Writer: Richard Li
Editor: David Han
Once again, the tides have undeniably turned against climate change action. Take, for example, the dissolution of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, the rise of private-sector “greenhushing,” the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, or Canada’s repeal of the consumer carbon tax. While some point fingers at President Trump and the role of conservative legislators in the undoing of pro-climate institutions and initiatives, Stanford University-led research cites a “global movement opposing climate policies,” that has emerged since the past three decades in response to pro-environmental government policies. This focus on “reactionary cultural dynamics” differs from arguments concerning think tanks and corporate actors from the fossil fuel industry that support a “counter climate change” movement aiming to infiltrate public opinion.
The Paris Agreement, often revered as the pinnacle of international climate cooperation, focuses on the “ends” rather than the “means.” In other words, it states the desired outcome of reducing global warming to 2ºC (preferably 1.5ºC) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, while leaving it up to governments to set their “nationally determined contributions.” The lack of a standardized means to achieve this goal exemplifies the weak agreements some view as a consequence of consensus diplomacy.
This lack of guidance, though understandable, is problematic in two clear ways. First, with few apples-to-apples comparisons between countries’ efforts, it is difficult to hold parties accountable. For example, countries have used different baseline years and attached custom conditions, such as “excluding international aviation,” to their targets. Second, public perception fixates on highly abstracted golden numbers, namely “1.5” and “2.0” degrees Celsius. A perfectly reasonable question, like “Where does this come from?”, leads to a trove of articles designed for the lay audience that, while accessible, are unconvincing. They contain appeals to authority, including mentions of how Greta Thunberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres have advocated for the 1.5ºC target. They leave the justification of 1.5ºC to phrases like “climate scientists agree,” framing the target as scientific dogma and relying on the reader’s faith in a distant authority. In particular, more in-depth explainers disclose the continuous nature of climate targets: the idea that, similar to the rationales for speed limits or COVID-19’s six-feet apart rule, “keeping at 1.4 is better than 1.5, and 1.3 is better than 1.4, and so on.” Other valuable categories of articles and reports reveal more specific real-world consequences, such as that “2ºC of warming equates to the loss of 99% of coral reefs down the line,” or that meeting 1.5ºC could “halve the sea level rise from melting land ice” by 2100.
However, this information is not reaching its target audience. Instead, people hear about the $1.4 trillion of economic damage caused by natural disasters in 2024, or other numbers too large to trigger emotional reactions. This apathy is compounded by the abstract nature of climate targets in general. A global increase of 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius sounds negligible compared to the double-digit temperature swings within a single afternoon. Because these figures don’t elicit a sense of urgency, combined with the most severe consequences of climate inaction appearing distant, standard scientific messaging typically emphasizes these higher-magnitude, long-term threats and neglects the opportunity to communicate tangible, short-term harms.
Graphic By: Juwariyah Qazi
In a recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers Kimberly Clausing, Christopher Knittel, and Catherine Wolfram aimed to subvert these norms of climate communication by focusing on immediate household-level impacts. Their research reveals that American households are already paying an annual expense of $400 to $900 for climate change, , not driven by average temperatures creeping up, but by extreme weather events inflating insurance premiums, medical bills, and taxpayer-funded disaster repair.
Furthermore, these costs are regressive, as insurance and medical costs make up a larger proportion of lower-income household expenses. This burden is largest in disaster-prone regions, where annual costs can exceed $1,300 per household—not even accounting for the mounting cases of insurance non-renewals and underinsurance. While the authors acknowledge that “the chief concerns about climate change lie in the future,” their findings demonstrate that inaction already forms a major economic grievance, albeit perhaps a less visible one.
Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication published that 87% of Americans don’t deny that global warming is happening. That being said, only 44% of Americans believe people in the U.S. are being harmed “right now” by global warming. This lack of urgency makes it convenient to pit personal financial hardship against a costly and seemingly altruistic endeavor like the carbon tax.
For instance, in 2024, 47% of Canadians surveyed agreed that the price on pollution was a big reason why costs had risen so much. Without studies such as Clausing and colleagues’, household-level costs are difficult to attribute to climate change. With its focus on existing household-level costs, the tangible numbers produced by this study may be a powerful antidote to climate apathy. Rather than hammering the gargantuan and distant future costs of climate change, a more effective method of swaying public opinion could be to demonstrate how it is already draining household finances, reframing climate action from an issue of altruism into one of personal economic importance.
