What's the connection between Coffee and global warming...?!?

Question

All it took, was reading the inside of my Snapple bottle... just now at lunch... to see that "ONE coffee tree produces only ONE pound of coffee per year". When you see where coffee is grown... can you imagine how many trees it takes to satisfy a per day demand? per coffee chain, per year? worldwide? (amazing that we never see a conservation-talker or org. mention COFFEE, instead of lumber and cattle -- that seem to be the deforestation/equivalent of Big Oil as the "bad guys" across Global Warming...). But, why? does coffee pay more $$$ to TV stations, and thus, no one says a peep about this? across Indonesia, South & Central America, Brazil, Central Africa.. all areas where we see/know that natural habitats are "threatened" by man. By we always see images of CATTLE farmers... so, meat = bad. Coffee = what?

http://www.artisanmaps.com/preview.asp?image=Caf1020073.jpg

Answer 1

I'm not following your reasoning here.  Trees absorb CO2 - they reduce global warming.  If we need to plant more coffee trees to meet increased coffee demand, that would reduce global warming.

They don't cut down the coffee trees to harvest the coffee beans...

Answer 2

Maybe it's all the Mr. Coffee machines all plugged into the grid and drawing power at the same time every morning, making the Evil Electric Company pour more coal into the boilers and belching "green house gases" into the atmosphere.

Answer 3

Trees, even coffee trees, capture and sequester carbon dioxide.

Cattle not only require the clearing of forests (including the Amazon), they emit large quantities of methane, which is 24X worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (and it also contributes to ozone depletion).  

So what should we drink, milk?  More cattle...

Looking more broadly at coffee:

http://www.physorg.com/news6067.html

"Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than any other dietary source. Nothing else comes close," says study leader Joe Vinson, Ph.D., a chemistry professor at the university. Although fruits and vegetables are generally promoted as good sources of antioxidants, the new finding is surprising because it represents the first time that coffee has been shown to be the primary source from which most Americans get their antioxidants, Vinson says. Both caffeinated and decaf versions appear to provide similar antioxidant levels, he adds.

Antioxidants in general have been linked to a number of potential health benefits, including protection against heart disease and cancer. For the current study, Vinson and his associates analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. The data was compared to an existing U.S. Department of Agriculture database on the contribution of each type of food item to the average estimated U.S. per capita consumption.

Coffee came out on top, on the combined basis of both antioxidants per serving size and frequency of consumption, Vinson says. Java easily outranked such popular antioxidant sources as tea, milk, chocolate and cranberries, he says. Of all the foods and beverages studied, dates actually have the most antioxidants of all based solely on serving size, according to Vinson. But since dates are not consumed at anywhere near the level of coffee, the blue ribbon goes to our favorite morning pick-me-up as the number one source of antioxidants, he says.

Besides keeping you alert and awake, coffee has been linked to an increasing number of potential health benefits, including protection against liver and colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, and Parkinson's disease, according to some recently published studies.

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Answer 4

because you seem to believe coffee trees are cut down and

ground into coffee, you will win the ignorance award.

why are global warming people always posting crazy ideas to save the world?

I'm not trying to belittle you, but these are the ideas that make people make fun of the whole global warming mess.

Answer 5

Most coffee beans are produced on plants that look more like bushes instead of trees.  But something is better than nothing.