Even though scientists have been sounding the alarm bells since 2003 about climate change hurting agriculture, we’re only now realizing how bad it could get. The Climate Institute (based in Australia) produced a startling report in 2016 about climate change's effect on coffee. It predicts that useable land for growing coffee beans will be cut in half by 2050, possibly even further. Another study, published last year in the Proceeding for the National Academy of Sciences, estimates usable coffee bean land in Latin America could be reduced by as much as 88% by 2050. (Reality check: that’s only 32 years from now, could you imagine a future without coffee so soon?)

The coffee industry is now actively taking proactive steps to research, understand and mitigate the situation. Time reports that Starbucks is so deeply concerned about climate change’s impact on agriculture (and the lack of government-funded research on the matter) that the company decided to take matters into their own hands; Starbucks developed their own “field laboratory” coffee farm in Costa Rica where they are conducting research on new ways of adapting coffee to climate change. Other initiatives such as Coffee & Climate aim to develop more sustainable production methods. Meanwhile, World Coffee Research is looking for answers based in science, such as inventing more robust species of coffee trees that are engineered to withstand the threats posed by climate change.

Unfortunately, these research efforts are at the mercy of a warming world and a population that doesn’t know how to help fix the problem. Just how badly climate change will affect coffee crops is unknown, and dependent on how hot the Earth gets. You can start making a difference by choosing to purchase coffee beans sourced from sustainable farms, as well as demanding government and policy-makers to fund research about climate change’s effects on our coffee and our lives.

How you can fight climate change today: Recycle any plastic/cardboard coffee cups, unplug your electric coffee maker when not in use, and drink sustainably farmed coffee.

(Note from Lauren: I promise to try to not to be so negative about climate change, but it’s currently a bleak situation because we aren’t making a serious effort, as humans living on this Earth together, to combat it. Group awareness gets attention, but group action gets results. Every time I write about climate change, I’ll offer a small action you can do today to be part of the solution.)