Pizzaro used to go shopping. The high-rise offices of the advertising and food company executives, as well as of the media executives whose magazines and TV shows carried the coffee advertisements, were inefficiently lit, cooled, and heated by electricity generated by large amounts of coal and oil. These represented the same kinds of deep inequities that had led, in recent years, to a fanning of anti-Mexican sentiment throughout California. As a Californian whose grandparents had immigrated from Mexico, Pizarro had often been uncomfortably conscious of this sentiment. But none of this crossed his mind as he sipped his evening coffee and watched the sun sink below the horizon.
Coffee is indeed one of the simple pleasures of life, for people everywhere.
It has contributed to innumerable moments of good conversation and congeniality, and has helped people like Paul Pizarro to get started in the morning and to stay awake while driving at night. It is also true, however, that the production of a single cup of coffee requires the participation of an enormous array of materials, processes, and industries. The question is not whether the final product is good or bad, but whether the particular methods used to produce it are appropriate. But it may also be possible to produce the same product with far less impact. And that may be true for almost every product we consume.