Bears, Nuts, Chocolate, and Climate Change

For a similar reason, Japan has more bear attacks, Ferrero has a Nutella problem, and Almond Joy is no longer a milk chocolate treat.

Let’s take a look.

Global Warming Hot Spots

Bear Attacks

In northern Japan’s mountains, a hungry bear could be anywhere. Bear sightings have come from inside supermarkets, outside bedroom windows, and at a hot springs resort. One cause could be a shortage of the bears’ tasty beechnut treats. One result is a soaring murder rate from bear attacks.

Hazelnut Shortages

A frost, the brown marmorated stink bug (aka “sputnik”), and a drought reduced Turkey’s hazelnut harvest. Sinking by 100,000 tons or more from a 600,000 to 700,000 average, the plunging hazelnut harvest could elevate Nutella prices. As Nutella’s manufacturer, Ferrero uses one quarter of the world’s hazelnuts.

Concentrated in Turkey, hazelnut production (and Nutella) depends on one country:

Milk Chocolate Changes

Rolos, Mr. Goodbar, and Almond Joy (reputedly–I have not done the taste test) have changed. Their labels say why. With climbing cocoa prices, some candy companies cut costs with new recipes. When the new ingredients did not meet U.S. regulatory definitions, the milk chocolate on the label had to switch to chocolate candy:

Our Bottom Line: Global Warming Externalities

Economists like to think at the margin. The “place” where something extra occurs, the margin can explain the impact of global warming. Rather than one massive event, global warming frequently occurs at the margin. It creates the erratic weather patterns that affect nut and cocoa harvests.

From there, we wind up with a slew of externalities. Because an externality can be called a ripple, it describes how multiple people feel the impact of an event. Indeed, being killed by a bear, paying more for Nutella, and less pleasure from Almond Joys, are the externalities of global warming that unfold at the margin.

My sources and more: Thanks to GZero for alerting me to Japan’s bear problem and then the NY Times for the details. As for the hazelnut crisis, there were lots of possibilities that ranged from this DW article to the Financial Times. And finally, here, we learned more about milk chocolate label changes.