Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.
Let me count the ways.
The sublime offerings of Dumon in Bruges. Any time.
The carnal necessity of Milk Tray at Christmas. (Even if the current owners have messed with the taste a little.)
And then there’s the stuff they peddle in Norway. Kvikk Lunsj, for example.
If you’ve never had that, you’ve likely not lived in any meaningful way.
Chocolate, to me — really good chocolate, that is — can do what so many drugs can’t.
It can lift you toward a spirit of being that renders you pleasantly insensate, but bathing in the goodness of nature.
And now let’s discuss evapotranspiration.
It’s increasing, so chocolate lovers are in trouble.
As the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just explained, cacao plants are on the road to becoming extinct by 2050.
In essence, climate change is going to suck far more moisture out of soil and plants in Africa.
There probably won’t be enough rainfall to offset this sucking.
That will drive cacao farms — which are mostly in West Africa — up the mountains. There, though, the conditions aren’t ideal. And much of the mountain areas are already designated as wildlife preserves.
We, the chocolate lovers of the world, are likely doomed.
Unless, that is, scientists at the University of California Berkeley and some of the larger brains at Mars manage to create viable crops using the gene-editing technology CRISPR.
As the Independent reports, the idea is to create crops that will be able to put up with the significant changes that are happening to the climate.
Cacao plants are more temperamental than your average Hollywood actor.
They have backstage riders worse than any rock star.
A constant supply of rain, appropriate temperature and humidity is essential.
And then there’s the need to play them Bach Cantatas all day.
That last one, I made it up. But we take for granted something that is rather delicate.
Look, this is how serious it is.
By 2050, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believes that 89.5 percent of the land upon which cacao is currently grown won’t be in a state to host the cacao plants.
This is about the survival of the human race.
Anyone who can survive without chocolate is clearly not human.
So we must sit and wait.
Meanwhile, as you go to your fridge — no chocolate is worth eating warm — and remove a couple of pieces of fine chocolate from your chocolate drawer, please consider how precious the item you’re eating truly is.
What do you mean your fridge doesn’t have a chocolate drawer?
It’s the bottom drawer, just below the salad drawer.
It’s one of the essences of civilized homo sapiens.
No one ever told you?