Consumer pocketbooks are taking the heat. Climate change is no longer a theoretical issue that will happen at some distant point in the future, like 2050 or 2100. Already, unprecedented climate change is happening on a regular basis and clobbering the American capitalistic system via consumer pocketbooks. People can’t afford ordinary life. They’re priced out of the market. Everything is getting more expensive by the year, every year.
“We’re no longer in a world where climate change affects the economy, or where voters prioritizing economic or inflationary concerns are responding to something distinct from climate change—we’re in a world where climate change is the economy.”(Source: Everything’s About to Get a Hell of a Lot More Expensive Due to Climate Change, Wired, June 22, 2024)…
This is the stupidest thing about climate change denial: most of it is motivated by the notion that ignoring the problem/continuing to exploit fossil fuels is cheaper/more profitable, but it really isn’t. Certainly not in the long term, and as we’re beginning to see, not really even in the short to medium term, either!
The only reason it keeps happening is that oligarchs have managed to set up the system such that it externalizes their costs, so they personally get more profit even as the total profit is lowered compared to what it could have been.