IMMINENT CRISIS

Urgent ~ below you will find the complete text of An Open Letter to Climate Change Deniers and Skeptics: The Final (Chocolate) Straw. It appeared earlier this month in Forbes magazine online. As Martin Lawrence said to Will Smith in the movie Bad Boys ~ SJGR.

To the few of you left,

OK, you have fought hard to deny or challenge the realities of climate change, perhaps because you are afraid of the policies that might have to be put in place; or are afraid of the possibilities of increased government intervention; or you don’t think it will be that bad; or you think it will be too expensive to do anything about; or you don’t understand the science; or you don’t trust scientists, including, by the way, every national academy of sciences and every professional scientific organization in the geosciences (see the list attached to this Congressional testimony); or whatever.

You may not think the expected consequences of climate change are bad enough to do anything, despite what researchers have been telling us for years about higher temperatures, worsening frequency and intensity of storms and droughts, rising sea levels, altered water quality and availability, growing health risks from pests and heat, and much more.

Fine. But you are dragging the rest of us, who still believe in science and think that things can and should be done quickly, down into what increasingly seems like a future hell. You need to get on board. Why? Here is the final straw.

It now appears that on top of all of the other potentially catastrophic, costly, damaging, or dangerous impacts of human-caused climate change, there is a very serious risk that it will threaten the production of chocolate.

Yes, chocolate. A new scientific study from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, a research center of the world-renowned Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has just published a new analysis that says the world will suffer a massive loss of area suitable for growing cocoa as temperatures continue to rise and rainfall patterns shift.

Figure 1, below, shows the drastic potential decrease in the viable chocolate-growing areas of Ghana and the Ivory Coast by 2050 due to climate change. These two countries produce 60 percent of global cocoa, but by 2050 cocoa production by these two leading global producers will be crippled. The authors note that smart farmers will certainly try hard to adapt and modify where and how they grow cocoa and that there may be opportunities to avoid the worst damages if farmers shift to other crops, like cashews.

I’m sorry, but cashews are no substitute for chocolate. It should now be clear, even to the few remaining climate change deniers, that the risks of accelerating climate change are just too high. Our policymakers must act immediately.

Sincerely,
All who truly love chocolate.

P.S. To those climate deniers and skeptics who don’t like chocolate and hence don’t care: please stop imposing your distorted sensibilities on the rest of us.