You may have heard unsettling facts and figures about our changing environment, but it's not always easy to understand exactly how those changes will impact us.
Sometimes it takes looking at this information through a unique lens for it to really hit home. Like, say, the lens of beloved beverages.
What's happening?
Extreme weather exacerbated by a shifting climate may pose a threat to some of our favorite alcoholic drinks, Euronews reported.
Whether it's because of drought drying up crops or heavy rains degrading and eroding soil, many ingredients of popular beverages are becoming harder to source.
For example, hop yields are expected to drop anywhere from 4-18% in Europe by 2050, per The Guardian. That means beer production will drop, significantly raising prices or eliminating certain beers entirely.
To many, that's not just a loss of a beer, but also a piece of national identity.
"We are just going to be importing beer, and we won't have the culture that goes with it anymore," said Danielle Whelan of England's Shepherd Neame brewery, per Euronews.
With grape yields dwindling due to extreme weather, it's safe to say that environmental changes are a serious threat to wine, too. Prosecco production, in particular, is under threat due to soil erosion caused by severe rain.
Why is it important to point out these endangered beverages?
Hopefully, we've all got several more significant items on our priority lists than these popular alcoholic beverages. Still, that doesn't mean their potential disappearances are not important.
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Sign me up 👍 Many of us assume that things that have always been around will never go away. Call it wishful thinking or faulty programming, but it's true of so many of us, even when all the information screams otherwise.
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Seeing the raw truth that these staple beverages are under threat can help to shake off that illusion. It allows us to put the impacts of our changing environment into an understandable context. If we do nothing, many of the things we've taken for granted may no longer exist.
What's being done about dwindling crops?
Where there's adversity, there's always resilience, innovation, and creativity. Dwindling crops are being addressed using all three of those valuable tools.
A group of scientists has discovered a spray to protect grain crops from blight, while farmers in India are addressing environmental changes by growing saffron indoors. Elsewhere, researchers are using zinc oxide nanoparticles to grow rice in extreme weather.
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