Climate claims miss bigger food threat
Subtitle: Fertiliser shortages expose deeper global risk
| Source: Sunday Times / Syndicated | Author: Bjorn Lomborg (Copenhagen Consensus) | Date: May 2, 2026 |
Note: This article was syndicated across multiple outlets including the Financial Post and Sunday Times under varying titles. The Mint PDF compilation featured it as “Radical emission cuts will harm food security across the planet.”
For years, climate campaigners have argued that our food supply is under grave threat from climate change driven by excessive fossil fuel use. Ironically, the war in the Middle East is highlighting a different challenge: the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to sustain food production.
Today, half of all the calories we consume depend on artificial fertilisers, most of which are produced using natural gas. Without fossil fuels, the global population would suffer a severe lack of food.
The conflict in the Middle East and the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz are not only driving up global energy prices. Crucially, about a quarter of the world’s fertiliser typically passes through the strait, and the blockade is holding back supplies needed to grow next season’s crops. The UN estimates this could raise fertiliser prices by 15%-20% and push 45-million more people into acute hunger.
For decades, however, we’ve been told that fossil fuel-driven global warming poses the greatest threat to the world’s food supply. That claim is almost entirely wrong.
This climate-apocalyptic argument was only given any attention because we lost sight of one of humanity’s greatest achievements in the modern age: our ability to tackle food security. Over the past 125 years, food has become far more abundant and affordable, driven by productivity gains and innovation.
Far from a looming apocalypse, the data reveals a story of remarkable progress, with climate change posing only a relatively minor hurdle. Radical emission cuts risk making food scarcer and more expensive for the world’s most vulnerable.
Consider the arc of history. In 1928, the League of Nations estimated that more than two-thirds of humanity experienced constant hunger. Today, fewer than one in 10 people worldwide go hungry — a rate that dipped below 7% before disruptions such as Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
This isn’t luck; it’s the result of humanity quintupling cereal production since 1926 while more than halving global food prices in real terms. Incomes have surged, lifting billions out of extreme poverty and allowing families to afford more nutritious meals. This has prevented more than 4-billion people from starving — a testament to agricultural ingenuity and economic growth.
Even now, positives abound. The UN’s April forecast points to another record global harvest for 2025/26, largely because crops were planted before the Middle East crisis.
Concerns remain for the next season. About 670-million people still face food insecurity. In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, yields remain far below global averages. The barriers are clear, however, and should be surmountable: poor yields, subsistence farming, and — most importantly — a lack of fertiliser, pesticides and mechanised handling.
Yet Western NGOs and campaigners — well-fed but overly worried about climate change — have railed against artificial fertilisers because they are fossil fuel-based. Backed by rich donors and foundations, they suggest that Africa should go organic, despite evidence showing this reduces harvests and food security. When Sri Lanka went organic in 2021, rice yields — the country’s staple food — plunged by more than 30%, with other crops showing huge declines.
Climate activists paint a picture of rising temperatures devastating crops and fuelling famine, but they are wrong. Climate change will alter farming conditions — benefiting some areas and challenging others — with a net negative but negligible impact. One peer-reviewed study suggests the effect on agriculture will shave less than 0.06% from global GDP by century’s end.
Carbon dioxide is also a natural fertiliser. Elevated CO₂ levels have greened the planet, adding leaves since 2000 across an area larger than the continent of Australia.
Without climate change, global food calories are expected to rise 51% by 2050 from 2010 levels. Even under an extreme warming scenario, global food calories would still rise, only slightly less, at 49%.
Drastic emission cuts are a bad policy if we want to boost food security. Climate policy is a blunt, expensive tool: even aggressive action takes decades or centuries to measurably affect weather, costing hundreds of trillions while boosting calorie availability by under 0.1%. Prioritising economic growth, by contrast, is over 100 times more effective, increasing food access by more than 10% — in years, not centuries.
Emission reductions harm food production more than climate change. They inflate costs for fertilisers, tractor fuel and land, pricing out small farmers. Naïve models often overlook that, but careful research clearly shows that a low-emission future with high carbon prices overall means 50-million more people hungry by mid-century.
The war in the Middle East has exposed the climate food scare for the distraction it truly is. To end hunger in the developing world, the poor don’t need expensive carbon cuts or organic farming mandates pushed by rich-world activists. What they actually need is greater access to affordable fertiliser.