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Angela Bishop struggles with what she describes as “the cost of everything lately.” Groceries are one of the stressors, though she gets some reprieve from the free school lunches her four children receive. Still, gas, utilities and clothing persist several years of high prices have caused pain.
“We just saw the prices just go up before our eyes,” said Bishop, who is 39. He moved his family to Richmond, Va., a few years ago to stop “paycheck to paycheck.” has been hard lately, he worries it won’t be long before they’re barely getting by once again.
Households across the country are facing similar financial challenges.While inflation, defined as the increase in the average price of goods or services over a given period, has slowed significantly since a record peak in 2022, consumer prices have risen today. By more than 21 percent since February 2020. Frustration with the rising cost of living led many voters to support President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on fighting inflation.
Simply put, inflation is how millions of Americans voted.However, climate change, one of the main levers of inflationary pressures, was not so much in the mind – directly 37 percent of voters they considered the issue “very important” for their vote. Bishop said it may have something to do with how difficult it is to understand how extreme weather affects all aspects of the economy. He knows “climate change has something to do with inflation,” but he’s not sure. what exactly?
Inflation has arrived in 2022 9% In the U.S., the highest rate in 40 years, it was part of a global trend. cost of living crisis which pushed millions of people around the world into poverty.
Extreme weather shocks were another major cause of price increases, said Alla Semenova, an economist at St. Mary’s College in Maryland. “Climate change is an important piece of the inflation puzzle,” she said.
In February 2021, Winter Storm Ur hit Texas, causing a deadly energy crisis across the state. It also caused widespread shutdowns of oil refineries which account for nearly three-quarters of U.S. chemical production, disrupted the production and distribution of plastics, which Semenova says contributed to subsequent price increases for packaging, disinfectants, fertilizers and pesticides.
Food prices are another area where warming inflationary pressures have become evident. The drought that hit the Mississippi River system in 2022 severely disrupted the transportation of crops used for livestock feed, increasing freight and commodity costs for livestock producers probably absorbed by consumers buying meat and dairy products. Grain prices have risen around the same time, as drought-induced supply shortages and high energy prices raised the costs of fertilizer, transportation, and agricultural production before long. lettuce prices have increased Because of the shortages following the floods in California and its cost orange juice is up after the drought and storm that hit major production areas.
Although overall inflation has eased significantly since then, extreme weather pressures on food costs persist, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said Global food prices hit an 18-month high in October. In fact, cocoa prices up nearly 40 percent this year Due to drier conditions in West and Central Africa, where about three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is grown, this could affect not only the price of chocolate, but also health supplements, cosmetics and fragrances, among other products, that are based on cocoa beans.
“What we’ve seen, especially this year, is this massive increase in prices” driven by abnormal weather patterns, said Rodrigo Carcamo-Diaz, senior economist at the UN Trade and Development Office.
But the impact on consumers “goes beyond” the consumer price index, the most widely used measure of inflation, says Carcamo-Diaz. His point is clear. Lower income households they are most affected by supply shocks that drive up commodity prices as increasingly volatile weather makes prices more volatile, straining households on tighter budgets as it may take time for wages to catch up with steeper living costs.
Prices are expected to increase even more of a problem as temperatures rise and extreme weather becomes more frequent and severe.In fact, A 2,024 studies found that climate change-induced heat extremes increased headline inflation in 121 countries over the past 30 years, with warming temperatures expected to increase global inflation by as much as 1 percent every year until 2035. Leading researcher and climate scientist Maximilian Kotz noted that general goods, or any physical items that can be purchased, generally have a “strong inflationary effect on temperature rise”.
Electricity is already getting expensive high temperatures and disasters strain networks and damage infrastructureto drive Higher rates of utility outages for low-income US households. Without significant emissions reductions and monetary policy set by central banks and governments to mitigate the financial impact of climate change through price stabilizationthis unfair burden is set to get much worse. Severe flooding that has derailed key manufacturing regions for consumer electronics and auto parts has recently disrupted global supply chains and driven up commodity costs. car ownership In the United States, persistent climate shocks even caused a huge increase in the cost of home insurance premiums.
Overall, the inflationary impact of climate change on the cost of living will remain and continue to strain American budgets, Semenova said. “The era of relatively low and stable prices is over,” she said. “Costs have gone up because of climate change. It’s the new normal.”
That’s bad news for families like the Bishops who are just trying to get by.
This article originally appeared Grist time https://grist.org/economics/dont-blame-biden-for-inflation-blame-the-climate/. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate solutions and a just future. Learn more here Grist.org.
