Are Climate Change, Obesity, and Malnutrition really one problem? Not a chance.
A major Lancet series authored by 43 researchers announces an alarming and counterintuitive conclusion: global climate change, obesity, and malnutrition are all really one single problem.
This revelation is so counterintuitive, it is largely counterproductive. While connections can be drawn between any major issue, the evidence linking these three problems as one is weak or contradictory.
The authors are so motivated to glue together disconnected ideas, they strangely argue obese people are a cause of climate change.
Why a Syndemic?
The authors define global malnutrition, obesity, and climate change as a “syndemic,” a word used to refer to diseases and pathologies that interact systematically to create a larger problem that are better tackled together. For example, in some places, the underlying causes of AIDS are so deeply connected to drug addiction that it is difficult to address one problem without also addressing the other.
It is possible, however, to fight obesity without fighting climate change, and to fight malnutrition without fighting obesity. So what motivates the authors to believe they are so intertwined?
Not new evidence. Rather, they hope connecting the issues will motivate action. “The enormous health and economic burdens caused by obesity,” they explain, “are not seen as urgent enough to generate the public demand or political will.” As a solution, they believe that: “Linking obesity with undernutrition and climate change into a single Global Syndemic framework focuses attention on the scale and urgency.”
This idea is dubious. It is already difficult to motivate individuals to take action for climate change because the problem seems distant and abstract. Adding obesity and malnutrition to the mix to create a more abstract problem is unlikely to help. The entire report therefore exists because of an assumption that is highly dubious.
The report offers three lines of evidence for why the three topics are really one problem. Let’s consider each.
“Obesity, undernutrition, and climate change cluster in time and place.”
The evidence these problems are clustered in “time and place” appears to be that they are all occurring at present on Earth. The authors do not show that the issues occur together in any particular place, but simply list the negative international consequences of each. By this standard, internet addiction should also qualify.
“Obesity, undernutrition, and climate change interact with each other.”
The report is correct in stating that climate change will likely undermine agricultural production, which may lead to malnutrition. But other connections are more tenuous.
They note that some populations suffer both malnutrition and obesity simultaneously, likely as a result of the low-nutritional content of many processed foods. While this is an alarming trend, malnutrition does not inherently cause obesity, and neither issue causes climate change.
They are right to note that plant-based foods produce less CO2. But not all weight-loss diets emit less CO2: junk food is largely made of plants, and many people eat more meat in an effort to lose weight. It is possible to eat healthy while reducing one’s carbon footprint, but this requires paying attention to two separate problems, not one.
The authors make far more baffling arguments to connect obesity and climate change, effectively blaming obese people, in part, for melting icecaps.
They write that a “mechanism by which obesity could contribute to climate change is through the increased costs of fossil fuels related to transporting populations with a high prevalence of obesity.” To state this clearly: obese people help cause climate change because it takes more gas to move them around. The authors further argue that that feeding more obese populations, “will increase the food system’s greenhouse-gas emissions,” presumably because they eat more.
The authors bemoan “the bias and stigmatisation” that people suffering from obesity suffer, yet make far-fetched claims about problems caused by obese people. The authors acknowledge that the impacts are “very small,” but in their effort to draw tenuous connections, they decided the accusation was important enough to make.
They further argue that climate change may make fresh food more expensive, so people “might” buy more processed foods and become more obese. Perhaps, but this conjecture about the future does nothing to explain obesity today.
All major problems influence each other: inequality, war, corruption, prejudice, mental ill health, etc. It does not clarify anything, however, to conflate them all as one.
“Obesity, undernutrition, and climate change have common systems drivers.”
The authors argue the three problems have the same underlying causes, and are startlingly clear on who they blame: “The fossil fuel and food industries … are responsible for driving The Global Syndemic.” Elsewhere they blame “economic systems” that, “value GDP growth and overlook its role in damaging the health of people, the environment, and the planet.”
Here the authors fall victim to the attribution bias: the tendency to believe bad things happen because someone decided they should happen. Corporate greed certainly plays some part in promoting unhealthy food and climate change denial. But so do social trends, human psychology, perverse incentives, and myriad other factors that no one planned.
At least one cause they identify, “car-oriented transportation systems,” contradicts the idea that GDP growth alone is to blame. Cities with high rates of walking and low carbon impact per person also have high economic output. Walkability is itself associated with economic growth. New York and Hong Kong have a high GDP, in part, because people walk and take transit, not in spite of it. Prioritizing economic growth does not contradict sustainable planning.
It is true that people from low-income countries drive and consume less, and therefore produce less CO2. I suspect, however, that the authors’ preferred solution is not to keep people in poverty.
An unproductive distortion of facts
Adam Smith observed that even a good, caring person would have a stronger emotional reaction to cutting their pinky finger than to learning that, “the great empire of China… were suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake.” People respond to things that feel concrete and personal.
The “global syndemic” makes real, everyday problems feel obscure and far away. In addition to being factually baseless, the report is counterproductive.
We need to move in precisely the opposite direction. Cities can fight obesity and climate change by improving transit and ensuring streets are wonderful places to walk, actions that improve people’s lives today. We need greater clarity on our personal stake in local solutions for these global problems.
The last thing we need is to distort facts to make our problems seem more confusing.
A version of this story was originally published on the Jean Monnet Health Law + Policy Network.
