Fossil fuels affect all stages of human life, with their consequences starting even before the fuels are burned – releasing climate-heating gases and other pollutants – and extending long after, according to a new report by the Global Climate and Health Alliance.
The effects of fossil fuel extraction and use are also unevenly distributed, the report says, impacting marginalised groups including Indigenous peoples, racial minorities and low-income populations the most, and exacerbating other pre-existing health inequalities in those vulnerable communities.
Published this Tuesday, the flagship report compiles more than 600 scientific citations, case studies from around the world, and testimonials from affected communities and health professionals in every region, from oil spills in Nigeria to coal pollution in India and gas extraction in the United States.
Dr Jemilah Mahmood, executive director at the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, whose testimonial features in the report, said in a statement: “Fossil fuels are not just an environmental crisis – they are a public health emergency… As health professionals, we know the cost of inaction is measured in lives.”
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In an interview with Climate Home News, study co-author Shweta Narayan, campaign lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA), which unites over 200 health and development organisations, explained that the report – more than a year in the making – focuses on the unseen health effects of fossil fuels.
“It was important to show the scale of the problem that we’re dealing with,” she said. “Unless you understand the scope and the scale, you will not be able to advocate for the appropriate policies for climate action.”
According to the report, there are three main ways for pollutants from fossil fuel activities to enter the body: contact or absorption, ingestion or inhalation. Children are especially vulnerable to inhalation, since they breathe more rapidly than adults and take in more air as well as the pollutants it carries relative to their body weight, and those pollutants may be more damaging to their narrower airways.
In addition, children directly exposed to fossil fuel activities like unconventional oil and gas developments, refineries, major roads and petrol stations show higher rates of cancer, most consistently with leukemia.
Trillions in dirty subsidies
The report authors debunk the popular argument that fossil fuels are the cheapest way to obtain energy. In 2022, estimated global fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion, of which $5.7 trillion represented indirect costs such as healthcare spending, productivity losses and climate-related damages, the report notes.
Children also bear a large share of those costs as the money spent on subsidising fossil fuels diverts public resources from essential services such as healthcare and education.
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Dr. Jeni Miller, the GHCA’s executive director, called on governments to halt “new oil, gas and coal projects, setting clear timelines to phase out existing projects, and ending the shocking $1.3 trillion in direct subsidies that keep this industry afloat”.
Instead, they should invest that sum in public health, clean energy and protecting the communities suffering from the impacts of climate change, she added.
She urged political leaders at the COP30 climate summit in November to recognise fossil fuel dependence as a widespread driver of disease and inequality, as well as planet-heating emissions.
The most affected groups
The report documents how the impacts of coal, oil and gas start even before their extraction and processing, with the worst consequences for those least able to protect themselves.
Exploration and site development often result in environmental destruction, disrupting access to clean water, polluting the air and sometimes displacing people from their homes. One Texas study noted an increase in hospitalisation among children with asthma during periods of gas drilling. Another study from Colombia showed that people exposed to open pit mines were more likely to have DNA damage.
The transportation of fossil fuels can also end up being a health hazard to workers and the environment, especially when disasters like spills and explosions occur. Leaks release harmful pollutants into marine, freshwater and land ecosystems.
Many fossil fuel workers come from already vulnerable communities, including rural areas where poverty is rife and work options are limited, which can push people to labour in hazardous conditions.
The report shows that workers exposed to fossil fuels face an elevated risk of developing cancer and cardio-respiratory diseases that can lead to impairment, disability and premature death. To make matters worse, they often face greater exposure to climate impacts, resulting in “disproportionate health, economic and social harms”, it adds.
And because of their limited political and social power, relocation – or even opposition to the siting of industrial facilities, landfills and extractive operations – is less of an option, which further fuels a cycle of vulnerability, the report says.
These populations are also among the hardest to study, with the health risks they face under-researched, and relevant data and information non-existent or inaccessible, it notes.
Other hard-hit groups include older people with underlying conditions exacerbated by fossil fuel-driven air pollution. One quoted study from China found that increased exposure to sulphur dioxide, mostly from burning coal and oil, was associated with premature mortality.
For pregnant women, exposure to fossil fuel pollutants is associated with early birth, low birth weight and congenital abnormalities including anencephaly, spina bifida, and heart and gastrointestinal defects.
In 2018, air pollution cost the global economy $2.9 trillion through premature mortality, lost labour and diminished quality of life, the report notes, citing a Greenpeace study.
The politics behind the harm
GCHA’s Miller called for the influence of the fossil fuel industry on international climate negotiations to be reined in. Almost 1,800 coal, oil and gas lobbyists attended COP29 last year – a sharp increase from the roughly 500 present at COP26.
“Just as governments once curbed tobacco industry influence, they must now ban fossil fuel lobbying and disinformation,” she added in a statement. “COP30 is the moment to act – not only for the climate, but for people’s health and futures.”
And this lobbying is not limited to climate diplomacy, with Narayan pointing to the negotiations on a global treaty to rein in plastic pollution that ended with no agreement or clear way forward.
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“The disruption of the process itself because of undue influence of petrostates and industry lobbyists was very evident,” she said, noting that all multilateral processes are “riddled with undue influence by the industry. And that undue influence has to be curbed and restricted if we want to protect people’s health and have a livable future.”
The authors of the report call for a just transition away from fossil fuels, defining it as one “shaped by policy frameworks that ensure it is fair, inclusive, and health-promoting”.
That transition must also include the cleanup of existing fossil fuel sites, as the toxins that harm health remain in the environment for a long time – and that remediation should be done by the polluting companies, which often try to avoid it due to the high cost, Narayan told Climate Home.
“That’s why we see them evading the issue of accountability and responsibility,” she said. “But accountability is very important for protecting people’s health.”
The post “Public health emergency”: Report shows fossil fuel impacts on every stage of life appeared first on Climate Home News.
“Public health emergency”: Report shows fossil fuel impacts on every stage of life
At Climate Home News, we found this year a pretty depressing one to cover, shaped as it was by Donald Trump’s attacks on climate science and action at home and abroad – and rounded off by the UN declaring global warming will break through the key 1.5C limit the world set itself in 2015.
But it wasn’t all bad. Nobody had decided to follow the US out of the Paris Agreement by the time it turned 10 this month. Anti-climate candidates in Canada and Australia, backed by Trump, lost elections convincingly. And 2025 may also have been the year carbon dioxide emissions fell for the first time.
What’s more, our reporting this year saw results in the real world. After we revealed that Chilean doctors believe pollution from copper mines in the northern hub of Calama is causing autism, campaigners sued state-owned mining company Codelco. The case is ongoing.
One of the lawyers representing the campaigners said “when [Climate Home News] revealed our silent suffering and our fight, we felt we had finally been heard and had entered the national conversation thanks to international media coverage. That was the final push to file the lawsuit.”
If you want to fund more impactful reporting like this in 2026, please subscribe and unlock all of our content for just the price of a coffee per week. Or to keep up with our latest coverage, you can sign up for our free newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, BlueSky and Facebook.
Below are nine of our best stories this year and, if that’s not enough, here’s nine more from 2024.
1. Solar squeeze: US tariffs threaten panel production and jobs in Thailand
In the year of trade wars, Trump extended Biden-era tariffs on solar panels from China to neighbouring countries. Nicha Wachpanich spoke to some of those workers who subsequently lost their jobs making panels at Chinese-run factories in Thailand and found that the US levies and bad behaviour by bosses had combined to crush their dreams of a better life.
2. Business-as-usual: Donors pour climate adaptation finance into big infrastructure, neglecting local needs
Trump being Trump, and axing US climate finance, is no reason to let other wealthy donor nations off the hook. We examined the latest spreadsheets for annual adaptation aid and found Japan is counting support for massive infrastructure projects in its figures, despite them having only a dubious role in helping people adapt to climate change.
Our reporter Tanbirul Miraj Ripon visited one such project – the Matarbari port in Bangladesh. He found that the port handles coal and gas imports and has destroyed locals’ homes and livelihoods. Despite this, on paper it represents $363 million in Japanese climate adaptation finance, the biggest single climate resilience project being funded by a wealthy country in 2023.
3. Ethiopia’s bold EV ambitions hit bumps in rural areas
Other nations are trying hard to go green but finding it tricky. This year, Ethiopia hosted the Africa Climate Summit, was selected as the host of COP32 and opened the continent’s biggest hydropower dam.
It plans to use some of this clean power to charge electric vehicles, after banning imports of cars with internal combustion engines (even as the European Union is softening its own 2035 ban on ICEs). While that will reduce Ethiopia’s already tiny emissions and its fossil fuel import bills, it won’t be easy in a nation where only half the population has electricity access, as Solomon Yimer and Vivian Chime reported.
4. Ending poverty and gangs: How Zambia seeks to cash in on the global drive for EVs
Other African governments are trying to cash in on their minerals, which big players like China, the US and increasingly Saudi Arabia want for green technologies and/or making equipment for wars.
Pamela Kapekele went to look at the situation in Zambia’s Copperbelt province – where you can probably guess what they produce! She found that good tax regulations and working conditions will be needed if locals are to see the benefits of surging demand for the metal.
Later in the year, an acid spill from a copper-mine tailings dam that contaminated the country’s main river showed the value of environmental regulation too. Reporting from Nigeria’s lithium and South Africa’s platinum mines also highlighted the challenges of making minerals mining and processing cleaner and fairer for communities.
5. Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
Some sectors – like international aviation and shipping – tend to fall outside the scope of national media, and it’s a gap we’ve aimed to fill. Together with Singapore’s Straits Times, we tracked the supply chain for what the airline industry calls “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” (SAF) and found that virgin and barely used palm oil – which threatens rainforests – is being passed off as waste cooking oil and used to power planes in Europe.
Malaysia is a particular hotspot for this fraud, as government subsidies there make virgin palm oil cheap in the shops – and it can be sold for a higher price as “used” cooking oil, providing a profit motive for flipping it. Our investigation was picked up by the Financial Times, Bloomberg and the Malaysian authorities, who have since launched a crackdown on this kind of fraud.
But with verification of the materials used for SAF relying on just a handful of commercial auditors conducting mainly paper-based checks, airlines currently cannot know for sure if their green jet fuel is actually sustainable. Their advertising to passengers should – but often doesn’t – reflect this uncertainty.
6. Brazil’s environment minister suggests roadmap to end fossil fuels at COP30
Our reporting was often prescient this year. We called it correctly that the US would leave the Paris Agreement but not the UNFCCC, that Argentina would not follow America out of Paris, that Ethiopia rather than Nigeria would be chosen as COP32 host and that petrostates would try to kill a new green shipping framework at the International Maritime Organization.
We are also pretty sure we were the first – at least in English – to pick up on Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva’s proposal for COP30 to agree on a roadmap away from fossil fuels, which she aired back in June at London Climate Week. That proposal was pushed by President Lula at the start of COP30, dominated much of the conversation at the summit and will continue to be discussed throughout 2026.
8. PR firm working for Shell wins COP30 media contract
In the summer of 2025, our crack investigative reporter Matteo Civillini got the scoop on how the Brazilian government, via a contract tendered by the UN, was working with Edelman on international media relations for the COP30 climate summit while the global PR giant was simultaneously engaged in promoting Shell’s fossil fuel interests in Brazil.
This story was picked up by a range of other media, and amplified calls for agencies whose clients include fossil fuel firms to be excluded from the climate negotiations. Advocacy group Clean Creatives was inspired by Matteo’s reporting to launch a campaign against Edelman’s COP involvement. That culminated in an open letter from influencers and creators with a combined audience of over 24 million calling for Edelman to be dropped. The drumbeat on this theme is likely to get louder in 2026.
8. “House of cards”: Verra used junk carbon credits to fix Shell’s offsetting scandal
And talking of smoke and mirrors, just when we thought the murky web of carbon offsetting linking oil and gas major Shell to sham rice-farming projects in China couldn’t get any more convoluted, it did exactly that.
By combing through the records of carbon-credit registry Verra – the world’s biggest – Matteo confirmed that nearly a million bogus offsets from 10 disqualified methane reduction projects had been compensated for with the same number of junk credits from another four such projects that were also axed by Verra.
“It’s frankly unbelievable that Verra considers it appropriate to compensate for hot air credits with other hot air credits,” Jonathan Crook, policy lead at Carbon Market Watch, told us. “To pretend this is a satisfactory resolution is both absurd and deeply alarming.”
Verra insists the replacement credits were technically available to plug the gap left by the first batch – even though the second set, too, now need to be swapped out. Shell is keeping its distance, saying it does not manage or operate “the projects in question” despite being earlier involved in the Chinese rice-farming programmes as their “authorised representative”. Mind-boggling indeed!
9. Self-taught mechanics give second life to Jordan’s glut of spent EV batteries
In what was on balance a bad year, we brought you some hope too. A landmark advisory opinion on climate change and human rights from the International Court of Justice in The Hague was stronger than anyone imagined and may open the door to lawsuits against polluting countries and companies in 2026.
Other good news stories included analysts suggesting China’s fossil fuel use could peak this year, the UN’s loss and damage fund launching its first call for proposals, South Korea and Morocco moving to phase out coal and a boom in imports of solar panels to Africa.
Hope came too from ordinary people and their ingenuity – like the untrained Jordanians interviewed by Yamuna Matheswaran, hooking up solar panels to old Tesla batteries, lowering both their electricity bills and their carbon emissions into the bargain.
The post Nine of our best climate stories from 2025 appeared first on Climate Home News.
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