Climate Change Barely Affects Poverty

Growth-oriented policy does much more for to prevent malnutrition deaths

By Bjorn Lomborg.

"The World Health Organization estimates that climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths each year in the two decades following 2030, mostly among the world’s poor. The WHO compared the real world with an imaginary one in which there’s no climate change, calculating the difference in deaths from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, dengue fever, flooding and heat. By far the biggest killer at 85,000 additional deaths in 2050 is malnutrition. Understandably, the immediate response to this prediction by many is that we should work to end global warming even if it’s costly. But a less publicized part of the WHO analysis shows why this could hurt the poor more than help: the effect of economic development.

As you can see in the accompanying graph, malnutrition deaths have declined dramatically over the past three decades and will continue to drop rapidly over the next three. This is partly due to increasing crop yields, which would still rise under climate change but slightly slower—resulting in 85,000 deaths in 2050 that might not have been had temperatures held still. Economic growth—which allows families to buy more food regardless of yields—is the primary cause driving down malnutrition deaths. This puts the impact of global warming in context: For nutrition, climate change isn’t a disaster, but something that slightly slows down progress.

The future may be even brighter than what’s shown in this chart, which is only the WHO’s medium economic growth scenario. It also predicted what low and high growth would mean for malnutrition deaths. In the former, there are two million total malnutrition deaths in 2050. In the latter, there are 300,000. Growth policies can avoid 1.7 million annual deaths. That is far more than any climate measures could provide.  

Even stringent regulations won’t eliminate global warming, meaning they could at best prevent some of the 85,000 predicted deaths. And in the process these measures would slow economic growth, keeping more people poor. The Paris climate agreement is projected to keep 11 million more people in poverty come 2030 than otherwise would be. If the Glasgow climate conference in November leads to the adoption of much stronger climate measures, policy makers will raise that total to 80 million additional people in poverty by 2030, which will inevitably cause even more malnutrition deaths.

Climate change deserves our attention, but policy makers need to be realistic. What really protects the world’s poor from malnutrition is getting out of poverty. It’s not expensive climate regulations."