{"id":601,"date":"2026-06-16T15:36:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T15:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=601"},"modified":"2026-06-16T15:36:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T15:36:49","slug":"heres-what-americans-really-blame-for-causing-energy-price-hikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=601","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s What Americans Really Blame for Causing Energy Price Hikes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This story was originally published by\u00a0<\/em>Grist\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>

Read more She Froze After Being Released by ICE. The Medical Examiner Ruled It a Homicide.<\/a><\/p>\n

For decades, <\/span>American politicians have been slow to take on climate change and curb carbon dioxide emissions, under the assumption that doing so might pass along costs to their voters. Ironically, their failure to rein in fossil fuel emissions has yielded the same result: Expenses for everyday Americans have soared as a result of more extreme flooding, fires, and heat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s striking is that already, households are bearing serious costs,\u201d said Kimberly Clausing, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She co-authored\u00a0\u00a0from earlier this year finding that families were paying between $400 and $900 more each year because of the effects of climate change, with the costs above $1,300 in the 10 percent hardest-hit counties, many of them found in Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, Colorado, and California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that the annual inflation rate reached 4.2 percent in May, the highest rate in three years. Though the war in Iran is mostly responsible for this recent increase, a surprising number of Americans are attributing the general economic pinch they\u2019re feeling to the changing climate. Two-thirds of US voters agree that global warming is affecting the cost of living to some degree, according to\u00a0new survey data\u00a0from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, including most Democrats and moderate Republicans. Of those two-thirds, a majority of them said that climate change was driving up what they pay for groceries, utility bills, and home insurance.<\/p>\n

Rising energy prices were at the top of people\u2019s lists, a concern that some climate advocates are tapping into ahead of the midterm elections this November. On Monday, the LCV Victory Fund, a political action committee,\u00a0announced\u00a0that it will target \u201cenergy bill voters\u201d with messages about how clean, affordable energy can trim their monthly expenses, and how Republicans have held back renewable power. That follows successes for Democrats in the off-year elections in 2025, where\u00a0energy prices played a role\u00a0in state races in Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia.<\/p>\n

There are\u00a0many factors pushing up electricity prices, but in some parts of the country, the effort to revamp the electric grid to handle more extreme weather is the primary reason. In California, utilities are upgrading their infrastructure to reduce wildfire risk; in the Southeast, they are rebuilding after hurricanes and flooding and billing their customers for it. In Arizona, residents are cranking up the air conditioning during scorching heat and paying more for power simply because they\u2019re using more AC.<\/p>\n

Even Republican-leaning voters\u201442 percent of conservative Republicans, and 57 percent of moderate ones\u2014are linking their rising costs to global warming, according to the Yale survey. \u201cIt makes perfect sense that they would do so, given the results from our study, which show that the geographically rural areas are actually facing some of the highest costs,\u201d Clausing said. From wildfires to hurricanes, rural areas are often facing the brunt of the damage. Her study found that the largest household costs occurred in parts of the West, the Gulf Coast, and Florida.<\/p>

Read more No Sanctuary: Inside Ron DeSantis\u2019s War on Cities That Won\u2019t Help ICE<\/a><\/p>\n

Utility bills, despite being a top political issue, are actually one of the smaller price-point impacts of climate change, according to Clausing\u2019s research: Households are spending an\u00a0average of about $35 more on electricity\u00a0per year, compared with an extra $356 on homeowners\u2019 insurance premiums, the highest cost. Clausing, who owns a house in Portland, Oregon, said the insurance premium on her home skyrocketed from around $1,000 five years ago to about $2,200 today\u2014an increase that her insurance company said was to help recoup the costs of wildfire damage in Oregon.<\/p>\n

Another major category of costs in Clausing\u2019s study was the health effects of climate change. As wildfire smoke grows more common, exposing people to harmful particulate matter, it\u2019s leading to early deaths. The estimated economic damage of these premature deaths works out to $103 for every household in the United States each year. That\u2019s not to mention the other ways climate change damages the public\u2019s health, from lengthening allergy seasons to expanding the geographic spread of infectious diseases as temperatures warm, allowing ticks and mosquitoes to explore new territories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it seems like many Americans haven\u2019t made the connection: Only 35 percent of those in the Yale survey who agreed that climate change was driving up prices saw a link to higher health care costs. That\u2019s because these health risks haven\u2019t been adequately communicated to the public, said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. \u201cHealth is one of the most powerful ways we have of saying, \u2018Actually, this affects our lives right here, right now. It\u2019s already affecting the people and places and things that we love,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Though most of the respondents thought climate change made groceries more expensive, it\u2019s hard to measure the effect of extreme weather on food costs, according to Catherine Wolfram, a co-author of the study and a professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. That\u2019s mainly because the United States\u2019 food supply comes from all over the world, mitigating the impact of, say, a drought in Brazil or a heat wave in the Great Plains. Still, other research has found that hot summers can lead to higher\u00a0food prices, with\u00a0more increases projected\u00a0as the world warms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the effects of global warming grow more extreme, it\u2019s becoming clear that they\u2019re posing a problem for the budgets of lower-income Americans. Clausing is studying ways to design policies that tackle climate change without burdening poor families, through rebates or other mechanisms that can offset costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad people are connecting the dots,\u201d Clausing said. \u201cI think, at the moment, if you pursue better climate policy, the benefits to households, for the country as a whole, would exceed the costs.\u201d<\/p>

Read more ICE Took Mom and Dad. Now the Perez Kids Are Home Alone.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans across political parties agree that global warming is raising the cost of living, a new survey shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nHere\u2019s What Americans Really Blame for Causing Energy Price Hikes - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=601\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Here\u2019s What Americans Really Blame for Causing Energy Price Hikes - Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Americans across political parties agree that global warming is raising the cost of living, a new survey shows.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=601\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-16T15:36:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9742fa8c67c9b21767bff2242649cece-1024x575.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"575\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=601#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=601\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/6b7c79bcfd888d98f34c5413df7e81a2\"},\"headline\":\"Here\u2019s What Americans Really Blame for Causing Energy Price Hikes\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-16T15:36:49+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=601\"},\"wordCount\":1040,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=601#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/1f241e1f21122fad9d0b7dcec91bd3ab.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=601#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=601\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=601\",\"name\":\"Here\u2019s What Americans Really Blame for Causing Energy Price Hikes - 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