Macchiatos from the Moon won’t be cheap, but needs must

Hands up those who felt weirdly sad to discover the tiny cotton sprouts the Chinese planted on the far side of the Moon have perished?

It was the freezing cold night that did it for them, which makes you wonder why the biosphere researchers didn’t plant Antarctic hair grass or polar bears in their lunar rover.

Better still, they could have taken a handful of coffee cherries, because if there’s one thing Mother Earth simply can’t function without, it’s our early morning stimulant – and our flat whites are in clear and present danger.

Conservationist have discovered that 60 per cent of the 124 known coffee species are on the brink of extinction due to climate change.

More than 100 types of coffee tree grow naturally in forests; their existence is crucial for sustaining the global crop, as their hardy wild genes can be crossed with domesticated crops to improve yield and quality.

The best coffee comes from the Bean Belt, a band of tropical regions that sit close to the Equator, where the plants thrive in the high altitude, the mountainous terrain, warm days and cold nights.

Now I’m no scientist (unless an A-level in chemistry counts…), but that sounds pretty much like the Moon to me, give or take the tropics. And the Equator. And the fact it’s 239,000 miles from the nearest Costa.

Maybe the Chinese – who aren’t big coffee drinkers – are the wrong nation to ask. The average person in mainland China consumes just three cups a year.

Here in the UK, we drink 250 cups per person, rising to 363 cups in the US – and a staggering 1,013 in Finland.

I suggest the next Moon mission be financed by Scandinavians and crewed by expert Ethiopians, Colombians and Kenyans, whose coffee is grown at very high altitudes, although not as high as the Moon, obviously.

Macchiatos from the Moon won’t be cheap, but we have to do something. Losing our lattes could cost us the Earth.