I like a cup of coffee in the morning to start the engines, but some of the people I know really grind my gears.

It’s like they’re not going to manage to function – literally, they plead – until coffee has entered their system. Funny, they managed fine until they began ‘adulting’, but at least the coffee fiends I know can rest easy in the fact that they’re not alone.

Yes indeed, a new report says that the global demand for coffee is at an all-time high. Hit it, VICE:

Millennials are to blame. The data shows that young people aged 19 to 34-years-old now make up 44 percent of coffee drinkers in the US.

And we’re all drinking more of it than ever before.

Daily coffee consumption has risen at a rate that makes up for decline in older generations. The number of lattes, flat whites, and cappuccinos drunk by 18 to 24-year-olds soared from 34 percent to 48 percent between 2012 and 2016. In 25 to 30-year-olds, the figure jumped from 51 percent to 60 percent.

Good news for business, sure, but in the long run it might not be so rosy:

Supplies are currently under threat in major coffee-producing regions like South America. Experts debate the reasons for decline—a combination of coffee rust, warmer weather, and increases in fertiliser prices are all to blame—but there’s no getting away from the fact that coffee output has dwindled in recent years.

In 2012, around half of South America’s coffee crop was wiped out and experts predict that by 2050, half of the world’s current coffee growing regions could be unsuitable for production.

Oh no, then the world will stop functioning as everyone literally cannot think without caffeine.

If you happen to have watched Leo DiCaprio’s new doccie Before The Flood (watch for free HERE), you’ll know that we will have bigger worries than coffee shortages in the year 2050.

Stockpile your beans, build an underground bunker, start weaning yourself off coffee – do your thing, I literally couldn’t care less.

[source:vice]