No, achieving net zero will not result in 50% of the population dying

Context

Posts sharing a statement by Patrick Moore, who claims to be a co-founder of Greenpeace, has been circulating on social media, saying, "If we actually achieved net zero, at least 50% of the population would die of hunger and disease." The post on X, accompanied by a video of Moore making the claim, has been viewed by more than 149,000 people. The same statement has also been shared on Facebook.

The posts go on to say, "At least 50% of the population depends on nitrogen fertilizer for its existence. And there's people trying to ban it, and Netherlands and Sri Lanka have already made these kinds of moves. So it is truly a death wish in disguise, and the disguise is to save the Earth, which doesn't need saving, particularly."

However, the claim that at least half the world's population will die of hunger and disease if we reach net zero is false. The second part of the post is also misleading, suggesting that banning nitrogen fertilizers is a "death wish."

In fact

Logically Facts previously contacted Greenpeace to understand Moore's links to the organization and found that although Moore played a "significant role for years at Greenpeace in Canada," he did not co-found the organization. He applied for a role in 1971, a year after the organization was founded, and now "exploits his long-gone ties with Greenpeace" to promote unethical solutions, which Greenpeace opposes, the organization confirmed. 

Moore made the statement about net zero causing the death of at least 50 percent of the population in an interview with BizNews in May 2023. According to Media Bias Fact Check, this media outlet has previously published unproven and misleading claims regarding climate change and COVID-19. The interview is available on YouTube in two parts. In the second part, at the 03:28 minute mark, Moore talks about the net zero target and its impact on the population. The statement that has been circulating on social media appears in full in this interview. 

Net zero refers to a state in which the greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere are balanced by their removal from the atmosphere. The Paris Agreement requires that countries "achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century." As set out in the U.K.'s Roadmap to Net Zero Government emissions, the U.K. government aims to reduce all direct emissions from public sector buildings by 50 percent and 75 percent by 2032 and 2037 respectively, against a 2017 baseline. All U.K. emissions are to reach net zero by 2050. This target was confirmed in June 2019 and signed by Chris Skidmore, Energy and Clean Growth Minister in the former Conservative government. The new Labour Party government has not changed this target so far.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says achieving this goal is essential because reducing greenhouse gas emissions through better choices in transport, food, and energy use can lead to very large health gains, particularly through reduced air pollution. There’s no evidence achieving net zero will increase the number of deaths; by contrast, high mortality rates are accelerated by climate change which is not being mitigated. According to the WHO, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress alone.

Logically Facts contacted Dr. Adam Parr of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, who told us, "Achieving net zero will not lead to 50% of the population dying. In fact, the opposite is true: stabilizing global temperature is essential to reduce the death and suffering already being caused by global heating and fossil fuel air pollution."

In the U.K., achieving net zero will improve public health in the near future through better air quality, better diets, increased physical activity, improved building standards, and better work-life balance, according to a report by the UCL Institute of Health Equity. "For example, in the UK, in the absence of adaptation, heat-related deaths are projected to increase to an annual average of between 3,000 and 13,000 in the 2050s. Meanwhile, flood risk is growing in the UK, and approximately 1.8 million people, 3% of the population, currently live in homes in areas of significant river, surface water, or coastal flooding risk," the report states.

Moore's claim that the removal of nitrogen fertilizers is a "death wish" and will be responsible for the increase in mortality is also inaccurate. Dr. Parr, who recently published peer-reviewed research on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, explains: "While nitrogen is crucial to food production, the excess use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers – which have a large impact on climate change – is not. The calories and proteins required by today’s human population could be produced with biologically fixed nitrogen from leguminous cover crops instead of synthetic fertilizers. A well-managed elimination of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer from farming can be comfortably accomplished without causing food shortages through changing the way we farm, modest changes to diet, reducing food waste, and using land for food, not biofuels."

Verdict

Achieving the net zero target will not cause 50 percent of the population to die, but will improve public health rather than increase mortality. We have, therefore, rated the claim as false.