Climate Change Could Make Beer Drinking A Lot More Expensive In The Future
Source: https://www.forbes.com/
Eric Mack
October 16, 2018
What if drinking a cold pint became as special and pricey an occasion as dipping into the good scotch or popping some quality champagne? New science finds beer could soon become much more expensive and rare thanks to climate change.
Increasingly long, intense and concurrent heat waves and droughts may lead to a sharp decline in barley crops, which is a primary ingredient in the world’s ales, lagers and more. That’s according to a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Plants.
“Our results show that in the most severe climate events, the supply of beer could decline by about 16 percent in years when droughts and heat waves strike,” said co-author Nathan Mueller from University of California – Irvine. “That’s comparable to all beer consumption in the U.S. Future climate and pricing conditions could put beer out of reach for hundreds of millions of people around the world.”
Researchers looked at climate models based on both current and expected levels of greenhouse house gas emissions, which are linked to warmer, drier conditions in places where barley grows like the plains and prairies of the U.S. and Canada. These areas are projected to see crop yields decrease by 3 to 17 percent.
Making things potentially worse for beer lovers is the fact that most barley is actually harvested as livestock feed that could be prioritized over the needs of brewers. The study looked at the impacts of drought on different beer-making and beer-swilling regions and finds that many could expect to see individuals drinking dozens less bottles of beer in coming years while paying two or three times as much for each.
Among the places hit hardest could be the beer haven of Ireland, where beer prices could increase by between 43 and 338 percent in coming decades under the most severe climate scenario.
“The world is facing many life-threatening impacts of climate change, so people having to spend a bit more to drink beer may seem trivial by comparison,” said co-author Steven Davis from UCI. “But there is definitely a cross-cultural appeal to beer, and not having a cool pint at the end of an increasingly common hot day just adds insult to injury.”
Other links:
https://www.businessinsider.com/extreme-weather-climate-change-global-beer-shortage-2018-10