Fossil fuel industry’s threat to humanity exposed in latest global health climate stocktake

Melissa Sweet
Melissa Sweet
Thursday, November 16, 2023

Climate emergency, #HealthyCOP28, Commercial determinants of health, Fossil fuels, Global health, Health in All Policies, Health inequalities

Melissa Sweet writes:

The political and economic power of the fossil fuels industry is harming the health of millions of people around the world and threatens the future of humanity.

That is the clear message from the latest report by the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, an international research collaboration that independently monitors the evolving impacts of climate change on health, and the emerging health opportunities of climate action.

The report warns that years of scientific warnings of the threat to people’s lives have been met with “grossly insufficient action”, and policies to date have put the world on track to “a potentially catastrophic 2·7°C of heating by 2100”.

It says “the multiple and simultaneously rising risks of climate change are amplifying global health inequities and threatening the very foundations of human health”.

“The path to a liveable future is becoming more difficult with every moment of inaction,” the researchers warn.

“Climate change is placing human health and survival at risk in every region of the world.”

In its eighth iteration, the 2023 report draws on the expertise of 114 scientists and health practitioners from 52 research institutions and United Nations agencies worldwide to provide its most comprehensive assessment yet.

It outlines the inequities being exacerbated by climate change and inequitable, inadequate policies and responses, and warns that “the most vulnerable and minoritised populations, who often contributed least to climate change, are disproportionately affected – a direct consequence of structural injustices, and harmful power dynamics, both between and within countries”.

Fossil fuels

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown warned that global health is at the mercy of fossil fuels and noted a unique opportunity, as countries responded to the energy crisis, to deliver transformative climate change action.

This year’s report finds few, if any, signs of the urgently needed progress, “in a world still bound to fossil fuel ambitions”.

Related findings include:

Governments continue to incentivise a carbon-intensive, health-harming economy, allocating amounts often equivalent to substantial proportions of their health budgets to subsidising fossil fuels.
Global fossil fuel investment increased by 10 percent in 2022, reaching over $1 trillion. The expansion of oil and gas extractive activities has been supported through both private and public financial flows.
Regardless of their claims and commitments, the strategies of the 20 largest oil and gas companies are becoming less consistent with Paris Agreement goals.
High energy prices yielded $4 trillion in profits for oil and gas companies, incentivising fossil fuel expansion. Oil and gas companies allocated only roughly four percent of their capital investment to renewables.
Direct and indirect employment in renewable energy increased by 5·6 percent in 2021 to a record high of nearly 12·7 million employees, whereas direct employment in fossil fuel extraction increased by nearly 20 percent.
Green sector lending has risen sharply since 2016, to $498 billion in 2021, and is approaching fossil fuel lending. But 22 of the top 40 private banks have increased their fossil fuel lending. The biggest fossil fuel lenders (Citi, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan) have made negligible progress on reducing their fossil fuel lending.
Despite a rapidly growing use of clean renewable energy, renewables still account for only 9·5 percent of the world’s electricity.

COP 28

The report intensifies pressure on the upcoming COP28 global climate negotiations to produce meaningful outcomes for health.

While this is the first COP to feature health as a core theme – “a substantial step forward for advancing health-centred climate change action” – the report warns against health being used as window-dressing.

The authors call for coordinated efforts grounded in science to hold decision makers accountable at the COP, and to counteract the growing lobbying and influence of the fossil fuel sector and other health-harming industries.

“To truly protect health, climate negotiations must drive a rapid and sustained shift away from fossil fuels, accelerate mitigation, and increase support for health adaptation,” says the report.

“Anything less would amount to healthwashing – increasing the acceptability of initiatives that minimally advance climate change action to the detriment of billions of people alive today.”

Make some noise

In an article accompaning the Lancet Countdown’s latest release, Australian public health leader Professor Sharon Friel calls for civil society to be noisy, in demanding climate action and accountability.

She also warns against being taken in by fossil fuel corporations’ increasingly vocal support for a green energy transition through, for example, promoting methane gas as clean energy, hyping dirty hydrogen, and touting carbon capture as a silver bullet.

“These distraction tactics aim to obscure companies’ continuing extraction of massive amounts of coal, oil, and gas,” writes Friel, who is director of the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University.

“This shift in strategy from denying climate change to delaying climate action through greenwashing tactics aims to protect and maintain the power and social licence of fossil fuel corporations to operate in a global economy that is making a conscious shift towards renewable sources.”

Friel says that if mitigation is the biggest preventive health opportunity of the 21st century, grabbing that opportunity requires tackling the commercial drivers of the global consumptogenic system.

“Governments, especially in high-income countries, must use their regulatory power to curb excess commercial activities and stop further coal, oil, and gas projects,” she says.

“Civil society must be noisy, demanding action and holding commercial actors and governments to account,” Friel writes.

“Actors concerned about planetary health equity must be at the energy, industrial, food, infrastructure policy tables; work in coalitions to articulate and lobby for structural reforms; and change the narrative from individual responsibility to commercial and state responsibility.”

Other key findings

In 2023, the world saw the highest global temperatures in over 100,000 years, and heat records were broken in all continents through 2022.
Adults older than 65 years and infants younger than 1 year, for whom extreme heat can be particularly life-threatening, are now exposed to twice as many heatwave days as they would have experienced in 1986–2005.
The global land area affected by extreme drought increased from 18% in 1951–60 to 47% in 2013–22, jeopardising water security, sanitation, and food production.
Economic losses from extreme weather events increased by 23% between 2010–14 and 2018–22, amounting to US$264 billion in 2022 alone, whereas heat exposure led to global potential income losses worth $863 billion.
Labour capacity loss resulting from heat exposure affected low and medium Human Development Index (HDI) countries the most, exacerbating global inequities
Health systems are increasingly strained, and 27% of surveyed cities declared concerns over their health systems being overwhelmed by the impacts of climate change.
If global mean temperature continues to rise to just under 2°C, annual heat-related deaths are projected to increase by 370% by mid-century, assuming no substantial progress on adaptation.
Renewable investment is also unequally distributed. Only 1% of renewable energy investments in 2022 were in Africa.

Some positive signs

The Lancet Countdown report says some encouraging signs of progress offer a glimpse of the enormous human benefits that could come from health-centred action.

Deaths attributable to fossil-fuel-derived air pollution have decreased by 15·7% since 2005, with 80% of this reduction being the result of reduced coal-derived pollution.
Renewable energy sector expanded to a historical high of 12·7 million employees in 2021.
Renewable energy accounted for 90% of the growth in electricity capacity in 2022.
Global clean energy investment increased by 15% in 2022, to $1·6 trillion.
The health dimensions of climate change are increasingly acknowledged in the public discourse, with 24% of all climate change newspaper articles in 2022 referring to health (this figure was 26% in 2020).
Governments increasingly acknowledge the link between climate and health, with 95% of updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement now referring to health – up from 73% in 2020.

“These trends signal what could be the start of a life-saving transition,” says the report, which highlights the critical role of the health sector in engaging in advocacy and action across multiple sectors.

“With climate change claiming millions of lives annually and its threats rapidly growing, seizing the opportunity to secure a healthier future has never been more vital. Ensuring that a thriving future remains in reach will require the coordinated action of health professionals, policy makers, corporations, and financial institutions.”