farmers and distributors who bear the brunt of the rust. On the consumer end, the serious snobs will feel the sting most: Even if plants survive, the fungus can hurt the coffee’s flavor, so specialty shops will need go the extra distance, and pay the extra penny, to get the best beans.

Some shops are already raising their rates. Joe, a specialty coffee chain with 10 shops in New York City and Philadelphia, recently raised it’s prices by 25 cents a drink because of the higher cost of beans.

So at what price does the coffee habit no longer become worth it? Ugh … get me another cup and I’ll stew on it.

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food

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Why there’s trouble brewing for your coffee habit

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There’s trouble brewing for your coffee habit

by Bettye39Wqhk Posted on May 23, 2014

There’s trouble brewing for your coffee habit

By

Shutterstock

Coffee lovers beware: Those miracle beans just got all the more precious. Coffee rust, a fungal disease, and Brazil’s epic drought are driving up the cost of that vital morning fix.

As NPR reports, wholesale coffee prices have jumped by more than 60 percent since January, from $1.25 per pound to $1.85. And traders suspect that the worst is still to come. Some predict that during the main harvest next month, prices could shoot up to $3 a pound. The long-term forecast looks even grimmer: Global warming is only making it easier for the fungus to spread, and some studies even suggest that our favorite blends will be wiped out by 2080.

Will you need a savings plan just to cover your morning cuppa joe? Well, it’s really the farmers and distributors who bear the brunt of the rust. On the consumer end, the serious snobs will feel the sting most: Even if plants survive, the fungus can hurt the coffee’s flavor, so specialty shops will need go the extra distance, and pay the extra penny, to get the best beans.

Some shops are already raising their rates. Joe, a specialty coffee chain with 10 shops in New York City and Philadelphia, recently raised it’s prices by 25 cents a drink because of the higher cost of beans.

So at what price does the coffee habit no longer become worth it? Ugh … get me another cup and I’ll stew on it.

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food

,

Living

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There’s trouble brewing for your coffee habit

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The four fossil fuel stockpiles that could toast the world

by neogrom Posted on April 14, 2014

Burn Baby Burn

The four fossil fuel stockpiles that could toast the world

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By now it’s old news that the U.S. is in the midst of an oil and gas boom. In fact, with 30.5 billion barrels of untapped crude, our proven oil reserves are higher than they have been since the 1970s. But if that oil doesn’t stay in the ground, along with most U.S. gas and coal reserves, then the planet and all of its inhabitants are in trouble.

A new report from the Sierra Club takes a look at what will happen to the climate if we burn through four of our biggest fossil fuel reserves — and it ain’t pretty. The four stockpiles are Powder River Basin coal in Wyoming and Montana; Green River shale in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah; oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska; and frackable oil and gas across the U.S. Together these deposits could release 140.5 billion tons of CO2, the report says, enough to get the world a quarter of the way toward a global 2-degree Celsius rise, aka climatological catastrophe.

While the Sierra Club also reports that, for the first time in 20 years, domestic CO2 emissions are actually decreasing (and the U.S. has lost its place as No. 1 CO2 emitter to China), exploiting our oil, gas, and coal reserves will make it hard to maintain that trend. And, if we’re exporting the fuel, domestic trends don’t tell the whole story. Extracting even a fraction of these fossil fuel deposits would outweigh all of the positive climate steps the Obama administration is taking.

As Dan Chu, an author of the report, told Grist, “We have more [fossil fuels] than we can afford to burn. Our argument is … unless we are proactively keeping some of those proven reserves in the ground, we will assuredly go over that tipping point.”

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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The four fossil fuel stockpiles that could toast the world

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