Forget Inflation—Climate Change Is Terrorizing Your Wallet and Our Future!

Forget inflation, ghosts, and ghouls—this Halloween’s real fright is the chilling cost you are paying because of climate change. It’s downright terrifying!

Climate change is no longer a distant threat; it’s here, and it’s already hitting our bank accounts. Whether it's rising grocery bills, skyrocketing insurance premiums, or the increasing cost of keeping a roof over our heads, the financial impacts of climate change to you are growing by the day.? And if you are not scared you should be.?

Entire towns in western North Carolina drowned in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Then, only two weeks later, the same Florida region that got knocked to its knees by Helene was battered again by Hurricane Milton. This isn’t normal. It shouldn’t be normal. And yet, it is becoming normal. While some may still think of climate change as a future concern, it is already driving both an increase in the number of extreme weather events and the severity of those events. These disasters, in turn, are driving up the costs of everyday necessities for everyone and creating turmoil in key sectors like real estate and insurance — critical pillars of the U.S. economy — regardless of where you live.?

Surely, it can’t be that bad, right? Maybe it's just an off year. Let’s look at the numbers.?

In 2023, the U.S. experienced a record 28 climate-related disasters, the most in a single year since NOAA started tracking back in 1980. In the last three years (2021-23), the US averaged 22 climate disasters, sustaining an average of $147.3 billion in damages each year. Compare that to the 2010s, when the average was 13.1 events per year and $99.3 billion in damages.?

In the 80s... we averaged 3.? This isn’t an anomaly. It's a trend.

Homeowners across the country are feeling the effects: premiums have risen by 21% since 2015, according to a 2021 LexisNexis report. Naturally, insurance premiums are rising as insurers scramble to cope with these escalating risks. State Farm, the largest home insurer in the country, announced it could no longer afford to insure homes in California due to "rapidly growing catastrophe exposure." In high-risk areas, insurers are even denying coverage outright, leaving families vulnerable to catastrophic financial loss.

But this crisis isn't confined to coastal regions. Insurers are pulling out of states nationwide, and this is quickly becoming an issue that is impacting us all. Without insurance, many homeowners will struggle to secure mortgages. And without mortgages, the housing market — which underpins much of the U.S. economy — could face a severe downturn. A collapse in real estate values would erode local tax bases, cutting funding for essential services such as schools, public safety, and infrastructure. And that’s before we consider the direct, personal impacts to the millions of us who have most of our wealth invested in our homes. We all need to be really concerned and terrified.

But the instability doesn’t stop with housing. Climate change is also putting pressure on another fundamental necessity: food.

As global food production is disrupted by extreme weather, prices at grocery stores continue to climb. A study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the European Central Bank warns that, by 2035, rising temperatures could increase food prices by as much as 3.2% each year — far exceeding inflation targets set by central banks. Heat waves, droughts, and floods are making it harder to grow crops and are damaging infrastructure, further straining global food supply chains. The financial burden of these climate impacts is already being felt, and it will only worsen without substantial intervention.

Let’s be clear. The disasters we currently face right now in 2024, the food prices we see rising with each failed harvest — they are only the beginning. This doesn’t get better on its own. It gets worse. Much, much worse. Every year we delay, the problem grows, as does the cost and difficulty of solving it.

The reality is stark, but there is a clear solution: clean energy. And offshore wind is one of the most promising tools we have at our disposal. Offshore wind can provide vast amounts of clean, renewable power, directly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping stabilize the climate. It offers not only a path to cut emissions but also an opportunity to create high-paying jobs, develop critical infrastructure, and unlock a new industry that can drive long-term, sustained economic growth. While there may be a period of elevated energy costs during the transition, the alternative of continuing down the path we’re currently on will be far more costly.

We face a critical choice: continue to bear the rising costs of climate change—higher grocery bills, unaffordable insurance premiums, and a housing market on the brink of collapse—or invest in the energy transition, creating jobs and stabilizing the economy while mitigating the risks of future climate disasters.

This is not just a question of whether the country can afford to invest in clean energy and if we should pay a little more for our clean electricity. The real question is whether we can afford not to, whether we can gamble on improvidence. The choice is ours to make—before the consequences become irreversible and we can’t afford to put a roof over our heads or food on our table, which is a truly frightening future. ?

#cleanenergy #offshorewind #ourfuture #renewableenergy #climatechange