<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/26/us-voters-link-climate-crisis-affordability>
"Most Americans now connect the worsening climate crisis with their cost of
living pressures, with clear majorities also disagreeing with moves by the
Trump administration to gut climate research and halt windfarms, new polling
has found.
About 65% of registered voters in the US think that global heating is affecting
the cost of living, according to the polling by Yale University.
Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, storms and heatwaves,
exacerbated by the climate crisis, are taking a toll on food production, with
recent spikes in the cost of coffee and chocolate blamed by experts, at least
in part, on global heating.
Meanwhile, many Americans have faced rising home electricity costs and steep
increases in home insurance premiums, with both of these areas also influenced
by the climate crisis and the Trump administration’s decision to choke off
solar and wind power, often the cheapest source of energy.
There has also been a broad backlash in many communities against new
datacenters, which have been championed by the administration and the tech
industry for advancing artificial intelligence but attacked by critics for
causing planet-heating emissions and raising power bills.
Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change
Communication, said that despite focus on the climate crisis drifting away
among many politicians and activists, many Americans are grasping the
connection between rising temperatures and rising bills.
“I find it stunning that even some people in the climate community say that we
should stop talking about the climate because there’s a cost-of-living crisis
going on,” he said.
“It’s a fundamental error to treat these issues as mutually exclusive – climate
solutions are also cost-of-living solutions. Most of the elite discourse is
very bad at estimating or understanding levels of public concern, and this is a
good example of this.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
