Drinking Trees. ARE YOU A COFFEE ELITIST?
According to Wikipedia, there are two main forms of coffee beans that we brew to drink around here. One is the highly regarded Coffea arabica, and the 'robusta' form of the hardier Coffea canephora. The latter is resistant to the devastating coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix). Both are cultivated primarily in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Once ripe, coffee berries are picked, processed, and dried. The seeds are then roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor. They are then ground and brewed to create coffee.
Robusta coffee beans are considered a "low class" poor man's drink. It has been called worse than chicory, trailer-trash brew for uneducated Wal-Mart workers. According to Coffee Review, Robusta coffees are rotten with poor quality and are bland at best, and Arabica coffees are exquisitely refined, pure golden liquid of the gods.
Coffee from Robusta beans are scoffed, dismissed as garbage by self-proclaimed elite gourmands who read expensive magazines that offer advice as to which coffee brew is considered more socially elite.
So what will happen when climate change affects Arabica crops throughout Central America?
Robusta plants are hearty and can tolerate great shifts in temperature and rainfall, whereas Arabica plants are akin to squealing divas - unhappy little piglets - that wither and sob every time there is one extra degree, or one less rain drop. These plants need to be pampered with crooning cabana boys, massages, foot rubs, and Feng Shui.
According to a recent story on NPR, Arabica coffee growers are struggling to keep their plants alive.
Climate change is forcing these growers to make one of two options:
- Shift to growing and producing Robusta coffee beans, OR
- Clearing more mountain tops to move all of the Arabica coffee plantations to higher elevations (until we run out of mountain top space, anyway)
Will climate change affect our gourmet palate? Will we start to see articles praising Robusta brews? Can we find adventurous chefs and food writers who can sway our lemming-like public buying habits with Pro-Robusta soliloquies?
Or, will our gourmet palate affect climate change? Will we stick our self-absorbed noses in the air, refusing to purchase trailer-trash "low class" sludge, and continue to demand Arabica beans?
Realize that if you do, millions of forest acres will have to be cleared just to satisfy your sense of entitlement to something that your palate is not sophisticated enough to tell the damn difference between anyway.
