Challenging Anti-Fatness amid the Climate Crisis

This article critically examines how anti-fat biases have been introduced into environmental bioethics, particularly in discussions of climate change. Fat bodies are often linked to environmental harm based on the flawed assumption that they consume more resources and produce higher greenhouse gas emissions. The authors argue that such claims rely on mistaken assumptions, which ultimately result in the disproportionate blaming of already oppressed individuals, reinforcing weight stigma, and exacerbating fat people’s vulnerability to various harms—especially within communities of color. Framing fatness as an environmental burden is thus both empirically unfounded and unjust.