Analysis | Add Inflation to Reasons to Worry About Climate Change - The Washington Post
Climate Change and Inflation Are Inextricably Linked - Bloomberg
Add Inflation to Reasons to Worry About Climate Change
Young people care more about affording food and rent than fighting climate change, a new survey says. The two problems are closely connected.
Global warming and accelerating prices are increasingly, inextricably linked.Photographer: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images
A big frustration of writing about climate change is that it’s wildly difficult to get people to care about the subject unless they happen to be, say, unexpectedly choking on wildfire smoke hundreds of miles from the nearest wildfire or escaping a flooded basement after a random rainstorm turns biblical.
The sense of failing to convey to your stovetop mates that you are all boiling alive was hammered home this week by a new survey showing young people — humanity’s hope for the future, supposedly — care more about inflation than they do about climate change. This in the middle of what will probably be the hottest year in human history, wracked with deadly floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”