The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes 5 billion US dollars of environmental damage per hour, according to the United Nations report “Global Environment Outlook”, produced by 200 researchers for the UN Environment Programme.
Overall, environmental damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and the pollution and destruction of nature caused by industrial agriculture, costs 45 trillion US dollars a year, the report said. The food system carried the largest costs, at 20 thousand US dollars, with transport at 13 thousand US dollars and fossil-fuel powered electricity at 12 thousand US dollars.
These costs – called externalities by economists – must be priced into energy and food to reflect their real price and shift consumers towards greener choices, professor Robert Watson, the co-chair of the assessment said: “So we need social safety nets. We need to make sure that the poorest in society are not harmed by an increase in costs.”
The GEO report emphasises that the costs of action are much less than the costs of inaction in the long term, and estimates that the benefits from climate action alone would be worth 20 thousand US dollars a year by 2070 and 100 thousand US dollars by 2100.
The report suggests measures such as a universal basic income, taxes on meat and subsidies for healthy, plant-based foods.
According to the report, there are also about 1.5 thousand US dollars in environmentally harmful subsidies to fossil fuels, food and mining. These need to be removed or repurposed, it added. Watson noted that wind and solar energy was cheaper in many places but held back by vested interests in fossil fuel.
Link: https://www.unep.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-7
Source: The Guardian, 9 December 2025
