How climate action can lower the cost of living

Accelerating climate action will help California address the rising costs of food, electricity, and insurance. Collaborating with partners across the state, The Climate Center is working to pass laws in 2025 and beyond that will hold Big Oil and corporate utilities accountable, support clean local energy, and responsibly draw down past carbon pollution.?

Right now, oil and gas corporations enjoy massive subsidies and profits while passing along the cost of cleaning up their toxic pollution to Californians. Eliminating these subsidies and tax breaks could recover hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually. Polluters should also be required to pay into a “climate superfund” in California to invest in equitable disaster recovery, climate adaptation, and the clean energy transition. A climate superfund law has already passed in Vermont and one is pending in New York.?

State leaders should also leverage rooftop solar and energy storage, vehicle-to-grid technologies, and other clean, local energy solutions (distributed energy resources or DER) to make electricity more affordable. Our recent report Envisioning the California Grid for the Future dives into how more local clean energy can build a safer, more reliable, and more affordable electricity system.?A new analysis shows that California’s rooftop solar customers benefited other ratepayers to the tune of $2.3 Billion due to cancellation of transmission projects. Another study shows that making more extensive use of vehicle-to-grid technologies would save California ratepayers around $1 billion per year. The state should be promoting distributed clean energy resources such as rooftop solar, microgrids and the use of EV batteries to reduce ratepayer costs.

Finally, California must address rising food prices due to increasing climate extremes, from off-the-chart heatwaves to flooding. State leaders should prioritize investments in climate-resilient agriculture (eg, regional planning and technical assistance) by supporting regional and local partners, such as Resource Conservation Districts, that work directly with farmers and ranchers to rapidly scale up climate-beneficial practices.??Scaling up implementation has the potential to transform agriculture from a carbon source to a carbon sink, while providing adaptation and resilience co-benefits to protect our communities and environment from increasingly destructive extremes. Agriculture in California produced $59 billion in products in 2022 alone, providing one third of the nation's vegetables and two thirds of its fruit and nuts, the largest of any single state in the country.

Join us in advancing accelerated, equitable climate policies that will secure a vibrant, healthy, and affordable future for all. Tell California’s leaders to stand up for climate action today.

This blog first appeared in The Climate Center’s bi-weekly newsletter. To keep up with the latest climate news and ways to take action for a climate-safe future, subscribe today!