Stock Up Now: Chocolate Is Going Extinct

2018, we had high hopes for you being awesome, but two days in you are really disappointing us.

Climate change has impacted not only the weather, but also the ecosystem and everything in it, including, it seems, chocolate. It’s so bad, Business Insider reports chocolate could go extinct in 40 years.

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Say it’s not so! But, ultimately, it is. Cacao plants grow in a “a narrow strip of rainforested land roughly 20 degrees north and south of the equator, where temperature, rain and humidity all stay relatively constant throughout the year,” Business Insider says, and that land is especially sensitive to climate change. If the land is destroyed, so will be everything on it, and that, of course, includes our beloved cacao.

Major chocolate companies are researching ways to grow cacao in other environments and at differing elevations, but as of now, things are looking pretty bleak. Way back in 2010, Scientific American reported the spread of fungal disease had already begun to destroy cacao trees in Central America, which was their original natural habitat. These fungal diseases spread too, of course, so if climate change doesn’t kill our cacao, disease will.

Well, that’s the sort of downer only a big bowl of chocolate something will cure. Good thing we still have it (for now).

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How depressing. Lets hope those scientists have success in finding ways to save our chocolate. Apparently, they are already pulling all-nighters.