https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-malnutrition-regulation-economic-growth-glasgow-conference-11633551187?mod=opinion_major_pos4
Editor’s note: As November’s global climate conference in Glasgow draws near, important facts about climate change don’t always make it into the dominant media coverage. We’re here to help. Each Thursday contributor Bjorn Lomborg will provide some important background so readers can have a better understanding of the true effects of climate change and the real costs of climate policy.
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.