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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Horm Metab Res 2021; 53(09): 575-587
DOI: 10.1055/a-1533-2861
Review

Climate Change and Obesity

Christian A. Koch
1   Department of Medicine, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA
2   Department of Medicine, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, USA
,
Pankaj Sharda
1   Department of Medicine, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA
,
Jay Patel
2   Department of Medicine, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, USA
,
Sriram Gubbi 
3   National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
,
Rashika Bansal
3   National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
,
Michael J. Bartel
1   Department of Medicine, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA
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Abstract

Global warming and the rising prevalence of obesity are well described challenges of current mankind. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic arose as a new challenge. We here attempt to delineate their relationship with each other from our perspective. Global greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have exponentially increased since 1950. The main contributors to such greenhouse gas emissions are manufacturing and construction, transport, residential, commercial, agriculture, and land use change and forestry, combined with an increasing global population growth from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.8 billion in 2020 along with rising obesity rates since the 1980s. The current Covid-19 pandemic has caused some decline in greenhouse gas emissions by limiting mobility globally via repetitive lockdowns. Following multiple lockdowns, there was further increase in obesity in wealthier populations, malnutrition from hunger in poor populations and death from severe infection with Covid-19 and its virus variants. There is a bidirectional relationship between adiposity and global warming. With rising atmospheric air temperatures, people typically will have less adaptive thermogenesis and become less physically active, while they are producing a higher carbon footprint. To reduce obesity rates, one should be willing to learn more about the environmental impact, how to minimize consumption of energy generating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, and to reduce food waste. Diets lower in meat such as a Mediterranean diet, have been estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 72%, land use by 58%, and energy consumption by 52%.

Key words

climate change - greenhouse gas emission - temperature - endocrine disrupting chemicals - brown fat - metabolic rate - COVID-19 - thermogenesis, obesity


Publication History

Received: 14 June 2021

Accepted after revision: 22 July 2021

Article published online:
08 September 2021

© 2021. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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