Will chocolate save us?
by digby
I wish I knew how to get people to care about climate change. It just seems like an uphill battle to make it immediate enough and personal enough for them to care. But I was reading an article in the LA Times the other day that made me think there is at least one fact that might wake people up. It referenced a report by the International Cocoa Organization that sent a cold shiver through me:
Half of the world’s cocoa comes from the West African nations of Ivory Coast and Ghana. An expected temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius by 2050 will render many of the region’s cocoa-producing areas too hot for the plants that bear the fruit from which chocolate is made, says a new study from the Colombia-based International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
“What we are saying is that if we don’t take any action, there won’t be sufficient chocolate around in the future,” said Peter Läderach, the report’s lead author.
Do we really want to live in a world with insufficient chocolate?