The cost of transporting crude oil by the world’s largest oil tankers has reached extraordinary levels.
On the benchmark TD3C route — a 270,000-metric-ton Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) traveling from the Middle East Gulf to China — daily time-charter-equivalent (TCE) earnings have surged from roughly $16,000/day in 2020 to more than $1.2 million/day in September 2026.
That is not simply a large increase. It represents an extraordinary transformation in the economics of moving oil by sea.
From $16,000 to $1.2 Million a Day
Period
Approx. TD3C Daily Rate/TCE
What Was Driving the Market
2020
~$16,000/day
Pandemic-era demand collapse and abundant tanker capacity
2025
~$35,000/day average*
Tightening tanker fundamentals, geopolitical rerouting and limited fleet growth
September 2026
$1,212,503/day
Middle East conflict, disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, rerouting and severe tanker scarcity
*McQuilling reported a TD3C average earning of approximately $35,136/day for the first eight months of 2025, rather than $160,000/day.
The 2020 figure is also consistent with contemporary tanker-market estimates. McQuilling projected the TD3C round-trip voyage at approximately $16,200/day for 2020.
Then came 2026.
The $1.2 Million-a-Day Shock
In September 2026, the TD3C benchmark moved into territory rarely seen in modern tanker shipping.
The Baltic Exchange reported that the TD3C rate rose to Worldscale 1,140, corresponding to a round-trip TCE of approximately $1,212,503 per day for a standard Baltic VLCC.
Earlier in September, the same benchmark had already exceeded $1 million/day, with the Baltic assessment reaching approximately $1.099 million/day on September 15.
The surge reflects an extraordinary combination of factors:
disruption to Middle Eastern oil-export routes;
sharply reduced traffic through the Strait of Hormuz;
attacks and security risks affecting regional shipping;
longer and more complicated voyages;
ships being tied up in shuttle and ship-to-ship operations;
and a limited number of immediately available VLCCs.
Reuters reported on September 21 that only 17 commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, compared with 37 the previous week and a pre-conflict average of about 125 vessels per day.
Why Shipping Costs Matter
Oil does not simply move from the wellhead to the refinery.
It has to be transported.
When the cost of transporting a cargo of crude suddenly multiplies, the consequences extend through the entire energy system.
At today’s extreme tanker rates, transportation itself can represent a substantial portion of the delivered cost of crude. The Wall Street Journal reported that VLCC charter costs had exceeded $1 million/day, equivalent to roughly $26 per barrel on the affected voyages.
That means the disruption is not merely a problem for shipowners and oil traders.
Higher transportation costs can therefore add pressure to gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products even when the underlying price of crude oil is moving differently.
An Extraordinary Comparison
The scale of the change is easier to see this way:
2020: ~$16,000/day ↓ 2025: ~$35,000/day average ↓ September 2026:$1,212,503/day
From the approximate 2020 level to the September 2026 TD3C assessment, the daily TCE increased by roughly 75×.
That is an extraordinary change in the economics of moving a single cargo of oil.
And it demonstrates something important about modern energy systems:
When a critical transportation chokepoint is disrupted, the cost of moving energy can become a crisis of its own.
A market under extreme stress
The current rate should not be interpreted as a normal annual shipping cost. It is a spot-market benchmark during an exceptional geopolitical disruption. Rates can move dramatically in either direction as vessel availability, security conditions, oil flows and trade routes change.
But the magnitude of the September 2026 spike is unmistakable.
The cost of moving oil by VLCC has gone from tens of thousands of dollars per day to more than $1.2 million per day.
That is a remarkable indicator of just how much stress has entered the global oil-transportation system.
What Does a Barrel of Oil Cost—and What Does It Mean to You?
When you hear the price of oil reported on the news, you are usually hearing the futures price.
But what does that number actually mean?
The futures price is essentially a “paper” price. Very little physical oil actually changes hands through the futures market. The price that matters to consumers and businesses buying and using petroleum products is the spot price—the price of physical oil being purchased today. And right now, there is a significant difference between the two.
Today, the futures price of oil is roughly $102–$107 per barrel. But the spot price—the actual price being paid for physical oil—is approximately $125–$150 per barrel.
That is the price that ultimately matters to everyone buying refined petroleum products, including gasoline, diesel, and heating oil.
The Pain at the Pump
This is why diesel has reached approximately $6 per gallon, making it the highest price in history. It is also why gasoline is currently averaging approximately $4.32 per gallon. Yes—this is the highest average gasoline price ever recorded for this time of year.
And what’s next?
Heating oil.
As we move toward the winter months, parts of the Northern Hemisphere are already seeing heating oil prices averaging between $5.15 and $5.75 per gallon. Yes. Just like gasoline, heating oil is trading at an absolute record high for the month of September.
Historically, heating oil prices have hovered around $3.50 to $4.00 per gallon during a typical winter season. The current offseason surge above $5.00 per gallon is unprecedented. And this is happening before winter has even arrived.
For millions of households that depend on heating oil, the implications are obvious. The price shock at the pump can become a much larger household energy shock when temperatures fall and heating demand rises.
Adding Fuel to the Fire
There is another problem developing in the background. Oil borrowed from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) under the 2026 emergency exchanges is scheduled to be repaid in tranches between November 1, 2026, and September 30, 2028.
Under the 2026 SPR emergency exchange program managed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), companies are contractually required to return approximately 1.18 to 1.24 barrels for every barrel they borrowed.
In other words, oil that was taken out of the reserve during an emergency must eventually be replaced—and companies are not simply returning the same amount of oil they received. They have to return more. That creates another future demand on the physical oil market.
So when you look at the oil price reported on television, don’t assume that the futures number tells the whole story.
The price of oil isn’t just a number on a screen.
It flows directly through the economy. It becomes diesel. It becomes gasoline. It becomes heating oil. It becomes transportation costs, food costs, manufacturing costs, electricity costs, and ultimately the cost of living.
And if physical oil is already trading substantially above the futures price, while heating demand is about to increase and SPR repayment obligations are beginning to come due, the question isn’t simply:
“What does oil cost today?”
The more important question is:
“What is the price of oil going to cost you tomorrow?”
Tonight’s homework assignment: How much land do I need for my own shit? (AKA The Eat n’ Poop Experiment)
Both literally and figuratively.
This is an experiment I’ve been working on for years. And when you actually try to do it—when you have to think about where your food comes from, where your water comes from, and what happens to everything that comes out of you—you gain a very different perspective.
And yes, sometimes the experiment even comes down to a question like: Do I eat the worm, or don’t I?
Food and water are big problems.
But getting rid of what comes out of you can be an even bigger problem.
I’ve been meeting quite a few other people who are “doing it”—trying to become more self-sufficient, reduce their dependence on centralized systems, and figure out what is actually required to sustain a human being.
So I thought a good test for me would be to reevaluate the whole concept at two scales:
Macro. And micro.
Tonight is micro night.
How many acres do you need for your own shit?
A commonly cited homesteading rule of thumb is roughly 2–5 acres per person for a fairly self-sufficient setup—but that’s not a universal number. It depends enormously on your diet, soil, climate, water supply, livestock, energy needs, and how much of your waste you can safely recycle.
And that’s where it gets interesting.
Food production: You might be able to produce a substantial amount of plant food on a fraction of an acre. Add grains, livestock, dairy, or meat, and the land requirement can increase dramatically.
Water: You need a reliable source of potable water—and potentially enough watershed, recharge area, storage, or infrastructure to keep that supply reliable.
Waste: This is the part people tend to overlook.
Your sewage system doesn’t just need a place to put sewage. It needs soil, treatment capacity, separation from groundwater and drinking-water sources, and enough suitable land for the system to function safely.
In Pennsylvania, for example, wastewater land-treatment systems can require significant separation distances from private drinking-water wells. That means the geometry of the property can matter almost as much as the number of acres.
At the right scale—and with proper treatment—some things we call “waste” become inputs into another system.
So tonight I’m starting at the smallest possible unit:
One human.
How much land does one human actually need to provide food, water, and a safe place to put—or recycle—everything that comes out of them?
How many acres do you need for your own shit?
Then we’ll scale it up.
Because four people don’t necessarily require four times the land. And four people sharing a watershed, a food system, and a waste-treatment system creates an entirely different problem.
Tonight: micro. Next: macro.
MACRO
Tonight’s homework assignment: How much land do we need for all our shit?
AKA: The “Who Will Fend for Themselves?” Experiment
Last night was micro: How much land do I need for just me?
Tonight is macro: How much land do we need for me, my family, and company?
In two different experiments—one in New Zealand and one in Pennsylvania—families have been trying to find the answer.
Interestingly, both case studies arrived at a remarkably similar result: if you can optimize the use of roughly 100 acres, you can support about 20 people, although toward the lower end of what we would consider a modern standard of living.
And that’s when the bigger problem became evident.
As part of our long-term planning, we had to determine who would be allowed to come live with us in a crisis such as climate change.
There were eight of us. We figured our parents would need to be among the first to come. That added six, bringing us to 14. Then we started adding siblings, their partners, and their children. We quickly exceeded 25.
So the real question became:
Who gets invited?
And who is left to fend for themselves?
That sounds like an abstract thought experiment when you have plenty of land, food, water, and energy. It becomes a very different question when those resources have a hard limit. And as climate change accelerates—and the number of grandchildren continues to grow—these questions are no longer really about “future generations.”
They are about our own descendants.
They are the people who may actually have to confront the new realities we are leaving them.
That’s the part of the experiment I find hardest to calculate.
Not how many people the land can sustain.
But who gets to be one of them.
Notes
In New Zealand, Ganantchian Claire said:
Human waste is a very easy “problem “. Composting is super easy, safe, and valuable. Water of course depends where you are. Stream, or roof water are easy gravity fed, groundwater requires energy to bring it up. Food, acreage… as you say, depends entirely on your soil and climate. My opinion is a cow or a couple of goats are the easiest quickest way to get food security as milk covers all your needs. My experience is plants are great, but unreliable as crops can be devastated in a flash by pests or weather events. To avoid starvation, I would never give up my milking cow. One could actually survive with no land at all just walking a cow along the roadsides. A bit extreme, but why not?
In Pennsylvania, USA, I replied:
Nice! Thanks. “Real food” is the hardest thing in my environment as well, especially in the winter. When I say real food, I mean exactly what you said—food security. Eating vegetation is not something I can do for any extended period, and winter makes that particularly difficult.
Though your winters get cooler, I assume they aren’t quite as extreme as Pennsylvania’s, are they?
This becomes particularly relevant when we get to the “macro” experiment.
You also raise another important point with your example of “walking a cow along the roadsides.” In our experiment, we set it up as a game. One of the rules is that you can’t use other people’s land.
That, too, depends on where you live—and on what is considered public property versus private property. Ultimately, I think this is a debate that is likely to intensify as climate migration itself intensifies.
As for waste management, this also appears to be heavily dependent upon location.
In Pennsylvania, the largest long-term problem is waste management, followed by food, then water. But if you don’t manage waste properly, water quickly becomes your biggest problem. Contamination of drinking-water supplies from inadequate or poorly located waste management has been a long-term issue.
Traditionally, you needed at least 10 acres if you could not “perc” your lot.
Collecting rainwater isn’t necessarily a viable solution either. There simply isn’t enough precipitation in many locations across the continental U.S. And in several states, there are legal restrictions on collecting or impeding the flow of water unless you specifically own the water rights.
That’s what makes this experiment so interesting.
The answer isn’t just “How much land do I need?”
It’s where is the land, what can it produce, where does the water come from, and where does the poo go?
How many acres do you have available and how many people do you think you could sustain?
Ganantchian replied:
Interesting conversation. It highlights one of the biggest obstacles to self sufficiency is regulations.
We have 100 acres of land. 25 acres retired to native bush and wetlands, 50 acres very steep of very poor quality soil, 25 acres of which have been planted in poplars. And 25 acres of gently slopping with average quality soil.
I reckon we would comfortably feed 20 people in a localised system ie no fossil fuels or synthetic fertilisers use. Because of the poor inherent quality of our soil, manure from animals and us is the most valuable resource. If composted properly, it is safe to use around fruit and nut trees, which we have planted over 100 over the farm.
Our climate is very mild and with usually good rainfall although we do get drought. Rainwater is vital for drinking as I drunk water from our creek as an experiment and got quite sick Although it’s fine when boiled.
But again, the biggest hurdle is having to pay land rates. Which at the moment the livery horses cover. They do take up 90% of our grazing land… so currently the farm can only sustain 1 or 2 people… All because we are forced to fund Growth in the region, new roads, infrastructure for cars which I loathe, airport extensions which I vowed to never use again…
Hence it is very difficult to prepare for the unfolding multi crisis while the authorities are impeding our progress.
I responded:
Yes, very interesting indeed. Our macro experiment was intended to demonstrate how many people we could sustain on similar acreage. The result was almost identical.
Two families of four acquired 135 acres. About 35 acres were “public rights of way,” and another 20 acres were steep slopes and other unlivable acreage. Some of those 35 acres consisted of three streams, so potable water wasn’t a problem. One of the streams originated from a spring on the property and tested safe for drinking.
We had a cattle and chicken farmer adjoining the property. We exchanged our tillable acreage, about 65 acres, for him to grow feedstock in exchange for him raising a couple of cows and some chickens for us. There were also fish, small game, deer, and other protein sources. That left us about 15 acres for vegetables.
We did not fully develop and complete the land-management plan because it was not economical at the time. However, we did a thorough plan for being able to survive the winters. Solar panels offered the best and cheapest energy source. Small hydroelectric systems installed in the streams could add additional wattage. In addition, a small windmill could pump water up the steep slope to a small reservoir, which could be used as a “battery” for hydropower when the sun wasn’t shining.
Sewage ended up being the limiting factor.
Without sewage, we could sustain about 38 people. With sewage, that number dropped to about 25. The three streams were great for eating and drinking, but they limited where we could build sewage treatment systems without having rainwater runoff contaminate the drinking water and food sources.
The end result was a self-sustaining property of roughly 100 acres that could provide enough food, water, and energy for 20–25 people.
That is when the bigger problem became evident.
As part of our long-term plan, we had to determine who would be allowed to come live with us in a crisis such as climate change. There were eight of us. We thought our parents would need to be the first to be saved. That was an additional six, bringing the total to 14. If all of our siblings, their mates, and kids were included, we quickly exceeded 25.
So that became the bigger issue.
Who would be on the list of people invited versus the list of people to fend for themselves?
As climate change accelerates and the number of grandchildren grows, these questions are no longer about future generations. They are about our own descendants being forced to confront the new realities they will inherit.
She asked:
did you give up?
Yes, I equally feel that I only can provide for close loved ones. It might become different if our local community wakes up. But so far, most of my neighbors think the crisis is a distant worry for the next generation. I’m more than happy to open my gardens to as many people as possible. As long as they are on the same page, and putting in the hard yards.
People seem to think we have time. But the systems you are describing take years to put into place. 50 years ago is when humanity should have gone down that track.
Now… we barely have time to prepare for our small family groups…
Makes me ponder if I’ve done it in the right place as the local population (walking distance) is about 2000 people. 99% of whom rely entirely on being fed by supermarkets and takeaways…
I replied:
No, we didn’t give up. We achieved the goals of the study.
I was the climatologist, economist, and estate planner, as well as the land-management executive. What became obvious was that the physics, science, and logic of a crisis weren’t going to be the real problem.
The security of the infrastructure from outside threats—and the internal trust required to manage the “financial trust fund”—were going to be the larger crisis within the crisis.
One would hope that a crisis would bring us—humanity—together.
Unfortunately, the opposite appears to be true.
Fear and greed are inherent problems that get amplified in a crisis.
That was probably the most important thing we learned from the experiment.
We’ve conducted case studies on the use of AI in a wide variety of environments, including everything from the dynamics of nonlinear chaotic systems to songwriting and musical production.
All produced similar results—benefits to the environment, the economy, and society.
For instance, the climate education and graphics used for this post are based on this scientific paper as well as the publicly accessible version.
If I had created them manually, the costs in time, labor, energy, and resources would have been substantial. Using AI, the direct dollar cost to me was effectively zero, the graphics were generated in about a minute, and the estimated natural-resource cost was roughly $0.067 per image.
By comparison, producing similar graphics through traditional methods could easily have cost hundreds of dollars when accounting for labor, software, revisions, and associated natural-resource use. Mathematically, the AI-generated version required approximately 0.005% of those resources—just five thousandths of one percent of the traditional cost. These savings are equivalent to a reduction in environmental impact.
The benefits—in both environmental savings to the planet through reduced physical-resource use and in the ability to produce and distribute education—far outweigh the costs.
Most importantly:
The only effective way to stop the acceleration of climate change is through the reduction of fossil-fuel combustion.
However, the most likely way of reversing the trajectory of climate change is through people using AI to develop previously unthought-of methods and technologies that can fundamentally change how we produce, consume, and manage resources—and potentially remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Anti-Science and Technology Rhetoric
Unfortunately, the lack of science and technology literacy is at the root of many of society’s problems. Anti-AI opinions are ironically very similar to the anti-science rhetoric used by climate-change deniers.
Climate-change deniers tend to have little, if any, experience as climate scientists. They often show signs of impaired executive function: the brain’s ability to plan, analyze, and think abstractly. This makes processing complex or nuanced information nearly impossible, fostering an aversion to science, mathematics, and logic. Their thinking becomes rigid, emotionally driven, and black-and-white, leaving them highly susceptible to political propaganda, conspiracy theories, and fear-based messaging. Unable to reason critically or tolerate uncertainty, they cling to misinformation and reject rational discourse—no matter how much evidence is presented.
The same holds true for anti-technology opinions expressed in public. The ill-informed individual has likely never used AI in the role of a climate scientist. Scientists train their own highly specialized AI assistants. AI is artificial SUPPLEMENTAL intelligence. This is not how the ordinary individual usually interacts with AI.
In my case, I have spent years developing multiple specially trained “lab assistants” that have learned from scores of our own work. When Sidd and I started, our work had to be done on Ohio State computers and supercomputers that Sidd helped create. Things like “a floating decimal” were, and still are, a significant problem. Problems that needed solving would take months or years to process. The amount of energy spent on computation was enormous compared with today.
Things have changed for the better.
This year, we were able to establish third-derivative behavior across multiple climate indicators—extremely important developments in climate science that confirm that the acceleration rate of climate change is itself accelerating. This work was completed within four months. Historically, I would have been unlikely to complete this work in my lifetime if it were not for AI.
In the meantime, the United States has gone extremist in anti-science and anti-technology ideology, much to the detriment of science and scientists in the U.S. In fact, we are now working on bringing up our own AI computer using Chinese technology. It will be running on DeepSeek. The single computer will do the work of what used to take at least a dozen servers to accomplish, at a fraction of the price. It will not be run in a data center. It will not be costing society anything. In fact, it will be greatly benefiting society and helping to solve the climate crisis.
So, the next time you want to voice your opinion about AI, do your homework first. Start by getting at least a master’s-level education in climate science. Then spend years training your AI assistants. After completion, I would be happy to discuss AI with you.
Sea-level rise is not simply a matter of the ocean getting higher. Climate change is altering the physical forces that move water toward and onto the shoreline. Rising seas, changing atmospheric pressure, stronger winds, altered ocean circulation, storm surge, king tides, and saltwater intrusion can interact to turn gradual sea-level rise into a much more immediate coastal threat.
A Real-World Warning: The Wetlands Institute
The experience of The Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, provides a striking example of how quickly coastal conditions can change.
The institute’s Salt Marsh Trail reportedly flooded only a few times a year around 2000. Over the past five years, flooding has averaged nearly 70 times annually. The institute is closing its headquarters on September 7, 2026, to begin a major coastal-resilience transformation.
The response includes raising the Salt Marsh Trail by two to three feet using clean dredged material, temporarily relocating operations and educational programs, and pursuing a broader campaign to replace and elevate the existing campus buildings.
This is more than an inconvenience. Increasingly frequent inundation can fundamentally alter the coastal ecosystem itself.
The Climate Shift
Accelerated sea-level rise: Sea levels along parts of the New Jersey coast are rising faster than the global average.
Marsh degradation: Repeated inundation can overwhelm salt-marsh vegetation, converting productive marsh into mudflats and eventually open water.
Wildlife disruption: More frequent flooding threatens habitats used by marsh-dependent birds and can interfere with diamondback terrapin nesting.
Infrastructure exposure: Roads, buildings, trails, drainage systems, and utilities face increasingly frequent flooding even without a major storm.
The critical point is that the climate signal is not experienced as a smooth, uniform rise in water level. It is experienced as more frequent encounters with water.
1. The Inverse Barometer Effect: Atmospheric Pressure Pushes the Ocean
Atmospheric pressure exerts physical force on the ocean surface. When a deep low-pressure system moves over the coast, the reduced atmospheric weight allows the ocean surface to rise.
The approximate relationship is:
A 1-hectopascal (hPa) decrease in atmospheric pressure produces roughly a 1-centimeter rise in sea level.
A very deep storm can therefore raise the local ocean surface substantially before the effects of wind-driven storm surge are even considered.
This is known as the inverse barometer effect.
Climate change does not simply “raise the sea.” It can alter the atmospheric conditions that determine how that elevated ocean is distributed along the coastline at any particular moment.
Inverse Barometer Effect Examples
Storm type
Approx. pressure near coast
Pressure drop from 1013 hPa
Inverse-barometer rise
Ordinary coastal storm
990–1000 hPa
13–23 hPa
5–9 in
Strong nor’easter
970–985 hPa
28–43 hPa
11–17 in
Very strong coastal storm
950–965 hPa
48–63 hPa
19–25 in
Sandy-type extreme
~945 hPa
~68 hPa
~27 in / 2.2 ft
Exceptional low-pressure event
930–940 hPa
73–83 hPa
29–33 in / 2.4–2.8 ft
The Combined Impact
The inverse barometer effect combines with wind stress, coastline shape, bathymetry, wave setup, tides, and storm track can produce much larger water-level changes. Hurricane Sandy’s actual coastal water levels were dramatically higher because the pressure effect was combined with enormous wind-driven surge, wave action, tide, and the storm’s exceptionally favorable track. At Sandy Hook, water reached about 8.9 feet above ground level, while the storm produced major surge throughout the central and northern Jersey Shore.
An additional 5 inches to 3 feet of sea-level rise represents a new baseline of climate energy impacting coastal communities. The inverse barometer effect then combines with wind stress, coastline shape, bathymetry, wave setup, tides, and storm track to produce much larger water-level changes. The result can be extreme coastal flooding, with observed water levels reaching roughly 9 feet above ground level along parts of the Jersey Shore and as much as 30 feet in parts of Florida during major storms.
2. Wind and Wave Energy: Turning Pressure Gradients Into Coastal Damage
Atmospheric pressure gradients—the differences between areas of high and low pressure—drive winds.
When those gradients become stronger, winds can become stronger and more persistent. Strong winds transfer energy to the ocean, generating larger waves and increasing wind setup, the piling of water against the coast.
The consequences can include:
Higher water levels along exposed shorelines
Larger and more destructive waves
Increased dune erosion
Offshore transport of beach sand
Overtopping of coastal defenses
Greater storm-surge penetration
The shoreline therefore experiences not only a higher baseline sea level but also increasingly energetic ways of moving that water around.
3. Altered Ocean Circulation: When Water Piles Up
Changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation can alter ocean currents and regional sea levels.
The relationship between the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic circulation, winds, and coastal sea level is particularly important along the U.S. East Coast. Changes in ocean circulation can redistribute enormous volumes of water, producing dynamic sea-level changes that may differ substantially from the global average.
In simplified terms, when ocean circulation changes, water can accumulate against a coastline rather than being transported away from it.
That means a community can experience a rapid increase in local relative sea level even when the global mean is changing much more slowly.
4. Compound Coastal Flooding: When Everything Arrives Together
The most dangerous coastal flooding occurs when multiple processes reinforce one another.
Imagine a high tide occurring while:
Global sea level is already elevated.
A low-pressure storm raises the ocean through the inverse barometer effect.
Strong onshore winds push additional water toward land.
Large waves increase water levels and erode dunes.
Heavy rainfall overwhelms drainage systems.
Rivers are already elevated and cannot discharge efficiently.
These processes can combine into compound flooding.
The problem is not simply that the water is higher. The problem is that multiple pathways for moving water onto the land are operating simultaneously.
Salt marshes normally provide a natural buffer. But repeated inundation and erosion can eventually overwhelm the marsh itself. Once protective wetlands deteriorate, more wave energy reaches infrastructure, creating a feedback loop of increasing exposure and increasing damage.
Saltwater Intrusion: When the Ocean Moves Underground
Sea-level rise has another consequence that is much less visible than coastal flooding: saltwater intrusion.
Saltwater intrusion occurs when seawater moves into freshwater systems, including groundwater aquifers, rivers, wetlands, agricultural soils, and drinking-water supplies.
Two forces are especially important:
Rising sea level increases the hydraulic pressure and inland reach of seawater.
Drought and reduced groundwater recharge weaken the freshwater pressure pushing outward toward the sea.
Together, these forces can shift the boundary between freshwater and saltwater inland.
Research has projected that saltwater contamination could affect a very large proportion of coastal aquifers by 2100, although the extent varies substantially by geography, aquifer characteristics, groundwater use, and future climate conditions.
How the Saltwater Wedge Moves Inland
Under normal conditions, rainfall replenishes groundwater. Freshwater flows toward the coast and maintains a hydraulic gradient that helps resist seawater intrusion.
Because freshwater is less dense than seawater, a freshwater lens can exist above denser saltwater beneath coastal areas.
But the balance can shift.
1. Underground Aquifer Intrusion
As sea level rises, the hydraulic pressure exerted by seawater increases. At the same time, climate-driven drought and higher temperatures can reduce groundwater recharge in some regions.
Less freshwater flowing toward the ocean means less outward pressure resisting seawater.
The underground saltwater boundary can therefore migrate inland.
This process can occur largely out of sight until a well begins producing water with elevated salinity.
2. Surface and Vertical Infiltration
Storm surge, king tides, and coastal flooding can push seawater onto land.
If that water remains on the surface, it can infiltrate downward through soils and shallow geological formations, contaminating groundwater.
Repeated flooding is especially important because a single event may be temporary, while dozens of inundation events each year can progressively alter soil and groundwater chemistry.
3. The “Highway Effect”
Human modifications to coastal landscapes can provide pathways for seawater to travel inland.
Agricultural drainage ditches, shipping channels, tidal creeks, canals, and other engineered waterways can connect coastal waters with areas that were historically protected by natural terrain.
When sea level rises or storm surge moves inland, these channels can function as highways for saltwater.
The Ecological and Economic Consequences
Saltwater intrusion does not stop at the shoreline.
Ghost Forests
As saltwater enters coastal soils and groundwater, freshwater-dependent trees can die from prolonged salt stress. The result can be stands of dead trees known as ghost forests.
These landscapes provide visible evidence that the boundary between marine and terrestrial ecosystems is moving inland.
Agricultural Damage
Salt deposited on agricultural land can accumulate in the root zone.
Excessive soil salinity interferes with plants’ ability to absorb water and can reduce crop productivity. Persistent salinization can make valuable coastal farmland increasingly difficult—or eventually impossible—to farm without expensive remediation and freshwater management.
Infrastructure Corrosion
Saltwater and brackish groundwater are highly corrosive.
Repeated exposure can accelerate deterioration of underground pipes, electrical infrastructure, concrete, foundations, roads, and other infrastructure.
The damage can occur beneath the surface long before it becomes visually obvious.
Drinking-Water Threats
Coastal communities that depend on groundwater face a particularly serious vulnerability.
Pumping already lowers groundwater levels around wells. If the freshwater table is lowered too far, the hydraulic gradient resisting seawater intrusion weakens further.
This can create another feedback:
More pumping → lower freshwater pressure → greater saltwater intrusion → less usable freshwater.
The Larger Picture: Climate Energy Does Not Disappear
Sea-level rise is one expression of a much larger physical process.
The additional energy accumulating in the climate system does not simply produce a higher average temperature. Energy moves through the atmosphere, ocean, land, ice, and biosphere.
The critical distinction is between average conditions and actual events.
A few inches of average sea-level rise may sound modest. But those inches can determine whether a high tide remains below a road or flows across it. They can determine whether a storm surge is absorbed by a functioning marsh or reaches buildings and infrastructure.
The climate system does not deliver its additional energy evenly.
It delivers it through water, wind, waves, heat, storms, erosion, flooding, and ecological disruption.
And along the coast, the ocean is increasingly finding more ways to come ashore—and stay there.
While Sidd was in town, I took some notes. Somehow, they turned into this:
Climate Change: The Big Picture
There are many ways to look at climate change. From a micro perspective, there are millions of individual feedbacks operating throughout the Earth system. From a macro perspective, there is the climate system as a whole.
Understanding how those feedbacks interact—and, more importantly, how they feed back into one another—is at the bleeding edge of climate science.
One of the simplest examples is the albedo effect. The physics of ice is straightforward: bright, reflective ice sends a portion of incoming solar energy back into space, while darker ocean absorbs it. Less ice means more absorbed energy and, therefore, more warming.
But the system quickly becomes much more complicated.
How does changing albedo affect cloud formation, particularly over the tropics? And what happens to the climate if those clouds increase—or decrease?
The low clouds are especially important. They can reflect substantial amounts of incoming sunlight back into space. If tropical low clouds diminish, the ocean could absorb significantly more solar energy, accelerating warming.
This is where the bleeding edge begins.
Clouds are arguably the largest remaining uncertainty in our understanding of climate sensitivity. They can both reflect incoming solar radiation and trap outgoing heat. Which effect dominates—and how that balance changes as the planet warms—is one of the great questions in climate science.
My expectation is that the climate system could eventually approach a new equilibrium around +4°C above the preindustrial baseline, perhaps over the course of a couple centuries. That would imply roughly +2–3°C this century, with additional warming continuing into the next.
But that remains uncertain.
The important point is that climate change is not a simple linear equation. It is a massively interconnected system in which changes in one component can alter another, which then feeds back into the first. Ice affects albedo. Albedo affects heating. Heating affects clouds. Clouds affect radiation. Radiation affects ocean temperatures. Ocean temperatures affect evaporation and atmospheric moisture. And the cycle continues.
Everything is nonlinear.
Yet uncertainty about the exact trajectory does not mean uncertainty about what we should do.
The clearest lever we have is still the same: reduce CO₂ emissions and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
And while the long-term equilibrium matters, there is a much more immediate question.
What happens to you over the next five years?
We are already seeing rainfall becoming more intense and, in many places, more destructive—violent. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, increasing the potential for extreme precipitation. The question isn’t simply how hot the planet might become over the next 50 years.
The more immediate question is:
What is the violent rain going to do to your home, your community, your infrastructure, your insurance—and you—over the next five years?
That is where climate change stops being a distant projection and starts becoming a personal reality.
The climate costs of fossil-fuel dependence are increasingly outweighing its benefits—not in some distant future, but here and now. We are moving beyond arguments about what climate change might cost decades from today. Across the Western world, climate impacts are already imposing costs of hundreds of billions of dollars in real time.
Insurance is only one part of the story.
Infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, labor productivity, public health, energy systems, and financial markets are all beginning to absorb the cost of a destabilizing climate. The economic question is therefore changing. It is no longer simply:
“What will climate change cost us?”
It is increasingly:
“How much are we willing to pay to preserve an energy system that is becoming progressively more expensive to maintain?”
Climate Stress Is Becoming an Economic Stress Test
The physical infrastructure of the global economy is already being affected.
Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc has warned that climate change is putting increasing pressure on European waterways and that substantial infrastructure investment will be needed to keep the Rhine operating as a critical transportation artery.
But the economic importance of waterways extends far beyond shipping.
Rivers, lakes, and reservoirs are also critical components of the energy, industrial, agricultural, municipal, and ecological systems that support modern economies.
When water levels fall or water temperatures rise, power plants can be affected directly. Thermoelectric and nuclear power plants rely heavily on water for cooling. If river flows become too low, or water temperatures become too high, operators may be forced to reduce generation or temporarily shut down units because sufficient cooling capacity is no longer available or because thermal discharge limits are exceeded.
That creates an economic chain reaction:
Lower river flows or higher water temperatures ↓ Reduced cooling capacity ↓ Reduced power generation ↓ Tighter electricity supplies ↓ Higher electricity prices and grid stress ↓ Higher operating costs for industry and consumers
The same waterways that transport fuel, raw materials, agricultural products, chemicals, and manufactured goods can therefore also be essential to producing the electricity needed to move and manufacture those goods.
Water is simultaneously a transportation system, cooling system, industrial input, agricultural resource, and ecological asset.
When that system becomes unstable, multiple economic sectors can be affected at the same time.
Low water levels can also restrict the movement of coal, oil, natural gas, grain, chemicals, construction materials, and other bulk commodities. Barges may have to reduce their loads or make more trips to transport the same volume of goods. In some cases, alternative transportation by rail or truck becomes necessary, increasing fuel consumption, congestion, labor costs, and emissions.
Flooding creates the opposite problem.
Excess water can damage ports, locks, bridges, rail connections, roads, warehouses, industrial facilities, and electrical infrastructure. A waterway can therefore become economically disruptive at both extremes—too little water and too much water.
Agriculture is similarly exposed. Rivers and reservoirs provide irrigation, livestock water, and municipal supplies. Persistent drought can reduce agricultural output while increasing competition among farmers, cities, industry, ecosystems, and energy producers for increasingly scarce water.
There is also a less visible economic cost: water temperature itself is becoming an economic variable.
Warmer rivers can reduce their ability to absorb additional heat from industrial processes and power-plant cooling systems. At the same time, warmer water can stress aquatic ecosystems, fisheries, and drinking-water systems, creating additional regulatory, treatment, and ecological costs.
This produces a broader economic concept that is often missed in conventional disaster accounting:
Waterway disruption is not a single-sector problem. It is a systems problem.
The Rhine and Danube are not simply waterways. They are components of Europe’s economic infrastructure. They connect ports, factories, power plants, farms, cities, mines, warehouses, rail networks, and consumers. When climate conditions interfere with their operation, the economic consequences propagate through the system. A river does not have to disappear to create an economic crisis. It only has to become less reliable. And reliability is one of the most valuable—and often least visible—assets in a modern economy.
The Economic Toll of Extreme Weather
Global extreme weather and natural disasters are generating enormous economic losses. Recent estimates from the International Chamber of Commerce, insurers including Swiss Re, and disaster-loss tracking organizations show that severe convective storms, wildfires, floods, and other extreme events are producing annual losses measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The first half of 2026 alone has already produced approximately $100 billion in global economic losses, while the cumulative economic toll over the past decade has reached roughly $2 trillion, according to recent assessments.
And the year is not over.
The second half of the year normally includes the peak of the North Atlantic hurricane season, creating the potential for another substantial wave of losses.
The Major Economic Drivers
Escalating annual losses. Global disaster losses continue to accumulate at extraordinary levels. The combined economic losses from 2022 and 2023 alone have been estimated at roughly $451 billion.
The concentration of U.S. losses. The United States remains a major source of global insured catastrophe losses. By June 2026, the country had already experienced 12 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, with estimated losses totaling approximately $31.9 billion.
Severe convective storms. Hail, tornadoes, straight-line winds, and other severe thunderstorms have become an increasingly persistent source of financial losses. The United States recorded a record 21 billion-dollar severe-convective-storm events in 2025.
Extreme heat and productivity. The economic damage from climate change is not limited to destroyed buildings and infrastructure. Heat reduces worker productivity, particularly in construction, agriculture, manufacturing, and outdoor occupations. Global heat-related productivity losses have been estimated at roughly 1% of world GDP annually—around $1 trillion.
The long-term U.S. bill. U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters have generated cumulative damages exceeding $3 trillion since systematic tracking began in 1980.
The Trajectory Is the Story
Recent U.S. disaster statistics illustrate the increasing economic burden:
Year
Billion-Dollar Events
Estimated Damage
Major Loss Drivers
2025
23
~$115 billion
Severe storms, wildfires
2024
27
~$182.7 billion
Severe storms, tropical cyclones, extreme heat
2023
28
$145+ billion
Severe storms and other extreme events
The important point is not that every individual disaster can be attributed exclusively to climate change.
The economic signal emerges from the frequency, intensity, persistence, and cumulative cost of extreme conditions.
Climate change does not need to create every storm, flood, drought, or wildfire to transform the economics of risk. It only needs to increase the probability, severity, or duration of damaging events enough to alter the cost structure of society.
That is already happening.
“Demand Destruction” Is Our Friend
This brings us to one of the most powerful—and least appreciated—economic mechanisms in the energy transition:
Demand destruction.
The International Energy Agency has projected that global oil demand will decline more sharply than previously expected in 2026, forecasting a reduction of approximately 1.6 million barrels per day.
The significance extends beyond the number itself.
As an economist, I am less concerned with establishing a specific date by which the world must eliminate fossil fuels than I am with changing the economic forces that sustain fossil-fuel demand.
That distinction matters.
People do not necessarily change because someone wins an argument about climate science. They change because incentives change. Prices change. Risk changes. Availability changes. And eventually, behavior changes.
Money Moves People
I am unlikely to change the minds of the roughly 20% of Americans who are ideologically committed to policies that accelerate fossil-fuel dependence.
But that leaves the vast majority of the population. And economics can do much of the work. Integrated Climate Stewardship begins with reducing unnecessary consumption.
Consumerism drives energy demand, resource extraction, pollution, waste, and habitat destruction. Every unnecessary unit of consumption represents another demand for energy and materials somewhere in the global economy.
Consume less, and demand falls.
Demand falls, and the economic incentive to produce falls.
That is the mechanism.
The Economics of Personal Climate Stewardship
Today, only a small fraction of Americans appear to be pursuing a deliberately structured net-zero lifestyle through continuous behavioral reductions, efficiency improvements, and intentional balancing. But this does not mean the model cannot scale. The critical question is how climate stewardship is presented.
If reducing climate impact is framed exclusively as sacrifice, people resist. If it is framed as economic self-interest, the equation changes.
What happens when people discover that reducing unnecessary consumption can save them thousands of dollars a year?
What happens when energy efficiency lowers household expenses?
When smaller vehicles reduce fuel, maintenance, and insurance costs?
When reducing waste means buying fewer things that do not provide meaningful value?
When local production and durable goods become economically attractive?
When conservation becomes synonymous with financial resilience?
The behavior does not have to begin with ideology.
It can begin with a household budget.
Vote With Your Dollars
This is where the remaining majority of the population becomes economically important.
When millions of people begin making purchasing decisions based on cost, durability, efficiency, resilience, and environmental impact, they collectively alter demand.
When demand changes, markets respond. When fossil-fuel demand declines, the economic incentive to extract, refine, transport, and sell fossil fuels declines with it. This is fundamentally different from waiting for governments to impose every change from the top down. It is a bottom-up economic transition.
People do not have to agree about everything.
They do not have to become climate activists.
They do not even have to agree about climate policy.
They simply have to discover that some forms of consumption are no longer worth what they cost.
The Feedback Loop
The process can become self-reinforcing:
Lower unnecessary consumption ↓ Lower household costs ↓ Lower energy and resource demand ↓ Reduced fossil-fuel demand ↓ Lower economic incentive for fossil-fuel expansion ↓ Greater investment in alternatives and efficiency ↓ Further reductions in fossil-fuel demand
This is an economic feedback loop.
And unlike many climate-policy debates, it does not require everyone to agree on the destination before beginning the journey.
Demand Destruction Is the Transition
The transition away from fossil fuels is often described as a supply problem:
How quickly can we replace coal, oil, and natural gas?
But there is another side of the equation.
How quickly can we reduce the demand that makes fossil-fuel extraction profitable?
That may ultimately be the more powerful question.
We do not need to convince every person to become an environmentalist.
We need to make lower-carbon choices increasingly rational economic choices.
The climate crisis is already generating enormous costs. Insurance premiums are rising. Infrastructure is being stressed. Agricultural productivity is being disrupted. Heat is reducing labor capacity. Extreme weather is destroying capital. Supply chains are becoming more vulnerable.
These costs are not theoretical.
They are appearing on balance sheets, household budgets, insurance statements, government budgets, and corporate earnings reports.
The economic system is beginning to receive the bill.
And money moves people.
Demand destruction is not the enemy of the energy transition.
I use phasing out in a way that means completely ending the use and production of fossil fuels down to zero. Phasing down means a gradual reduction or scaling back in FF use over time without specifying a complete stop. Would add or alter that in any way?
How would you define differntiate ‘transition away’?
Reply:
I would slightly modify your definition of “phasing down” to: “a gradual reduction or scaling back in fossil-fuel use over time without specifying a date for complete cessation.”
There are really two separate issues for me:
1. For this generation, I prefer net-zero carbon emissions as the immediate goal. If someone isn’t already moving toward net-zero, I think they should start now. We don’t need to wait for a theoretical future phase-out date to begin reducing emissions.
2. As both a climatologist and an economist, I’m not convinced that setting a specific date for the complete elimination of fossil fuels is ultimately what matters. In the U.S., roughly 20% of the population appears ideologically committed to policies that would accelerate climate change. Nothing I say or do is likely to change that.
But that still leaves roughly 80% of the population—and I think economics is going to do much of the work.
Right now, perhaps only ~0.5% of Americans are seriously attempting a structured net-zero lifestyle through continuous behavioral reductions and intentional balancing. As more people discover that net-zero can actually save them thousands of dollars a year while also leaving a better environment for their children and grandchildren, I expect consumer behavior to change.
When the remaining ~79.5% begin voting with their dollars, fossil-fuel demand will fall. That creates demand destruction, which ultimately means suppliers will have less and less reason to produce fossil fuels.
So, ironically, I don’t think we necessarily need to establish the exact date when fossil fuels reach zero. The market may establish that date for us. The “complete stop” happens when there is no longer sufficient demand to sustain the fossil-fuel supply chain.
Question:
When you use the term net zero is it with the understanding that the “net” component allows continuous greenhouse gas emissions under the assumption that unproven removal technologies or flawed offsets will balance them out later, delaying necessary fossil fuel phaseouts?
Net zero is a contentious term within my community and I want to be clear that I understand how you see and apply it.
Reply:
That’s an important distinction. When I use the term net-zero, I’m talking about it at the personal/lifestyle level, and I am not using “net” to justify continuing to emit greenhouse gases while assuming that unproven technologies or questionable offsets will clean up the problem later.
What I mean is closer to “Holistic Net-Zero Living” or “Integrated Climate Stewardship”: reducing and, wherever realistically possible, zeroing out the emissions associated with my own lifestyle first, while also taking responsibility for the impacts I can’t immediately eliminate.
For me, that means a 360-degree carbon strategy:
ZEROING OUT / STRUCTURAL DECARBONIZATION
Electrifying transportation and home energy
Increasing energy efficiency
Using clean electricity
Reducing fossil-fuel consumption as close to zero as practical
Reducing high-carbon consumption, including dietary choices
BEYOND MY DIRECT FOOTPRINT
Supporting ecosystem restoration and conservation
Protecting forests and biodiversity
Supporting businesses and technologies that accelerate decarbonization
Using my purchasing and investment decisions to create economic demand for cleaner alternatives
So I’m not saying, “Keep emitting and someone will remove it later.” Quite the opposite. The first priority is eliminating the emissions themselves.
I think of the “net” component as recognizing that an individual cannot instantly eliminate every indirect emission associated with modern life. Rather than pretending those emissions don’t exist, I try to compensate through additional positive actions while continuously working to reduce the underlying footprint.
Ultimately, my goal isn’t simply to achieve a favorable carbon-accounting number. It’s to change the way I live so that my actual fossil-fuel demand approaches zero—and to use my economic choices to help make that transition happen systemically.
That’s why I sometimes think “holistic net-zero living” or “integrated climate stewardship” communicates what I mean better than simply saying “net-zero.”
Question:
Why continue using the language of ‘net zero’? What economic model do you see best aligns w/ what you have outlined?
Reply:
Haaha… good questions.
A: I’m actually in the process of writing the paper that officially changes my language from “net-zero” to “Integrated Climate Stewardship.” So thank you for pushing me on that. I think the new terminology better captures what I’ve been trying to describe.
B: I’m also working on the economic model, and that one is considerably trickier—not because of the terminology, but because AI is changing the underlying economics so rapidly.
I see AI as a double-edged sword. On one edge, as AI replaces more human labor and productivity, the human contribution to economic production could eventually become a much smaller share of GDP. AI may also be capable of producing enormous amounts of economic value with far less energy per unit of output than traditional human labor and many existing production systems.
But the other edge of that sword is wealth distribution.
If the ownership of AI, capital, and productive capacity becomes increasingly concentrated, we could see extraordinary productivity growth occurring alongside increasingly unjust wealth inequality. We could potentially solve one problem—resource and energy efficiency—while creating another: who actually owns and benefits from the productivity?
That’s the economic model I’m wrestling with now: how do we build an economy where AI-driven productivity, decarbonization, consumer savings, and environmental stewardship reinforce each other while the resulting wealth is broadly distributed?
That may ultimately be a much bigger economic question than the climate transition itself.
Question:
Have you been sitting with the economic of degrowth in all of this then? Sounds like there is that tension in what is being considered.
Reply:
Yes. I’ve been sitting with the economics of degrowth quite a bit. And I think there’s an interesting tension here.
Traditional capitalism is fundamentally tied to population growth, human labor, productivity, and consumption. But AI potentially breaks that relationship. If technology increasingly replaces human labor, then economic growth can continue—even accelerate—while the economic value of human labor declines, perhaps dramatically.
So I’m not sure the future necessarily looks like “degrowth.” It may be something stranger: exponential technological growth occurring alongside declining human labor demand, an aging population in the developed regions of the world, and potentially declining population worldwide.
That raises a much bigger question: if human labor is no longer the primary engine of economic value, what exactly are we trying to maximize—and how should the economy distribute the benefits of that productivity?
That’s the economic model I’m wrestling with right now.
Question:
What about lands and waters in these considerations?
Can we agree that what we need must be either mined or grown?
Raw materials come from somewhere with significant externalities — often left out of economic theory.
My other issue is the assumptive ghost of interest-bearing-debt as a driver of unnecessary growth.
Reply:
Yes—and I think land, water, and raw materials have to be part of the model. My initial modeling, however, is pointing toward a very different problem than the one we traditionally assume.
If AI continues improving itself, productivity could eventually become extraordinarily resource-efficient. Very little additional human labor—and potentially much less land, water, or energy per unit of economic output—may be required for productivity and growth. At the same time, consumers could be forced to consume much less because their income from labor is declining. And as solar and other clean-energy technologies continue becoming cheaper, the pressure for some forms of mining and extraction could decline as well.
That brings me back to your point about interest-bearing debt. I think sovereign debt may become the critical part of the equation.
Productivity gains and abundant cheap clean energy are profoundly deflationary. Deflation sounds wonderful for consumers in theory—but not if it is accompanied by collapsing labor income. You could have falling costs and prices while households simultaneously lose the purchasing power needed to buy anything.
Now add governments facing enormous debt obligations while their traditional tax base is shrinking because human labor is becoming less economically valuable. Governments could increasingly rely on interest-bearing debt to finance poverty reduction, redistribution, and some form of basic income.
And that creates a potentially nasty feedback loop: AI-driven productivity → declining labor income → shrinking tax base → rising sovereign debt → greater reliance on monetary expansion → inflationary pressure.
Historically, severe sovereign debt problems have sometimes been resolved through substantial currency devaluation and inflation. I’m not saying hyperinflation is inevitable—but it is one of the risks I’m now modeling.
The really strange possibility is that we could simultaneously have exponential productivity, increasingly abundant cheap energy, falling costs of production—and increasing economic hardship for ordinary people.
In other words, the problem may not ultimately be whether the planet can produce enough. It may be whether humans can maintain enough income, purchasing power, and economic agency to participate in the abundance that AI creates.
That, to me, is where the economic model gets really interesting.
About Denialism and Ecofascism: Science Is Science
The Observation Glad to know you’re watching out! At the same time, this divisiveness—when we desperately need everyone to pull together because it’s a CRISIS, right?—makes me somehow deeply sad.
That’s a big job right there… How do we reach those who seem furthest away from any kind of understanding? We need both a Winston Churchill and a Mahatma Gandhi in this endeavor…
The Response Agreed. Both denialism and ecofascism are ideologies that ultimately defy logic. In very different ways, they can become a kind of combination of self-destruction and destruction of others.
I’ve spent years battling misinformation, propaganda, and rhetoric. To the best of my knowledge, neither Sidd nor I have successfully converted—or even educated—a single committed denier. Climate science has somehow been transformed into a “belief” system. But science has nothing to do with belief. 1 + 1 = 2. If someone refuses to “believe” that, what exactly can you do?
From the beginning, our work has been based on observations, data, mathematics, and the laws of physics. So yes, I think this is at the heart of the crisis. When we started this work, we genuinely believed humanity would eventually take action. We thought we had thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years to adapt. That was the one thing we got wrong.
A couple of years ago, after explaining my continuing attempts to reach climate deniers, I asked Sidd what we could possibly do. His response was essentially, “Dude, just tell them to look out their window.” It sounds simplistic, but there is profound truth in it. The consequences are becoming increasingly difficult to deny.
Since then, we’ve had to rebuild much of our modeling. A +4°C world within thousands of years is no longer the worst-case scenario we worry about. The possibility of 4–7°C of warming within a century has become a much more serious concern in our work.
And then there is the political dimension. The rise of white-nationalist and authoritarian governments in the U.S. and elsewhere has made an already difficult problem considerably harder. Paradoxically, though, history offers one small reason for hope: fascism ultimately fails. It is inherently self-destructive.
The “drill, baby, drill” mentality is economically and environmentally self-defeating. A severe economic contraction could, ironically, buy humanity some time for adaptation while drastically reducing emissions. That is hardly the future anyone should want, but history has repeatedly demonstrated that systems built on extremism and authoritarianism eventually consume themselves.
So yes—we desperately need both the Churchill and Gandhi dimensions: the willingness to confront reality without flinching, and the willingness to keep reaching for people rather than giving up on them. I’m just not sure humanity has ever faced a crisis where we needed both quite this badly.
An AP-NORC poll reveals a deeply troubling contradiction in the American public’s understanding of climate change: Americans are increasingly experiencing the effects of extreme heat, yet fewer now believe climate change is actually happening.
According to the poll, just 66% of Americans say climate change is happening, down sharply from 73% a year ago. That seven-percentage-point decline is particularly alarming because it comes at a time when Americans are reporting increasingly direct and disruptive experiences with extreme heat.
The disconnect raises an important question: How can people increasingly experience the consequences of a changing climate while becoming less likely to recognize climate change as the cause?
Extreme Heat Is Becoming Personal
The same poll found that 90% of Americans say extreme heat has affected their lives in some way, up from 83% in July 2024.
The impacts aren’t confined to abstract concerns about the environment. Americans report that extreme heat is affecting everyday life, including:
Electricity bills
Outdoor activities
Sleep
Travel and vacations
Daily routines
Perhaps most significantly, about 80% say extreme heat has affected their electricity bills, up from 69% in 2024.
In the Midwest, the increase is even more striking: 44% now say extreme heat has had a major impact on their electricity bills, compared with 29% two years ago.
That is climate change translated into something tangible: a higher household expense.
The Perception–Attribution Gap
The most important finding may not be the increase in heat-related disruption. It may be the growing gap between what Americans experience and what they believe is causing it.
The survey presents two seemingly contradictory trends:
90% say extreme heat has affected their lives.
Yet only 66% say climate change is happening.
And that 66% figure is down from 73% just one year ago.
This is a remarkable perception–attribution gap.
Americans can recognize that summers are becoming more difficult, electricity costs are rising, outdoor activities are being disrupted and extreme heat is affecting sleep—without necessarily connecting those experiences to a changing climate.
The result is a potentially dangerous disconnect between physical reality and public understanding.
Political Division Is Part of the Explanation
Political ideology continues to play an enormous role in how Americans interpret climate-related experiences.
Democrats are substantially more likely than Republicans to describe extreme heat as having a major impact on their lives. But that doesn’t mean Republicans aren’t experiencing the same heat.
The distinction is increasingly about interpretation and attribution.
People across the political spectrum can experience the same 100-degree day. They can experience the same oppressive humidity, pay the same higher electricity bill and face the same restrictions on outdoor activity.
But they may reach very different conclusions about why it is happening.
That distinction matters because climate change doesn’t require public agreement in order to produce physical consequences.
Climate Change Is Becoming an Economic Issue
The AP-NORC findings also demonstrate why climate change should not be viewed exclusively as an environmental issue.
Extreme heat can also affect worker productivity, agriculture, infrastructure, public health, insurance losses and energy-grid reliability.
The household electricity bill may therefore be only the first visible economic manifestation of a much larger systemic problem.
The public doesn’t need to understand atmospheric physics to experience these consequences.
They simply need to notice that something is different.
The Most Alarming Finding Isn’t the Heat
The increase in extreme-heat impacts is concerning, but the seven-point decline in belief that climate change is happening may be even more alarming.
The country is experiencing a growing number of climate-related disruptions while simultaneously becoming less certain—or less willing—to identify climate change as the underlying cause.
That creates a dangerous situation for public policy.
Democratic societies depend upon the public recognizing problems before governments can effectively address them. If the physical impacts become increasingly severe while public recognition of their underlying causes declines, political pressure for adaptation and mitigation can weaken precisely when the need for action is growing.
This creates a potential feedback loop:
More climate disruption → greater personal impacts → greater economic costs → political polarization → weaker recognition of climate change → less public support for climate action → greater future vulnerability
That is not merely a communications problem.
It is a systemic risk.
Experience Is Increasing Faster Than Understanding
The AP-NORC poll doesn’t measure the physical climate system. It measures what Americans are experiencing and what they believe.
Those are different things.
The survey cannot establish how much of an individual’s electricity bill, sleep disruption or outdoor inconvenience is attributable specifically to climate change. Establishing those causal relationships requires observational climate data and scientific attribution studies.
But the poll does reveal something extremely important about the human response to climate change.
The consequences are becoming increasingly personal while public recognition of climate change is moving in the opposite direction.
That should concern everyone, regardless of political affiliation.
The challenge is no longer simply convincing people that the climate is changing.
It is explaining why their increasingly familiar experiences—extreme heat, higher cooling demand, disrupted outdoor activities, poor sleep and growing economic costs—are connected to a much larger physical system.
Americans may not agree about climate change.
But increasingly, they are living with its consequences.
And the most alarming finding from this poll is that as those consequences become harder to escape, fewer Americans say climate change is actually happening: 66% today, compared with 73% a year ago.
America Is an International Outlier on Climate Change
The decline in American belief becomes even more concerning when viewed against the rest of the world.
A 2025 Pew Research Center international survey of 25 countries found that a global median of 67% of respondents considered climate change a major threat to their country. In the United States, however, only 51% said the same—a gap of 16 percentage points.
The U.S. was among the least concerned countries surveyed. Americans were less likely than respondents in 13 of the 16 high-income countries included in the survey to view climate change as a major threat. In countries such as Argentina, Brazil, France, Japan and South Korea, roughly 80% of respondents regarded climate change as a major threat.
The difference is particularly striking because the United States is not insulated from climate impacts. Americans are experiencing extreme heat, rising cooling demand, disrupted outdoor activities and other consequences of a warming climate, yet concern about climate change remains comparatively low.
The American Divide Is Also Unusually Political
The international comparison becomes even more revealing when political ideology is considered.
Pew found that approximately 84% of U.S. liberals regarded climate change as a major threat, compared with only about 20% of U.S. conservatives. That enormous gap makes the United States an international outlier in the degree to which climate change has become politically polarized.
The result is a remarkable paradox.
Americans across the political spectrum can experience the same heat wave, pay the same electricity bill and endure the same disruption to their daily lives. Yet they may reach dramatically different conclusions about what those experiences mean.
The disagreement therefore isn’t simply about the physical environment. It is increasingly about how Americans interpret the physical environment.
Believing the Climate Is Changing Is Not the Same as Accepting Why
Another Pew measure illustrates the problem even more clearly.
In 2026, only 48% of Americans said the Earth is warming mostly because of human activity. That is substantially lower than the 66% who currently say climate change is happening in the AP-NORC poll.
The difference is crucial.
A person can acknowledge that the climate is changing without accepting that human activity is primarily responsible for that change. Others may accept human-caused warming but disagree about its severity, consequences or appropriate policy response.
This creates several layers of public perception:
Is the climate changing?
↓
Is human activity causing it?
↓
Is it becoming dangerous?
↓
Should government and society act?
Americans can answer those questions very differently.
An Alarming Combination
Taken together, the international and domestic polling reveals a troubling pattern:
90% — say extreme heat has affected their lives
80% — say heat has affected their electricity bills
73% → 66% — Americans saying climate change is happening
51% — Americans calling climate change a major national threat
48% — Americans saying warming is mostly caused by human activity
The numbers measure different things and should not be treated as interchangeable. But together they reveal a striking disconnect between experience, attribution and concern.
The United States is already an international outlier in climate skepticism and political polarization. Now, at a time when Americans report increasingly personal impacts from extreme heat, the share saying climate change is happening has fallen seven percentage points in only one year.
That may be the most troubling finding of all.
The physical climate signal is becoming harder to escape, while public recognition of that signal is moving in the opposite direction.
Although it’s fine when boiled.
