The thing about climate change is it doesn’t care if you believe it exists or not. It’s going to happen regardless. We can pool our collective efforts and resources to stop it, but we are humans and we are allergic to working together for our collective survival, so that’s probably never going to happen.

You’re already seeing the effects of climate change in extreme weather patterns all around the world, but you’re going to start seeing it affect the items in your pantry soon enough. In fact, you’re already seeing it in the price of chocolate.

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Climate Change Is Making Chocolate Extremely Expensive

According to the independent news publication Grist, the devastating effects of climate change—not in some far-off hypothetical future, but right now—are affecting four African nations that act as the backbone of the global cocoa industry.

Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, and Nigeria collectively produce around 70 percent of the world’s cacao. A variety of climate change-induced phenomena has severely impacted those nations’ abilities to grow the seed that is eventually turned into your Hershey’s bar.

Altered rainfall patterns and rising temperatures are pushing farmlands well beyond the optimal conditions necessary for growth. All of these climate change-related disruptions have resulted in a 14 percent drop in global cacao production in the 2023-24 season. Then the laws of supply and demand start kicking in, so the prices skyrocket.

You might be asking, why is a small independent media outlet covering this and not, say, a major outlet like CNN? Well, CNN has covered it. But in a half-assed way that seems to indicate that they don’t want to ruffle too many feathers.

Just a few days before Valentine’s Day, CNN ran this article about how the price of Valentine’s Day chocolates has skyrocketed. The reason given? “Years of bad weather in the key cocoa-producing region of West Africa.”

There’s no mention of climate change at all. That’s like reporting that a child’s sandcastle was wiped out by a wave while ignoring the meteor that slammed into the ocean. Yes, the weather in cacao-producing regions of West Africa is pretty bad. Now, why is it bad, CNN? Why is it bad, CNN?!

What This Means for the Future of Cacao

Tiptoe around the full truth all you want, there are still harsh realities global food producers are going to have to face head-on in the coming years, and already are. A 2024 report found that climate change has stretched the number of hot days in cacao-growing regions by two to four weeks, thus damaging harvests.

The farmers are losing tons of money. And you’re losing out on delicious chocolate because it’s either not as available as it used to be or you see it on the shelves at a price that repels you.

If you’re the type to read that and say, “That means there will be less sugary chocolate out there making people fat and unhealthy!” Please understand that cacao use extends well beyond Snickers or chocolate cake. Cacao is widely used as an ingredient in cosmetics and is used in a variety of ways in the pharmaceutical industry.

Its derivatives are not only an active ingredient in some medications, but if you’re on any type of medication that has a coating on it that doesn’t make you gag when the pill touches your tongue, there’s a chance that the coating has cacao in it making that pill just a little bit more palatable.

Climate change isn’t some far-off futuristic problem that another generation is going to have to deal with. Boomers and Gen Xers had their shot at solving the problem but they opted instead to kick the can to Millennials and Gen Z. Climate change is our problem to fix and we are already dealing with its repercussions.

Will we learn from the mistakes and neglect of our dipshit elders or will we allow the world to further degrade while letting our ability to make a difference go to waste?