Definition of Climate Change

1. Referring to a change in average climatic conditions (i.e. temperature, precipitation, etc.) in a region over a long period of time, typically several decades or longer (and referring to both human-induced and non-human induced causes for these climatic changes).
2. Related: Today, Climate Change refers to the rapid, human-caused, global temperature rise going on since the Industrial Revolution (late 1700s-early 1800s). Earth’s climate is always fluctuating, but the best scientific evidence shows that our planet is heating rapidly and its more recent warming is happening at a rate much faster than previous climatic changes. Scientists and informed humans everywhere are deeply concerned about the human life risks of climate change, making it the biggest, most urgent problem our world faces today.

Synonyms: Global Warming, Climate Emergency,  Climate Crisis.

What Causes Climate Change?

A carbon imbalance in Earth’s atmosphere, specifically, an excess of carbon dioxide emissions (and other Greenhouse Gases – GHGs) being released (from solid form) into the atmosphere.

In solid form, carbon is stored in all earth (soil, oceans, trees, plants, etc.) and it gets released into the atmosphere in many ways, including humans releasing mass amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, mainly via activities such as natural resource extraction, the burning of fossil fuels, and large-scale agriculture, especially meat production.

The carbon dioxide then builds up in the atmosphere, with other GHGs, creating a “greenhouse effect” where the sun gets trapped in earth’s atmosphere and warms the overall global atmospheric temperature.

Why We Should Care About Climate Change

Our friends at the David Suzuki Foundation have summed this up nicely …

“In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a special report explaining the effects of a warming world. The news is not good. According to IPCC scientists, to avoid the worse impacts of heating — including more severe and frequent wildfires, droughts, floods and species extinction — we must keep the global average temperature from rising more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. A rise of even half a degree more could result in significantly more severe heatwaves, plant and animal species lost to extinction and devastating storms and floods.

Climate disruption puts human life at risk worldwide. Our health, food systems, economies and communities are all at enormous risk. But climate change poses the greatest threat to those least responsible for it — people who are already vulnerable to socio-economic challenges, such as poor communities, communities of colour, women and youth.” (David Suzuki Foundation)

Also, see video: “What is Climate Change” – Al Jazeera

How Merchants of Green Coffee is Acting on Climate Change

Cafe Solar® is our flagship coffee and primary means of addressing climate change via coffee. Its program essentially reverses the effects of conventional coffee supply chains so that instead of causing deforestation and carbon emissions, the production of this coffee contributes to natural forest regeneration and sequesters carbon.

Climate Change Coffee is the first and only roasted coffee blend addressing climate change, with a base recipe containing primarily sustainable Cafe Solar® beans.

Source: Information collected and summarized by Merchants of Green Coffee Inc. from wikipedia.org and David Suzuki Foundation.