What can you do about climate change? This is an oft-asked question from the vast majority of American citizens increasingly concerned about the consequences of climate change. The transition away from a fossil fuel-based energy system to a clean energy system is the most fundamental and effective action we can pursue nationally and internationally.
The Steep Climes Quartet holds this question central.
The answer to the above question is this: We can accept the costs of dealing with climate change and get to work!
Perhaps the biggest challenge ahead for us is to understand the real-world concerns we should focus on, which is the costs of climate change to our own households.
The single most consequential action is voting, of course. Changes that are at big enough scale to push against climate change are typically acts of legislation, so make sure to vote—local, state, and national—for climate progress candidates. This is a valid single-issue, considering the stakes.
But another action each of us financially fortunate enough can do is to accept the higher household costs it takes to combat climate change. Of course, with the economic trends of the last four decades, there are many who don’t have sufficient financial resources to carry the growing costs of combatting climate change, despite programs designed to help out. The transition to clean energy involves not just building out renewable energy generation and battery storage, but overhauling the transmission of the energy produced and reducing the amount of energy needed for every possible system, including building out solutions for heating and cooling and transportation. The good news is that electricity is a highly efficient power source, unlike fossil fuels that waste intrinsic energy all along the path from production to consumption, and mainly in the form of waste heat. The bad news is that transitioning our energy systems involves international agreements, national policies, and national, regional, and state regulatory bodies and public utilities, and many other participants that are part of the current (i.e., fossil fuel-based) world-wide power generation and distribution systems. It isn’t that “you can’t get there from here,” but the transition to renewable energy is a complex, long, and difficult process. Solar energy, many say, is free energy, but it is likely that much time and effort must occur before such benefits arrive, and that there are entrenched business interests, from fossil fuel corporations and billionaires to the many key companies and utilities directly responsible for our current energy systems, means that the effort and time required for the energy transition will be much harder and longer.
And, of course, the progressive income tax rates could be raised at the higher end of income, just like they were during the periods of 1945-1963, when the top rate 91%, not the 37% maximum since 2018. We are in a war with climate change, after all.
But here’s a key reality to keep in mind: Doing nothing about reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions is the vastly more expensive choice of all.
Without doubt, household costs will increase as we take on the challenge of fighting climate change. There are several categories of such costs, including “electrify everything,” “efficiency improvements,” “cost increases resulting climate change effects,” and the “attitudes and attention” cost required by all of us.
Electrify everything:
- Change less efficient GHG producing home heating and cooling appliances to heat pumps.
- Change other household appliances such as stoves to induction stoves, hot water heaters to heat pump high-efficiency water heaters.
- Switch from internal combustion engine cars to EVs.
Make your home and business place more energy efficient:
- Do an energy audit on your home and/or business property.
- Undertake energy efficiency improvements such as adding insulation, improving air sealing, replacing old windows and doors.
- Adjust thermostats lower in cold times and higher in hot times, dressing appropriately for re-set temperatures.
Understand that household costs are rising:
- Climate change is having economic consequences in the form of rising household costs, including food and energy (utilities) prices, as well as increasing costs for insurance, and labor costs—and especially in the construction segment—will inevitably rise as extreme heatwaves, deluges, and fire events reduce opportunities to work outside safely.
- It can be expected that taxes at local, state, and federal levels of government will increase as all levels of government will see increased need to maintain and/or repair infrastructure stressed by extreme weather events, as well as fund resiliency projects to deal with more and more damaging extreme weather events.
- The health system is likely to experience higher levels of crisis, including extreme weather-related illnesses and injuries, and as new disease vectors—Zika, West Nile, malaria, dengue, and other insect borne illnesses—become more common in the northern hemisphere.
Attitude and Attention:
- Even today, most Americans experience climate change problems through the news, but as climate change directly affects us more and more, our real-world perceptions will change, with more of our attention being taken up with consequences that disturb our daily experience.
- Our attitudes about climate change will be increasingly dictated by our direct experiences of climate change and adjusting our expectations to be in line with actual experiences, including better understanding and budgeting for rising costs.
- Do what you can if you are among the fortunate Americans in the top 30th percentile of income (2022, via IRS), because you belong to a group with the minimum income of $90,000 that may allow you to pursue various electrification and energy efficiency efforts, but half of your fellow citizens have at best $50,000 and at worse no income.
Climate Change Work and American Economic Households
Keep in mind how economically stressed Americans can be, and in 2022, for example, while the top 0.001% had a minimum income of over $85 million, the 50th percentile had a medium income of just over $50,000.
The fact is that the majority of Americans are poor, or at least poor enough to not have the resources to take advantage of the many impressive incentives to electrify home appliances and vehicles. If your income is $50,000, you’ll likely find it a challenge to spend money on electrifying your household, even with the incentive programs of Inflation Reduction Act and other government tax credit and grant programs. While changing out your heating system for a heat pump (or two) is not that expensive, and there are federal and (sometimes) state programs that help offset such costs and low-interest loans to support the financing of such costs, half of Americans will be hard-pressed to afford to pay for it or reluctant to add to further debt while there are mortgages, student loans, car payments, and credit card balances demanding attention, never mind rent, groceries, child care, and health insurance. In areas with expensive living costs, even households in the top 10th percentile of minimum incomes of $179,000 may find themselves hard-pressed.
Minimum income by percentile IRS
These economic realities need to become part of the climate change discussion right along with the individual household’s additional costs toward electrification and efficiency. The programs funded by IRA and various states could help eliminate a sizable portion of greenhouse gases emissions from the built environment and transportation segments, but it remains to be seen just how many households might act on these programs. There are, of course, other programs in the states that are cost-free for those who means test into them. In Massachusetts, for instance, Mass Save is a home efficiency effort to insulate and tighten existing houses, as well as provide certified contractors for things like heat pump and electrical service upgrades, too, sometimes at no cost to the homeowner. No cost, except that the funds for such efforts comes from an add on charge of (typically) several dollars to monthly utilities bills, which means you might be paying in $30-$100 or more each and every year, but if you avail yourself of Mass Save services, it is a great deal.
Unfortunately, getting to these various services and programs remains clumsy and too often requires households to figure things out. Rewiring America is one effort that aims to address supporting households and contractors and connections to electrification programs from the federal and state governments but judging from a quick review of the site today, Rewiring is still only half-cooked. For example, none of the many Massachusetts energy efficiency and transition consumer grants and rebates programs remain missing from the Rewiring America tools, and while this will likely be addressed as time goes on, it remains strange that Massachusetts’ programs remain absent, especially considering that ACEEE puts Massachusetts in the number two position for such programs second only to California.
I think it is fair to say that IRA-based and state-based electrification programs have been rolling out more slowly than one might hope, especially given the “existential crisis” rhetoric in the climate change world (and rightly so characterized). If leaders in the world of climate change work can’t shake a leg rolling out actual programs, just how serious, one might ask, is the problem?
This is not a question we want asked, because this is not a great message. Massachusetts, which, as mentioned earlier, is considered one of the top states for climate change programs, took some time to start rolling out IRA-sourced funds—funds that are significant in size, after all. My review of Mass.gov over a year after IRA had been passed in Congress and signed into law revealed few signs of the potential IRA largess for Massachusetts being put into practice, and the only evidence was some proposed bills in committee, and that evidence was scant. Add another year and Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, the main department within the state’s structure to administer IRA-sourced funding, has active programs, but much remains in development.
Hello? There is a climate crisis underway, and there is a hell of a lot of resistance from entrenched business interests, so dilly-dallying with programs to release available funds, huge sums, to move closer to electrification is embarrassing. Yes, the movement of government is slow, but, hey, there is an existential crisis underway, so, well, chop-chop, everyone. Even if only relatively well-off households can afford the programs, let them get to it, for goodness sake.
Rewiring America, I’m looking at you.