Every day I walk a hundred years to the hill where my great, great granddaughter sits. I carry words of blessing and reach to touch her back.
But feeling me near she turns, sad-eyed and heavy with grief.
“What was it like?” she asks, “when the great whales swam, when the birds sang you awake, when the rains came soft, and the soil smelled sweet underfoot?”
And the blessings catch in my throat.
On darker days she turns, her famished face charred, and eyes sunk in their bony orbits, burn with curses.
And the blessings froth at my mouth with the poisonous spume of betrayal.
On the darkest of all days I walk the hundred years and find no one there.
Let today be the bright day. Let today be the bright day I lay my hand upon her back.
And, feeling me near, she turns and blesses me, saying,
“Your love was fierce enough, sweet ancestor, your love was fierce enough.”
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.
By Daniel Brouse Economist & Climatologist Membrane Domain USA August 10, 2026
I’m not certain what the future holds. I don’t think anyone can be.
But I’m also not convinced that the future of fossil fuels can be projected simply by looking at today’s production levels and assuming they will continue indefinitely.
There is a very real possibility that economics, energy security, technological substitution, and even economic disruption could phase out fossil fuels much faster than most people expect.
In fact, some of the data already point in that direction.
The Energy Transition Is Already Moving
The International Energy Agency estimates that global renewable capacity will increase by roughly 4,600 GW between 2025 and 2030—an extraordinary expansion roughly equivalent to the combined current power capacity of China, the European Union, and Japan.
Solar PV is expected to account for almost 80% of that expansion.
Even more significant is what this means for the growth of electricity demand. Renewables are expected to provide more than 90% of the increase in global electricity generation through 2030.
This is not simply a distant prediction about some hypothetical future energy system. It represents an enormous investment already underway.
And the transition is happening particularly rapidly in China.
China is now responsible for nearly 60% of global renewable-capacity growth. In 2025 alone, it added roughly 314 GW of solar capacity and is on track to reach its 2035 wind-and-solar target approximately five years early.
Whatever one’s views on climate policy, these numbers are difficult to dismiss.
The global energy system is changing.
And it is changing rapidly.
This Isn’t Just About Climate Policy
There is another factor that deserves considerably more attention: energy security.
The transition away from fossil fuels is not being driven exclusively by environmental concerns. Increasingly, it is also becoming an economic and strategic imperative.
The disruption of oil and gas flows through critical transportation routes such as the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates the vulnerability inherent in an energy system dependent upon globally traded fossil fuels.
For Europe and Asia in particular, domestic renewable generation, energy storage, electrification, and efficiency increasingly represent something more than climate policy.
They are energy-security assets.
A solar panel or wind turbine doesn’t need to be transported through a geopolitical chokepoint every time it generates electricity. Once installed, domestic renewable resources can reduce exposure to international fuel-price shocks, supply disruptions, and geopolitical conflicts.
That changes the economic calculation.
And it is one reason I believe the energy transition may prove considerably more nonlinear than many conventional forecasts assume.
The Future May Be Nonlinear
I agree that we shouldn’t pretend we know exactly what the future holds.
My point is almost the opposite.
The future may be much more nonlinear than either of us can confidently predict.
Technologies don’t necessarily replace one another gradually. Once a technology becomes sufficiently cheap, reliable, scalable, and convenient, adoption can accelerate rapidly.
The same thing can happen with infrastructure.
Battery storage becomes cheaper. Electric vehicles become more capable. Solar becomes less expensive. Transmission improves. Heat pumps become more efficient. Businesses discover that electrification can reduce operating costs. Consumers begin choosing technologies that save them money.
Each development can reinforce the others.
And once enough pieces of the system change, the economics of the entire energy system can change with them.
This is why simply extrapolating today’s fossil-fuel production into the future can be misleading.
Could “Drill, Baby, Drill” Backfire?
There is an irony here.
Policies intended to expand U.S. fossil-fuel production could potentially accelerate the transition they are intended to slow if they contribute to greater volatility, geopolitical exposure, or investment in alternatives.
Consider what could happen during a serious economic downturn.
A major recession could cause substantial demand destruction. Businesses would consume less energy. Consumers would drive less and purchase fewer goods. Industrial production would decline.
Fossil-fuel consumption could fall sharply.
That would potentially undermine the very industry that policies designed around expanding fossil-fuel production are intended to strengthen.
There is no guarantee this will happen. But that’s precisely the point.
The future contains feedback loops.
Economic conditions affect energy demand. Energy prices affect technology adoption. Technology affects investment. Investment affects infrastructure. Infrastructure affects energy prices and security. Geopolitical events affect all of them.
The result is a system capable of changing much faster than a simple linear projection would suggest.
This Isn’t an All-or-Nothing Choice
I’m not trying to create another online debate.
I’m simply pointing out that the data show a transition already underway—and its speed is anything but static.
And perhaps the most important point is that this isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition.
Every increment of transition matters.
Every electric vehicle displaces some gasoline consumption. Every solar panel replaces some electricity that otherwise might have come from fossil fuels. Every efficiency improvement reduces energy demand. Every battery installation makes intermittent renewable energy more useful. Every business that electrifies reduces some exposure to fossil-fuel prices.
The more we transition, the more reasonable—and manageable—the future becomes.
We don’t need to transform the entire energy system overnight.
We need to keep moving.
Technology Is Changing More Than Energy
There is another reason I remain optimistic.
Ironically, AI and rapidly advancing technology are accelerating climate science at a pace that may eventually rival the acceleration of climate change itself.
Research that once took years can increasingly be explored in hours.
Large datasets can be analyzed in ways that weren’t previously practical. Relationships between variables can be identified more quickly. Models can be tested, refined, and compared at extraordinary speed.
I’ve been able to identify hundreds of interacting feedbacks and relationships that weren’t even being seriously considered just a few years ago.
That doesn’t mean every hypothesis will be correct.
It means our ability to investigate complex systems is expanding extraordinarily quickly.
And that gives me reason for optimism.
Humans have an extraordinary capacity to adapt, innovate, and solve difficult problems—especially when we are sufficiently motivated to do so.
The future is not predetermined.
What we do now can still make an enormous difference in what comes next.
The 80% Question
A final thought concerns something that initially struck me as particularly concerning.
Roughly 20% of Americans appear to be actively fighting the energy transition.
At first, I found that almost dumbfounding. I expected the number to be closer to less than 2%.
But there is another way to look at it.
That still leaves roughly 80% of the population.
And if that 80% chooses to act—through voting, investment, purchasing decisions, business decisions, and simply choosing where to spend their dollars—the market can move remarkably quickly.
We don’t necessarily have to fight the remaining 20%.
We can vote with our dollars.
Markets respond to demand.
If enough consumers and businesses choose alternatives, capital will follow. Manufacturers will respond. Infrastructure will change. Companies will adapt.
And eventually, the fossil-fuel industry will have to adapt as well—or gradually lose market share.
That is the power of an energy transition driven not only by government policy, but by millions of individual economic decisions.
My Choice. Your Choice. Our Future.
I went net-zero years ago.
If I can do it, anybody can.
I don’t claim that my individual decision changed the world.
But my choice made the future a little better than it otherwise would have been.
And so can yours.
The future of energy isn’t predetermined by today’s production numbers, today’s political battles, or today’s assumptions.
It will be shaped by billions of decisions made by consumers, businesses, investors, engineers, scientists, and governments.
Some of those decisions will be political.
Many will be economic.
Some will be technological.
And countless others will be personal.
That’s why I don’t think the question is whether we can predict exactly what the energy system will look like in 10, 20, or 30 years.
We can’t.
The more important question is:
What direction are we moving—and how much can our choices influence where we ultimately arrive?
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.
Sidd said: “frightening article by Jeff Masters. We saw some of this coming, the flood risk aint just along the coast, it extends 100 miles inland… the water cant get out …”
In the 1990s, Sidd and I began developing real-estate-based climate risk models. From the beginning, one of the underlying high-risk factors was flooding—and, closely linked to it, the availability and affordability of flood insurance. In the early 2000s, we met with FEMA, Fannie Mae (FNMA), and Freddie Mac (FHLMC) to better understand their flood-risk modeling and emerging plans for managed retreat.
In October 2023, Sidd observed: “Now I am thinking the violent rain will be a bigger problem before we die.”
That concern has become increasingly relevant. As the Earth warms, warmer air can physically hold more water vapor than cooler air. For every 1°C (1.8°F) increase in temperature, the atmosphere can hold approximately 7% more moisture, increasing the potential for extreme precipitation. Over a 10°C increase, atmospheric moisture-holding capacity would nearly double, creating the potential for substantially more intense rainfall.
The problem, however, is not simply the amount of water falling from the sky. It is also what happens when that water moves across the landscape—and whether infrastructure and government response systems are capable of managing, containing, and recovering from the resulting flows.
Flow forces scale with the square of velocity (v²). As flow speeds increase—whether from heavier rainfall, steeper runoff, or more intense hydrological events—the destructive force of moving water rises rapidly. Density further magnifies this effect. Water is roughly 800 times denser than air, meaning that a comparable flow velocity can produce dramatically greater force.
Together, we developed a series of models incorporating the Clausius–Clapeyron relationship, the extreme energy transfer within the water cycle through latent heat, and fluid-flow dynamics. These models increasingly pointed toward a risk structure in which flooding could no longer be treated as an isolated coastal problem. Instead, precipitation intensity, runoff, topography, infrastructure vulnerability, insurance stress, and limited recovery capacity can interact and compound one another across much larger regions.
By 2026, the framework had evolved from a theoretical real-estate climate-risk model into a broader multiplicative risk framework that could be evaluated against observed real-world conditions.
The latest evolution of this work is presented in the following three papers:
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.
Climate change is no longer simply a future environmental threat. It is increasingly affecting American households through higher costs, declining air quality, extreme heat, infrastructure disruptions, property damage, and changing patterns of disease.
Although catastrophic floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and other disasters dominate the headlines, the most widespread climate impact may be less dramatic: the steady financial pressure climate change places on everyday household budgets. Food prices, insurance premiums, utility bills, and the costs of maintaining homes and communities are all increasingly influenced by a changing climate.
The impacts are not distributed equally. Some are nearly universal, while others are concentrated in particular regions or communities. The ranking below therefore considers two factors: how widely households are exposed and how severely the impact can disrupt everyday life.
Ranking of Climate Impacts on the Average U.S. Household
Global Ranking of Climate Impacts on the Average Household
The ranking below shifts the order of impacts based on global reach and the immediate threat to human life and livelihoods across developing and developed nations alike.
Rank
Impact Category
Primary Global Household Threats
Ubiquity
Severity
1
Economic & Food Security
Global food price spikes, crop failures, loss of agricultural livelihoods
1. Economic Impacts: The Most Universal Climate Burden
Economic impacts rank first because households do not have to live in a flood zone, wildfire corridor, or hurricane-prone region to pay the economic costs of climate change. Climate-related costs increasingly reach Americans through food prices, insurance premiums, utility bills, taxes, public fees, and the rising cost of maintaining homes and infrastructure.
Climate change can therefore function as a cost multiplier, increasing expenses both directly and indirectly.
Climate-Driven Food Inflation
Drought, extreme heat, excessive rainfall, and other weather disruptions can reduce agricultural yields and interfere with food production and supply chains. Because food markets are interconnected, production losses in one region can influence prices far beyond the location of the original climate event.
The effects can reach everyday staples and commodities such as coffee, wheat, corn, beef, fruits, and vegetables.
The result is a climate-related cost that can reach virtually every household through the grocery bill—even when the household is hundreds or thousands of miles from the drought, flood, or heatwave affecting agricultural production.
The Insurance Crisis
Insurance is one of the clearest mechanisms through which climate risk is transferred directly to households.
As floods, hurricanes, wildfires, severe storms, and other disasters generate increasingly costly losses, insurers may respond by raising premiums, increasing deductibles, restricting coverage, or withdrawing from particularly high-risk markets.
For homeowners, climate risk can therefore produce a double financial burden:
In some locations, the problem extends beyond affordability. Homeowners may find that certain types of coverage are difficult or impossible to obtain through conventional private insurance markets.
Rising Utility Costs
Hotter summers increase demand for air conditioning. As temperatures remain elevated for longer periods, households may need to run cooling systems more frequently and for longer durations.
That increases electricity consumption while simultaneously placing additional stress on the power grid.
Climate change can therefore affect household budgets through both higher energy consumption and the cost of maintaining a more resilient electrical system.
Water systems can face similar pressures. Drought, declining water supplies, flooding, and changing precipitation patterns may require communities to invest in new reservoirs, treatment capacity, pipelines, drainage systems, and other infrastructure.
Those investments ultimately have to be paid for.
Taxes, Assessments, and Public Costs
One of the least visible climate costs is the portion that reaches households through government budgets rather than private markets.
When climate-related disasters become more costly, governments must spend more on emergency response, disaster recovery, infrastructure repair, flood protection, stormwater management, wildfire preparedness, water systems, coastal protection, and long-term climate adaptation.
Those expenses can eventually reach households through:
Property taxes used to finance infrastructure repairs and resilience projects.
Special assessments and municipal fees for stormwater, drainage, flood control, and other local projects.
Higher utility rates needed to upgrade vulnerable water and electrical systems.
State and federal taxes that help finance disaster recovery, emergency response, agricultural assistance, infrastructure rebuilding, and resilience programs.
Public insurance and disaster programs when private insurance markets cannot absorb the full cost of catastrophic losses.
This creates an important economic chain:
Climate hazard → physical damage → insurance losses → government response → infrastructure spending → taxes, fees, and utility costs.
The household may never experience the original flood, wildfire, hurricane, or drought, yet it can still participate in paying the bill.
Rising Property and Maintenance Costs
Climate stress can also increase the cost of owning and maintaining a home.
More intense rainfall can require improved drainage. Stronger storms can increase demand for roofing and exterior repairs. Heat can accelerate deterioration of infrastructure and building materials. Flooding and wildfire risk can require additional mitigation measures.
At the same time, widespread disasters can create temporary shortages of construction materials, contractors, equipment, and skilled labor, increasing repair costs.
The Hidden Climate Cost
Taken together, these effects mean that climate change does not have to destroy your home to affect your household finances.
A household can experience climate-related costs through:
Higher grocery prices
Higher insurance premiums
Higher electricity and water bills
Higher taxes and public fees
Higher repair and maintenance costs
Together, these expenses create a growing household climate burden—even when a family never experiences a major climate disaster firsthand.
The important point is that climate change is not simply a collection of isolated disasters. It is increasingly an economic force that propagates through markets, insurance systems, government budgets, and household expenses.
For the average American household, this may ultimately be the most widespread way climate change is experienced: not as one catastrophic event, but as a persistent accumulation of additional costs.
2. Air Quality & Chronic Health: A Widespread Physical Exposure
Climate change also affects the quality of the air people breathe.
Wildfire Smoke
Wildfire smoke can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles, carrying fine particulate matter such as PM₂.₅ into communities far from the original fire.
These particles can penetrate deep into the respiratory system and aggravate existing respiratory and cardiovascular problems. As wildfire activity and smoke exposure increase in some regions, air-quality impacts are no longer limited to communities immediately adjacent to fires.
Longer Allergy Seasons
Warmer temperatures can alter plant growing seasons and extend periods of pollen production.
For people with asthma or seasonal allergies, longer or more intense pollen seasons can mean more days of symptoms, greater medication use, and reduced quality of life.
Heat Stress
Rising baseline temperatures also increase the frequency and duration of dangerous heat.
Homes without adequate cooling, outdoor workplaces, and communities with limited access to cooling resources can be particularly vulnerable. Extreme heat is not merely uncomfortable—it can place substantial physiological stress on the human body.
3. Grid & Utility Disruptions: Climate Stress on Essential Infrastructure
Modern households depend on electricity, water, transportation, telecommunications, and other infrastructure every day.
Climate extremes can place additional stress on these systems.
Power Grid Failures
Extreme heat can push electricity demand toward peak levels as households and businesses increase air-conditioning use.
At the same time, extreme weather can damage transmission lines, substations, transformers, and other infrastructure.
The consequences can range from higher electricity costs to localized outages and, under severe conditions, prolonged disruptions to essential services.
Water Scarcity
Drought can reduce reservoir levels, groundwater availability, and other sources of municipal water.
Communities may respond with conservation requirements, watering restrictions, infrastructure investments, or higher water costs.
Water stress can therefore become both an environmental problem and a household financial problem.
4. Acute Physical Damage: Catastrophic Where It Strikes
Floods, hurricanes, wildfires, severe thunderstorms, hail, and high winds can cause enormous damage to homes, vehicles, businesses, and infrastructure.
This category ranks fourth not because the damage is minor, but because exposure is geographically concentrated.
A household directly hit by a major disaster can experience losses vastly greater than those associated with ordinary climate-related inflation.
Floods and Flash Floods
Intense rainfall can overwhelm drainage systems and produce rapid flooding in locations that may not have traditionally been considered high-risk.
Coastal communities also face storm surge and rising sea levels that can increase the consequences of major storms.
Severe Hail and Wind
Severe convective storms can produce damaging hail and straight-line or tornadic winds.
Roofing, siding, windows, vehicles, and other property can be damaged within minutes, creating repair costs that are often compounded by rising construction and insurance expenses.
Wildfires
Wildfires can destroy homes and communities directly while also creating secondary effects through smoke, evacuation, infrastructure disruption, and insurance losses.
5. Vector-Borne Diseases: A Smaller but Expanding Risk
Climate change can also alter the geographic range and seasonal activity of disease-carrying organisms.
Tick-Borne Illnesses
Changes in temperature and seasonal conditions can affect the distribution and activity of ticks and their hosts.
In some regions, this may increase opportunities for exposure to Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.
Mosquito-Borne Diseases
Changing temperature and precipitation patterns can also influence mosquito populations and the geographic conditions suitable for certain mosquito-borne diseases.
The importance of this category varies considerably by region, but changing environmental conditions can alter the boundaries of disease risk over time.
Other Pathogens
Environmental changes can also affect exposure to less common infectious diseases, including tularemia (rabbit fever), which can be transmitted through several pathways involving ticks, biting flies, infected animals, or contaminated environments.
The Basics: How Climate Change Reaches Your Household
Climate change may seem like a global-scale phenomenon, but its consequences increasingly arrive through very ordinary parts of daily life.
Your Wallet: A Rising Cost of Living
Climate change can function like a hidden cost multiplier, increasing expenses directly and indirectly.
Higher grocery bills: Weather extremes can disrupt agricultural production and food supply chains.
Higher insurance premiums: Increasing disaster losses can raise premiums, deductibles, and coverage costs.
Higher repair costs: Disasters can increase demand for construction materials, contractors, and replacement vehicles.
Higher infrastructure costs and taxes: Communities may need to spend more on flood protection, stormwater systems, water supplies, roads, and electrical infrastructure.
The result is that climate change does not need to destroy your house to affect your household finances.
Your Health: New Physical Strains
A warmer climate can change the environmental conditions in which people live.
Extended Allergy Seasons
Longer growing seasons and changing pollen patterns can increase exposure for people with seasonal allergies and asthma.
Heat Stress
More frequent and intense heat events increase risks of heat exhaustion, heatstroke, dehydration, and other heat-related illnesses.
Air Pollution
Wildfire smoke and other climate-related air-quality problems can expose people to unhealthy concentrations of fine particulate matter.
Vector-Borne Disease
Changing environmental conditions can alter the geographic and seasonal ranges of ticks, mosquitoes, and other disease vectors.
Your Environment: Infrastructure and Safety
Climate change also affects the physical systems surrounding your home.
Property Damage
Flooding, severe storms, wildfires, hail, and high winds can damage homes, vehicles, and personal property.
Travel Disruptions
Flooded roads, damaged bridges, severe storms, wildfire smoke, and extreme heat can disrupt transportation and cause delays.
Power and Water Reliability
Extreme heat, drought, storms, and other hazards can put additional pressure on electricity and water systems.
These disruptions can affect people even when their own property escapes direct physical damage.
What You Can Do
Climate change is a global problem, but households can take practical steps to reduce both personal vulnerability and unnecessary expense.
Audit Home Energy
Improve insulation, use efficient lighting and appliances, and manage heating and cooling more efficiently.
Prepare for Emergencies
Maintain a basic emergency kit, understand local flood and wildfire risks, and have a plan for prolonged power outages.
Protect Your Property
Keep gutters and drainage systems clear, maintain trees and vegetation around structures, and understand your property’s exposure to flooding, wind, wildfire, and other hazards.
Reduce Waste
Reducing food waste, conserving water, and using energy efficiently can lower household costs while reducing resource demand.
Know Your Insurance
Review deductibles, exclusions, flood coverage, and other policies before disaster strikes. Standard homeowners insurance does not necessarily cover every major climate-related hazard.
The Bottom Line
Climate change is often discussed in terms of distant environmental consequences, but for American households, the most immediate effects are increasingly personal and financial.
You may encounter climate change as:
a higher grocery bill, a larger insurance premium, a higher electric bill, a smoky summer afternoon, a longer allergy season, a power outage, a flooded road, a damaged roof, or a greater risk of heat stress.
The most dramatic climate disasters will continue to make the headlines. But the deeper transformation may be quieter: climate change is becoming embedded in the ordinary economics and infrastructure of everyday life.
The question is no longer simply what will climate change do to the planet?
Climate Change and a Backyard Produce Experiment: Results Through July 2026
Production Results
Produce
Production
Plums
Excellent
Cherries
Poor
Apples
Poor
Tomatoes
Below Average
Raspberries
Poor
Potatoes
Average
Beans
Average
Introduction
The results of this backyard produce experiment closely reflect the climate-related agricultural challenges affecting Southeastern Pennsylvania through July 2026. The region has experienced increasing climate volatility, often described as “weather whiplash”—a pattern characterized by unusually warm winter and early spring conditions followed by damaging late-season freezes, summer heat waves, and increasingly erratic precipitation.
The observed performance of each crop corresponds closely with the climatic stresses documented throughout the region.
Analysis by Crop Type
1. Tree Fruit Losses: Cherries and Apples
Both cherries and apples produced poor yields, mirroring the severe losses reported by many Pennsylvania fruit growers.
Climate Driver: Warmer winters and early springs are causing fruit trees to break dormancy and bloom earlier than historical averages.
The False Spring Effect: Following an unusually warm early spring, a significant late-season freeze struck Pennsylvania. Because many cherry and apple trees had already reached vulnerable flowering stages, blossoms were damaged or destroyed. Trees subsequently aborted damaged fruitlets, resulting in dramatically reduced harvests.
Observed Result: Poor production.
2. Heat-Stressed Crops: Tomatoes and Raspberries
Tomatoes and raspberries showed substantial sensitivity to elevated summer temperatures.
Climate Driver: Repeated heat waves during June and July 2026 produced prolonged periods with temperatures exceeding 95°F (35°C).
Botanical Impacts:
Raspberries possess shallow root systems that are highly vulnerable to heat stress and soil moisture fluctuations. Prolonged high temperatures can reduce berry size, quality, and overall production.
Tomatoes often experience blossom drop when both daytime and nighttime temperatures remain elevated. Flowers fail to pollinate successfully, reducing fruit set and overall yield.
Observed Results:
Raspberries: Poor
Tomatoes: Below Average
3. Resilient Crops: Potatoes and Beans
Potatoes and beans demonstrated greater resilience despite challenging weather conditions.
Climate Driver: Although extreme heat occurred, the season also included intermittent rainfall events that helped maintain soil moisture.
Botanical Impacts:
Potatoes benefit from underground tubers that remain insulated from extreme air temperatures.
Beans are generally adaptable and capable of maintaining stable production across a wider range of environmental conditions.
Observed Results:
Potatoes: Average
Beans: Average
4. The Plum Exception
Plums were the clear standout of the experiment, producing an excellent harvest despite widespread challenges affecting other fruit crops.
Climate Driver: Most stone fruit in the region faced significant frost damage. However, localized factors can substantially alter outcomes.
Possible Explanations:
Favorable microclimate conditions
Higher-elevation planting sites where cold air drains away
Natural frost protection from surrounding terrain
Orchard management practices that reduced freeze damage
The plums were planted at the highest point on the property and were well protected by surrounding trees. Their elevated location likely reduced frost exposure, while the surrounding trees helped moderate temperature fluctuations and wind. Together, these conditions likely protected the blossoms from the damaging late-spring frosts that devastated many other fruit trees. The exceptional performance of the plum crop suggests that site-specific conditions—including elevation, natural wind protection, and frost mitigation—can significantly improve a crop’s resilience to climate-related stresses.
Observed Result: Excellent production.
Production Comparison and Climate Correlation
Produce
Yield
Climate Correlation
Primary Driver
Plums
Excellent
Localized success despite regional stress
Microclimate protection
Cherries
Poor
Severe blossom losses from spring freeze
Weather whiplash
Apples
Poor
Frost-damaged blossoms and fruitlets
False spring freeze
Tomatoes
Below Average
Reduced fruit set during heat waves
Summer heat stress
Raspberries
Poor
Heat stress and moisture challenges
Extreme temperatures
Potatoes
Average
Protected underground growth
Soil temperature buffering
Beans
Average
Adaptable growth characteristics
Climate resilience
Conclusions
This small-scale produce experiment provides a useful illustration of how climate change is increasingly influencing agricultural outcomes in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
The results reflect a broader regional pattern:
Early warming followed by hard freezes disproportionately impacts tree fruits such as apples and cherries.
Extreme summer heat reduces yields of temperature-sensitive crops such as tomatoes and raspberries.
Root crops and legumes generally demonstrate greater resilience to short-term temperature extremes.
Microclimate advantages can sometimes offset regional climate pressures, as demonstrated by the exceptional plum harvest.
Key Finding
The experiment suggests that Southeastern Pennsylvania’s increasing climate variability—particularly the combination of false springs, late freezes, and extreme summer heat—is creating clear winners and losers among common food crops. Delicate flowering fruit trees experienced the greatest losses, while more resilient crops maintained average production levels despite challenging conditions.
Climate change is often discussed as a problem of emissions, but emissions are the result of two interconnected forces: consumption and production.
Q: What are the greatest drivers of climate change? A: Consumption and production.
At present, I would rank our addiction to consumption and ecofascism as the two most significant drivers of the climate crisis. While they operate in different ways, both reinforce the systems that accelerate environmental degradation.
The Consumption Problem
The United States, Western Europe, Canada, and Australia represent some of the world’s most consumption-driven economies. When self-interest, materialism, and short-term economic incentives dominate decision-making, consumer demand becomes one of the primary drivers of climate change, influencing not only greenhouse gas emissions but also land-use change, deforestation, habitat destruction, water consumption, resource depletion, and biodiversity loss.
This is why consumption-based accounting provides a more accurate picture of climate responsibility than production-based accounting alone.
For example, if a smartphone is manufactured in Asia using coal-generated electricity and then shipped across the Pacific to a consumer in Los Angeles, the emissions from mining, manufacturing, transportation, and delivery are ultimately driven by the purchasing decision. Under consumption-based accounting, those emissions are attributed to the American consumer rather than solely to the country where the phone was manufactured.
Read the full explanation and view the rankings here:
The production side of the equation is likewise influenced by self-interest and economic incentives, but it is also shaped by ideological movements that obstruct effective climate action.
Two distinct, though sometimes overlapping, ideologies are particularly important:
Denialism is characterized by the rejection of scientific evidence, refusal to engage with empirical data, and reliance on misinformation or rhetorical distraction. Its primary objective is often the protection of political, ideological, or economic interests by undermining the scientific consensus.
Ecofascism combines elements of denialism with authoritarian, exclusionary, or extremist beliefs. In its most extreme forms, it portrays environmental collapse as acceptable—or even desirable—because it is viewed as reducing populations or preserving resources for groups considered more deserving than others. This ideology has historically been associated with racist, xenophobic, or eugenicist beliefs and rejects principles of equality and shared human responsibility.
The distinction is important. Traditional denialism primarily seeks to delay or prevent climate policy. Ecofascism goes further by framing unequal human survival as an acceptable or even desirable outcome — eliminationist logic.
Why This Matters
Climate change is not simply a technological or economic challenge. It is also a question of values.
On one side, excessive consumption drives demand for fossil fuels, resource extraction, and emissions. On the other, ideologies that reject science or rationalize unequal human suffering weaken society’s ability to respond effectively to the crisis.
Both sides must be addressed if meaningful progress is to be made.
Further Reading
While investigating climate change denialism, I examined material that I believe illustrates the intersection between denialist narratives and extremist environmental ideologies. A summary of that research is available here:
