Fossil Fuels Or Food: Which Is Worse For Climate Change?

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For the people who know, the title’s pairing is ridiculous because it is well established that fossil fuels contribute more to climate change than agriculture. However, the other day someone insisted to me that food contributes more to climate change than fossil fuels. “Because we eat every day,” the person tried to explain to me. While we humans do need to eat regularly and it is every day unless a person is fasting or does not have access to food, the scale of what we do as individuals is less than what industries do. Agriculture does contribute to climate change too. Depending on what sources you review, that portion is about 20% to 30%.

If you guessed it’s fossil fuels that generate much more than agriculture does, you would be correct. “Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a new report.”

In an article on the United Nations website titled “Causes and Effects of Climate Change,” the following is stated: “Fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions.”

The World Resources Institute published a breakdown of climate change emissions in which they wrote, “The energy sector produces the most greenhouse gas emissions by far, accounting for a whopping 75.7% worldwide.”

What did the US Environmental Protection Agency write about the situation? “Burning fossil fuels changes the climate more than any other human activity.”

And what of the US Energy Information Administration? “In the United States, most (about 74%) human-caused (anthropogenic) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from burning fossil fuels — coal, natural gas, and petroleum — for energy use.”

Harvard University has a goal to be fossil-fuel free by 2050, and why would that be? “Burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change. The use of fossil fuels pollutes the air and water — damaging human health and disproportionately harming vulnerable communities — which is why Harvard is taking a holistic approach that incorporates climate, equity, and health.”

Yale Climate Connections published an article about how the insurance industry backs some fossil fuel companies. In it, the following was written: “Nonetheless, insurance companies have become some of the biggest financiers of fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of climate change — the extraction and burning of oil, gas, and coal are responsible for over 75% of greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of carbon dioxide emissions.”

UC Berkeley is one of the most well-regarded public universities in the US, particularly for research. An article from its School of Public Health states: “The review highlights that fossil fuels account for about 90% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, heating the climate, acidifying oceans, and fueling unprecedented climate disasters. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion is responsible for millions of premature deaths worldwide and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the United States every year.”

Harvard and Yale are top universities in the US. Their counterparts in the UK some may say are Oxford and Cambridge. An article published in Oxford Open Climate stated: “We review the vast scientific evidence showing that fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry are the root cause of the climate crisis, harm public health, worsen environmental injustice, accelerate biodiversity extinction, and fuel the petrochemical pollution crisis. Fossil fuels are responsible for millions of premature deaths, trillions of dollars in damages, and the escalating disruption of ecosystems, threatening people, wildlife, and a livable future.”

‘‘The world is facing a simultaneous inflation crisis, national security crisis, and climate crisis, all caused by our dependence on high cost, insecure, polluting, fossil fuels with volatile prices,” an article about research conducted at Oxford University explained.

Cambridge has plans to stop investing in fossil fuels. “The University of Cambridge is upping the ante for the fossil fuel divestment movement. The 811-year-old British institution announced on Thursday that it not only plans to divest its $4.5 billion endowment from fossil fuels — it also aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its investment portfolio.”

Zooming out a bit, what does the United Kingdom’s Parliament say about fossil fuels and climate change? “At present 78% of this energy comes from fossil fuels — oil, gas and a small amount of coal. The burning of these high-carbon fuels in combustion engines, boilers, and power stations is responsible for the majority of the UK’s territorial emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.”

And Canada? “Globally, almost 80% of GHG emissions from human sources come from the burning of fossil fuels and industrial processes,” a page on the Environment Canada website says.

The largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon, is in Brazil. What is the Brazilian government’s view? A key figure in Brazil has actually mentioned a plan to get rid of fossil fuels completely. “Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva put on the table an idea for a way forward: a roadmap to end the use of fossil fuels, the headline promise of the Dubai deal from 2023.”

Pulling back a bit further, away from governments and academic institutions, a respected figure who was not an environmental activist made remarks about climate change. The late Pope Francis described fossil fuels as the main culprit. The Pope provided 3 key messages on this:

There is an urgent need to substitute fossil fuels with sustainable energy and this must be available to everyone, including the poorest (paras 26, 165 & 179).

Richer countries must help poorer countries to make the shift away from fossil fuels or leapfrog to cleaner sources of energy through financing, technology transfer and technical assistance (paras 52, 165 & 172).

Maximising energy efficiency as a key building block of the energy shift (para 180).

Some of my exchanges with people recently have been sort of a catalyst for getting even more ideas to write about. It seems very clear that while agriculture and food contribute to climate change, fossil fuels are still dominant.

Lest anyone get confused about fossil fuels, they are harmful to the planet and human health, not only the environment. Harvard University will have the last word here: “New research from Harvard University, in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London, found that more than 8 million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution, significantly higher than previous research suggested — meaning that air pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal and diesel was responsible for about 1 in 5 deaths worldwide.”