It stands to reason that larger people eat more than smaller ones, which means that it takes more agricultural production — a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions — to feed them, too.
Basic physics also tells us that it takes more energy to move larger people around in planes, trains or automobiles. And unless that transport is driven by sustainably-sourced power, it makes sense that the bigger people are, the bigger (on average) are their contributions to transportation-derived climate change.
That thesis is codified in this week’s edition of the medical journal, the Lancet, by a team from the London School Hygiene & Tropical Medicine which finds that global obesity is a contributing factor to global warming.
“The researchers pegged 40 percent of the global population as obese,” reports Reuters. That’s a lot of extra food and fossil fuel being consumed that could be saved if people just had healthier body mass indices.
This statement of the somewhat obvious might have the unfortunate effect of contributing to prejudices against the obese, for whom achieving a healthy weight is often far more than a mere matter of will power.
But it might drive something positive, too, in the shape of further pressure upon us all to ask hard questions about why so many people make the kind of nutritional and lifestyle choices that result in their becoming obese. If this research helps further discredit the US subsidization of ‘junk’ calories that reside in products like high-fructose corn syrup, for example, we might be able to both help slow the warming of our planet and give its human citizens a healthier, and longer, life upon it.
EarthQuaker 
Hi Simon,
I have to disagree with you: on average, large people DO NOT eat more than thin people. Read Gina Kolata’s ‘Rethinking Thin’ for more info.
Best,
Bee
Why is everyone buying into this ‘zero sum’ theory when it comes to global warming and oil consumption?
Are we seriously considering growing less food in order to save the environment?
Seriously?
Humans need challenges in order to create. Cavemen were cold at night – they captured and learned to control fire. We created the wheel, domesticated animals, learned to fly,invented TiVO, the list goes on and on.
Have some faith that man can find an alternative to the internal combustion engine.
With regards to that article, may I suggest that the London School Hygiene & Tropical Medicine was doing a little bit of fat bashing.
If the goal is to decrease the overall mass of the car driving public, maybe we should look at decreasing the numbers of drivers rather than the mass of individual drivers. Maybe the authors of the Lancet article would like to start it off by swearing off cars and in true Luddite style, go back to horse and buggy.