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Climate change affects -- noooooooo! -- beer

Posted at 12:42 PM on 09 Apr 2008

If dire warnings about the fate of global health and security don't move you to care about climate change, maybe this will: Climate change could make beer more expensive. (No! Anything but that!) Malting barley will likely be harder to grow in a warming world, especially in Australia, says climate scientist Jim Salinger. He warned at an Institute of Brewing and Distilling convention Tuesday that within the next 30 years, "either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up." Now that's something that Foster's fear.

sources: Associated Press, The New Zealand Herald
see also, in Grist: A tasting of seven organic beers

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Comments: (3 comments)

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Not cool

This is not cool. Beer - what next? Hot Dogs and Baseball? But it starts dealing with a bigger problem I have - I have a problem with the "coolness" factor of fighting Global Warming. My problem is that Global Warming just isn't cool enough. And neither is the "weapons" and gadgets to help me in this fight. No badge or hip gadget I can wear. Makes it difficult to know what I should do. A Prius? Not cool. Not like the FJ Cruiser. Windfarms? Cool but I can't carry it around like an iPod to show off. Those pesky CO2's are just so tiny - smaller than the diamond my wife will accept and bigger than I can afford? http://angryafrican.net/2008/04/03/global-warming-is-just ...

by Angry African at 8:10 PM on 09 Apr 2008

Ethanol too...

...has actually been havin' a big effect on prices. Farmers have been switchin' over to corn production, which has cut down on barley and wheat production, thus risin' beer prices.

by Tasermons Partner at 9:13 PM on 09 Apr 2008

Hop prices

Have been through the roof as well. I know someone who planted hops on the south side of his house to reduce solar load in the summer - now that's a green combination of energy efficiency and helping out the beer shortage.

by Matt G at 2:05 PM on 10 Apr 2008

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