The world’s population is starting to recognize that the declining health of our planet is a defining issue of our times. No one can survive and thrive without a livable planet. But we also know that the economy has a very strong influence on people’s election decisions. This is because the cost of living, including all expenses (e.g., food and fuel prices, medical costs), weigh on us daily.
A changing global environment, including extreme weather events, affects our individual ongoing cost of living. The economic, social and cultural costs of climate change are well documented in an overarching sense. But few have tried to reframe economic costs on an individual level. Cost estimates for individuals are complicated by the diverse ways that climate impacts vary across time (days to decades) and space (local to international) and with one’s geographic location and economic status.
Unfortunately, many do not realize that costs of living today are fundamentally linked to the changing climate, and that costs today are linked to costs tomorrow. Long-term (decades, centuries) issues and events don’t naturally concern us as individuals and rarely register with corporations or policy makers. Similarly, climate impacts at one end of the nation impact us all individually through our shared contributions as taxpayers (e.g., the Federal Emergency Management Agency).
Costs of living increases for the average individual caused by climate change, whether acute or chronic, are real and significant even if not as spectacular or horrific as Hurricane Helene or Milton. No one knows how long the effects of these and future hurricanes will last.
The empirical data are now irrefutable: climate change is caused by humans and has been happening, is happening now, and is continuing to worsen. People are displaced by climate change, and there is no consensus about how these “climate refugees” can be accommodated. All of these manifestations of climate change accelerate costs of food, water security and housing (construction, repair, mortgages, insurance).
For these reasons, individuals and societies need to act now to further remediate and forestall continuing environmental deterioration while we also act to reduce social injustices including income and opportunity inequities. Income and opportunity inequalities are significant because increased costs of basic living are greater for people of lower incomes.
Lower-income people, many of whom must work and travel out of doors, suffer most from increased heat. Likewise, with increasing occurrence and vulnerability to climate-related impacts to individual health, health insurance must be made affordable and Medicaid must be expanded to cover the most vulnerable. These costs will need to be shared equitably across income levels, and the private and public sectors. Equitable allocation of costs enables all economic levels to contribute to climate solutions.
Recognizing these costs of climate change must inform every individual’s decisions as we go to the election polls. If people vote based on their personal economic considerations, they need to realize the costs of climate impacts to their (and their children’s) financial well-being. There are very clear differences in what the two most popular political parties will do with respect to ameliorating the growing financial repercussions of climate change.
Moreover, to not vote is an act of climate denial. We live in a country that gives us the sacred opportunity to help navigate how we individually and collectively will address the greatest challenge of our time. Though not equitably, we ALL contributed to our situation and, hopefully, as we have with past great challenges we all recognize our individual obligation to help create a more sustainable and equitable future.
Edward E. DeMartini, Ph.D., is with the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology; he has 30-plus years of experience in reef fish biology, reef habitats/community and ecosystem ecology.
