Coming For Your Coffee

I want to feed my family, same as you.                  C  E7  A7
Pollution makes it harder to do.                             D7  G C G
Heat wave  in Vietnam, rain in Brazil,                   C  E7  A7
It’s running up my grocery bill.                               D7   G7   C

It’s coming for your coffee, coming for your tea,  C  E7  A7
Only takes a few degrees.                                          D7  G  C  G
Coming for your chocolate, oh, yes indeed,           C  E7  A7
It only takes a few degrees.                                       D7  G  C

And all the climate denying, is just no good           E7    A7
For people trying to grow your food.                        D    G
West Africa cocoa beans, getting out of hand.        E7  A7
Pollution kills supply, but not demand.                   D     G

So tell the folks in Washington                                  E7
You better look at what you’ve done,                        A
Giving fossil subsidies while                                      E7
They’re polluting as they please,                               A

Melting down the mountain tops,                           G7
Killing off a lot of crops.                                          C
Killing barley, killing hops,                                       G7
I think we’d better call the cops!                              C

Contaminate the atmosphere,                              C  E7  A7
And now it’s coming for your beer.                     D G C
Coming for your coffee, your beer and ale.        C  E7  A7
Better throw the fossil bums in jail!                    D7   G7   C

INSTRUMENTAL
Coming for your coffee, coming for your tea,     C  E7  A7
Only takes a few degrees.                                       D7  G  C  G
Coming for your coffee, your beer and ale.         C  E7  A7
Better throw the fossil bums,                                 D7  G7
Throw the fossil bums,                                             D7  G7
Better throw the fossil bums in jail!                      D7   G7   C

©Doug Hendren 2025

What’s it about? Rising food prices have been getting headlines in 2025, and one big culprit is climate disruption, bringing drought, heat and floods to vulnerable crops. In recent years, drought has driven up vegetable prices in California and olive oil in Spain and Italy. Last year’s heat wave in West Africa drove global cocoa bean prices up nearly 300%. Looking back a few years, wildfires in Russia in 2010 drove up the price of wheat, which was a factor in protests across the Arab world.

Coffee production is highly dependent on predictable rainfall. It can be damaged by too much, or not enough. Due to climate disturbance, nearly half of the land in coffee production today may no longer be usable by 2050. The same is true of the world’s biggest tea-growing areas as well.

People worldwide get over half of our calories from three crops: rice, corn and wheat. We are already seeing declines in production in all three crops as extremes of heat and moisture affect their growth. Global yields of barley, maize and wheat are estimated at 4-13% lower today as a result of climate disruption.

Specific climate events have driven up food prices on many occasions in recent years. These increasingly frequent events have numerous consequences, including shocks to the agriculture sector, increasing malnutrition and social unrest due to food insecurity.

The cost of addressing climate change is small when we look at the many uncounted consequences. As Benjamin Franklin famously asserted: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Pass it on.

More information:  Yale Climate Connections:
Climate change could hurt chocolate production.

Harvard Climate Blog: Chocolate’s Climate Crisis

Your morning coffee keeps getting more expensive. Here’s why.