Plastic is a problem but you may want to stop drinking that coffee if you care about the “planet.” Looks like that coffee you drink my dear, is probably just as bad as the freaking straw. Perhaps you should stand and scream outside coffee shops, for the planet.

“Soaring demand for the caffeinated brew could hasten destructive climate change by encouraging producers to chop down some of the last remaining tropical forests as they struggle to increase yields on existing farmland, according to a report released Thursday by the nonprofit Conservation International.

Coffee grows in tropical countries near the equator, such as Indonesia, Brazil and Uganda, where thick jungles rich with biodiversity provide fresh water and store tons of carbon. Farmers expand their fields by felling trees in these forests and burning the dense underbrush — releasing that carbon into the atmosphere, where it traps other gases and warms the planet. As a result, deforestation is a twofold environmental catastrophe: Left intact, forests absorb many of the pollutants that cause global warming. Destroyed, they unleash even more emissions and speed up the pace of climate change.

The underlying market force in all this is the skyrocketing demand for coffee. Coffee growers may have to triple their production by 2050 to meet current demand forecasts, the report predicted. Coffee demand is expected to spike 25 percent in the next five years alone, according to a report last year by the industry group International Coffee Organization.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/coffee-deforestation_n_570fafa7e4b08a2d32b92c3c