Rising to the challenge: next steps in The BMJ’s climate commitments
BMJ 2024; 387 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q2197 (Published 10 October 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;387:q2197
- Juliet Dobson, managing editor1,
- Sophie Cook, head of clinical content1 2,
- Kamran Abbasi, editor in chief1
- Correspondence to: J Dobson jdobson{at}bmj.com
In February 2024, the world’s five largest listed oil companies were reported to have made record profits of $281bn since the start of the war in Ukraine.12 While oil companies benefited from steep rises in oil and gas prices because of the war, millions of households experienced fuel poverty and the associated physical and mental health effects of living in cold, damp homes. Some fossil fuel companies, including Shell and BP, are now reversing their climate commitments and plan to produce more oil and gas than previous targets.34
This renewed focus on fossil fuel production has health harming consequences worldwide. Extraction, production, and use of fossil fuels is directly linked to damage to planetary and human health.5 Burning fossil fuels has contributed to increased air pollution worldwide, resulting in health concerns such as increased cardiovascular and respiratory disease, and premature deaths. The World Health Organization estimates that 99% of the world’s population lives in places that do not meet its air quality guidelines.6 Fossil fuels drive increases in global greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate climate change.7 They are also a root cause of conflicts worldwide. The war in Darfur, Sudan, has been described as “the first climate change conflict” because climate and environmental factors exacerbated political tensions in the region.89
Extraction and production of fossil fuels widens global health inequalities and disproportionately affects poorer, marginalised communities, which are more vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. Communities living in areas where fossil fuels are extracted and processed also experience harm from disruption, land disputes, threats, and violence.7 Low and middle income countries are more directly affected by extreme and unpredictable weather events caused by climate change, despite being responsible for producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions; 92% of excess global emissions are produced by the world’s richer countries.10
Extreme weather events are becoming more common. Flooding in central Europe and the UK, extreme heat in the US, and wildfires in Brazil that have covered 60% of the country in smoke during 2024111213 are just some of recent climate related weather events—all of which have a heavy toll on people’s lives, health, and wellbeing.
The continued use of fossil fuels puts achieving the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) related to planetary, environmental, and human health at risk. In order to achieve the SDGs, governments must prioritise a just transition away from fossil fuels, and towards renewable forms of energy.14
Governmental inertia
Predictably, governments have been slow to act. Rather than holding fossil fuel companies accountable for their climate commitments, in some cases, government action has increased the use of fossil fuels. For example, the last UK government granted a licence for a new oil field in the North Sea. Campaigners estimate that if it goes ahead, burning the oil and gas from Rosebank would produce over 200 million tonnes of CO2, exacerbating the climate crisis.15
In December 2023, COP28 ended with an agreement that countries will move away from using fossil fuels and towards more renewable forms of energy. But there are no means of enforcing the agreement, and progress relies on individual governments.16 The final consensus statement fell short of agreeing a phase out of burning coal, oil, and gas and contained many loopholes.17 While more concrete action is still needed to limit global temperature rises, the agreement does signal to companies and governments that investing in fossil fuels is no longer a sensible investment and that they should invest elsewhere such as in renewable sources of energy.18
Calls for organisations to divest from fossil fuels are not new.1920 In January 2020, The BMJ launched a campaign calling for healthcare professionals and medical organisations to divest from health harming industries, notably from fossil fuels.21 Many medical royal colleges and healthcare organisations around the world have already divested.20 While individually these acts may seem small, the health sector contains a large workforce and collectively has great divestment power. People can feel powerless in the face of a worsening climate emergency, but divestment is a positive change that is fully within an individual’s or an organisation’s control. The objective is for these divestment decisions to be a tangible means of leadership and a way to exert influence on governments and industry.
Our commitments
In 2020, The BMJ committed to ban advertising and research funded by companies that produce fossil fuels. We have done so. And we asked others to join us. We will now strengthen our advertising policy further, following criticisms from readers that we carried advertising in our weekly print edition for Barclays Bank, a major funder of the fossil fuel industry. We are not banning advertising from all banks, but we will allow it only from banks that do not fund fossil fuel companies. BMJ has also re-endorsed the commitments of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, which include a commitment to divest from fossil fuels.22 We are estimating our company’s baseline carbon emissions and agreeing on actions to achieve net zero. One of these is to consider moving our print edition from being weekly to fortnightly. This would allow us to continue producing a high quality print journal while reducing our carbon footprint and the information load on print readers. Our online version is updated daily, includes everything we publish, and remains the canonical version of The BMJ for the purposes of the scientific record. Younger readers, in particular, prefer to consume information online. Please tell us what you think of our fortnightly print proposal on bmj.com or by email to Kamran Abbasi ([email protected]).
There is, of course, much more we can do, but this is a stepwise process whereby we tackle what is feasible first while we explore the more complex reforms that all organisations must embrace to reduce humanity’s damage to planetary health. We seek to lead by example and do what we ask of our readers. Climate commitments and pledges are important, but they are meaningless without action.
Footnotes
Competing interests: JD is a trustee of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change.
Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.