Climate change driving up the price of coffee

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Forecasting Senior Director Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss top headlines related to climate change in the Dec. 13 edition of Climate In The News.

Transcript

00:00Today, we're covering two climate stories, both on how climate change has direct impacts

00:05on things that you use every day.

00:07The first here from Inside Climate News about the price of coffee and how that coffee price

00:13has really significantly increased over the last several decades, Brett, and it seems

00:17like it's mainly due to drought and significant drought in some cases in some of the major

00:22coffee-producing countries across the world.

00:24Yeah, drought caused by climate change and El Nino recently, with El Nino coffee prices

00:30at a 47-year high now, and again, most of this drought is occurring in these prime growing

00:35areas, Brazil and Vietnam.

00:38Projections though with climate change are that nearly half of these growing areas may

00:43not be suitable for growing coffee by the middle of the century if we continue to warm

00:48at the current rate.

00:49Yeah, and as a coffee drinker, it's certainly concerning to me.

00:52I only use a drink one cup a day at least, but it seems also too that many of these coffee,

00:57either coffee producers or coffee companies that sell coffee are looking at other countries

01:02or places to start buying farms to be able to produce coffee in places that may not have

01:07these extreme conditions that are causing the reduced output of coffee.

01:10Exactly.

01:11Central America is being looked at.

01:13Also, Cuba by some European coffee makers is also looking at diversification is another

01:19option for some of these companies to use multiple sources in order to obtain the coffee

01:25at a reasonable price.

01:27One other option they've also looked at is replacing coffee beans with chickpeas or barley

01:32as a last minute correction to that problem.

01:37Well, I hope we do not get to that point.

01:40So moving from the coffee to the energy it takes to produce your coffee every day, the

01:46U.S. energy markets have been impacted by climate change in many different ways.

01:50Five covered in this article from Bloomberg.

01:53We'll focus on just a few of those here, one being the warmer winters and another being

01:59the reduction in hydroelectric power.

02:01Yeah, warmer winters means less usage of natural gas.

02:05So we're seeing an excess of natural gas in some of these storage facilities.

02:09And what do they do with it?

02:12These companies lose money because the price goes down.

02:15So the option is to export some of this.

02:17That's one option for that.

02:19In terms of hydropower on the Pacific Northwest, the summer is getting drier and therefore

02:23the rivers are not running as strong or they're very low and the result is less electricity

02:29generation from hydropower.

02:31Most importantly, or certainly significantly important, is the impact of hurricanes.

02:35It's the most costly natural disaster that impacts the U.S. and how that also hits the

02:40energy markets too.

02:42With climate change, as we've been saying for a long time now, not necessarily more

02:46hurricanes, but stronger, more intense hurricanes, and obviously with a stronger, more intense

02:51hurricane coming in the Gulf of Mexico, there's a greater risk for a shutdown of some of these

02:55oil and gas production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, which leads to higher prices.

03:00Well, thanks, Brett.

03:01Really, from the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico to warmer winters and dry conditions

03:06in parts of the country in the U.S. and the Northwest, as well as parts of the world causing

03:10those increased coffee prices, wide-ranging issues from climate change.

03:14For those stories and more climate information, you can find that at accuweather.com slash

03:19climate.

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