Bjorn Lomborg: The world abandons hydrocarbons at the risk of worsening food insecurity

Today, half of all the calories we consume are only possible because they are produced with artificial fertilizers, overwhelmingly from natural gas. Without fossil fuels, half the global population would suffer a severe lack of food.

The conflict in West Asia and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz are not just driving up global energy prices. About a quarter of the world’s fertilizer normally passes through the strait, and the impasse is holding back much of the fertilizer that could help grow the food needed to feed the world. The UN estimates that this could drive up fertilizer prices 15-20% and push at least another 45 million people into acute hunger.

Yet, for the last few decades, we’ve been told ad nauseam that fossil fuel use behind global warming was the big challenge to the world’s food supply. That claim is almost entirely wrong.

This climate-apocalyptic argument was only ever given any attention because we lost sight of the marvel 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 dramatically cheaper and more abundant, thanks to soaring productivity and innovation. Far from a looming apocalypse, the data reveals a story of remarkable progress, with climate change posing only a relatively minor hurdle. If anything, radical emission cuts risk making food scarcer and dearer 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 endured constant hunger. Today, fewer than one in 10 people worldwide go hungry—a rate that dipped below 7% before disruptions like 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 enabling families to afford more nutritious meals. This has kept more than four billion people from starving, a testament to agricultural ingenuity and growth.

Even now, positives abound. The UN’s April forecast points to another record-breaking global harvest for 2025-26 because crops were already planted before the energy crisis.

Still, there are concerns for the next season. Roughly 670 million people still suffer from food insecurity. In regions like sub-Saharan Africa, where crop yields lag global averages, the barriers are clear and should be surmountable: poor yields, subsistence farming and most importantly, lack of fertilizer, pesticides and mechanized handling.

Yet, Western NGOs and campaigners, well-fed but overly-worried about climate change, have railed against artificial fertilizers because they are fossil fuel-based. Backed by rich donors and foundations, they blithely 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 over 30% with other crops showing massive declines.

Climate activists paint a dire picture of rising temperatures devastating crops and fuelling famine, but they are mostly wrong.

Climate change will alter farming conditions, benefiting some areas and challenging others, with a net negative but negligible impact. One peer-reviewed study equates the effect on agriculture to shaving less than 0.06% from global GDP by the century’s end.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is also a natural fertilizer. Elevated CO2 levels have greened the planet, adding leaves with an equivalent area larger than the continent of Australia since 2000 alone.

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, just 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%. Prioritizing economic growth, by contrast, is over 100-times more effective, increasing food access by more than 10% in years, not centuries.

And emission reductions harm food production more than climate change. They inflate costs for fertilizers, 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 lesson from today’s geopolitical shocks is clear: food security depends less on distant climate projections than on reliable access to energy and agricultural inputs. If the goal is to reduce hunger, especially in poorer regions, the priority should be to make fertilizer more accessible—not restricting the very resources that make large-scale food production possible.

The author is visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.