Ben & Jerry's: Global warming is changing the flavor of ice cream

Ice cream sellers Ben & Jerry's, which are a division of a giant multinational food conglomerate, seem to have a lot of marketing leeway, because they are claiming global warming is coming for your ice cream freezer.

Many nutrition groups think global warming is the best thing that could happen to their ice cream, with its loads of fat and sugar and implications for diabetes, but they are not selling to those people anyway, they are selling to fat people who like to buy organic, or people who think ice cream is health food if it was made using free-range peanut butter, or something.

So the marketing department for this division of Unilever has created an "Endangered Pints List" - ice creams they say will disappear if you don't drive a Tesla. Peanut Butter Cup ice cream is on that list. And lots of others, because they believe cocoa production could drop by as much as 50% by 2050. And that scares their lids off.

The good news is, food projections aren't worth a hill of cocoa beans. Like all doomsday scenarios, they think everything will stop right now except the one thing they are trying to terrify people about. So no innovation will happen and in places like western Africa, where over 70% of the world's cocoa is grown, as temperatures rise and rainfall stagnates, prime cocoa-growing areas will shift to higher altitudes. But there are no more higher altitudes in western Africa. And cocoa production won't move simply somewhere else, it will go extinct.

Yes, that is how environmental marketing people think. Here are the flavors they say will be gone unless you vote for a certain special candidate in November (wink, wink);

Boom Chocolatta!Cherry GarciaChocolate Chip Cookie DoughChocolate Fudge BrownieChocolate Peppermint CrunchChocolate TherapyEverything But The…Half BakedKaramel Sutra CoreMilk & CookiesNew York Super Fudge ChunkPhish FoodS'moresThe Tonight DoughVanilla Caramel Fudge

And nuts will be gone too. Like chocolate, nut trees are very particular about the climate that they thrive in, but they need winter to stimulate their spring growth. So if winter gets warmer, nuts will be gone, because no one will think to move those either.

So global warming is putting these flavors at risk too:

Peanut Butter Fudge CorePeanut Buttah Cookie CoreBanana SplitChubby HubbyChunky MonkeyPeanut Butter CupPistachio PistachioBanana Peanut Butter Greek Frozen Yogurt

No one really cares if any of those flavors disappear, any Kroger will have stuff that tastes as good, so they go for the jugular with coffee.

Different varieties of coffee have specifically adapted to different climates around the world. That's what makes them all so unique (and why your coffee snob friends might be so fond of the Sumatra Mandheling but not so keen on the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe on the coffee shop menu). It's also why even small changes in climate can have a big impact on production. Warmer temperatures, long droughts, extreme rainfall, more resilient pests, and rapidly spreading diseases are all taking their toll on coffee production. And – you guessed it – all those things are associated with climate change.

Yet if different coffees have adapted - if they say so, coffee has actually been artificially selected - why would they not adapt again? We are unsure what Ben & Jerry's climate scientists believe about that, they wouldn't return emails at the Unilever Physics Division, but the number current regions suitable for growing coffee could shrink anywhere from 65–100% by 2080. And stupid business people, apparently like those that run Unilever, will never think to grow it in new regions yet again.

So global warming will cost you:

Coffee Caramel Fudge Non-DairyCoffee Toffee Bar CrunchCoffee, Coffee BuzzBuzzBuzz!

Scared yet? We sure are. We need to go out and enjoy those Ben & Jerry's flavors no one has ever heard of, though it seems likely the free market will kill them before global warming does.