Sunday, January 11, 2009

we're doomed (part 2)

Well, after discovering that eating red meat is approximately environmentally equivalent to running over a rainforest filled with kittens in a Hummer, it saddens me to report the next avenue of our rampant destruction on Mother Earth:
museo!

Yes, indeed dear friends, it is our morning cup of coffee that silently lurks our endangered animals and turns up the thermostat in Antarctica. A 2007 study by Chapagain and Hoekstra states that an average (125 mL) cup of joe took an astounding 140 litres to produce! Annually, the world uses 110 billion cubic metres of water for the production of coffee (about 2% of the world's total water use on crops).

We here at Infiniflux are deeply saddened to hear of this, as we are very big fans of coffee and his little friend, 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione.

Puts the few litres you save from have a shorter shower in perspective!

You can find out more information here.

(above: a delicious latté from Museo in Saskatoon)

5 comments:

Joel Kelly said...

I guess a little context would be more appropriate: the oil sands in Alberta, pretty much the poster-child for being an environmental asshole is estimated to use 359 million cubic metres per year, twice the amount of water required for the city of Calgary (with over a million residents).

It's enough that it's starting to threaten the water supply to other parts of Canada. Yikes.

Joel Kelly said...

Ahhh it keeps getting worse: 2 Google searches is approximately equivalent in CO2 production to boiling a kettle!

kerry said...

you're freaking me out.

Anonymous said...

Dear Earth,

Sorry, but I like meat, coffee and Google more than most other things you have to offer.

No hard feelings,
-Will

Joel Kelly said...

Update: that claim for the CO2 emissions from a Google search is incorrect.

Whew. I need a cup of coffee.