Climate Change Is Already Showing Up in the Cost of Living

Climate change is starting to have a visible impact on prices, researchers said. Extreme weather such as droughts and floods have always affected costs, and since global warming is expected to increase their frequency, modeling suggests that it will lead to price rises. But teasing out its impacts is difficult: A rare exception was the 2022 European heat waves which economists estimated drove the continent’s food prices up 0.7%. But “climateflation” is increasingly detectable. As temperatures rise above certain thresholds, crop yields fall: Each 1°C (1.8°F) increase is associated with a roughly 1% increase in inflation, one researcher told Bloomberg. Extreme weather’s inflationary effects are felt for about two years.