Until now, overweight people didn’t have much motivation to shed those unwanted pounds. Sure, they probably knew all about the problems that stem from being overweight, like Type II diabetes, heart disease, and ridicule from thinner members of society. But those are paltry sources of motivation; otherwise more obese people would have dropped the weight long ago.

Thanks to this month’s heroes, Drs. Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, fat people now have a new motivating factor to lose the flab: saving the Earth from global warming. According to a report published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, a study by Edwards and Roberts concludes that being overweight “should be recognized as an environmental problem.”

The study states that the rising number of big eaters means more food production, a major source of carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, Edwards claims, “Food production accounts for about one fifth of greenhouse gases” and “moving about in a heavy body is like driving a gas guzzler.”

According to the report, each obese individual is responsible for emitting an extra ton of carbon dioxide per year as compared to a thin person. Furthermore, that doesn’t even account for the additional methane that’s released as a result of additional food consumption, and methane is 20 times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The impact of obese people on the environment is made worse by the fact that they are more likely to travel short distances by car, while thinner people might walk or ride a bicycle. Plus, it takes more energy to transport heavier people, especially if they have to be loaded onto a flatbed truck.

So thanks to Edwards, and his colleague Roberts, fat people can draw on a new, more profound source of inspiration to lose weight. They now know that being morbidly obese isn’t just killing them, it’s also killing the planet.