“I cannot talk about climate change. Right now, all my constituents want to hear about are kitchen table issues.”
That’s a recap of a conversation between a friend and one of her elected officials from earlier this year. My heart sank to hear about it, mostly because it’s screamingly clear that climate change is hitting us all in the pocketbook–the very definition of kitchen table issues that reach painfully close to home.
Apparently, winning political leaders agree. Key races this month in New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia demonstrated that energy affordability was on the ballot.
Democratic candidates “who presented a vision of climate policy promising to make energy more affordable to ordinary Americans did spectacularly well,” observed the New Republic and others.
The Trump administration’s drastic cuts to renewable energy programs are also part of the surge in energy prices. Of course, Trump himself and a sagging economy helped bring about the blue winning streak, too.
But there’s even a thing called climateflation, a term coming out of Europe which refers to the rising cost of living caused by the climate crisis.
And that’s exactly what we need to talk about.
Far too many people still see climate change as a vague future threat instead of the existential crisis that’s killed millions. So, we’ve got to talk about this disaster in ways that make it more personal, immediate and tangible. We’ve got to communicate in ways that make climate change integral to every American’s kitchen table talk. This isn’t to say we should stop articulating the broad environmental and human-health impacts of climate change—along with solutions. But it’s time to find new ways to motivate change.
To wit, here are five Climate Change Kitchen Table Talking Points, economic and otherwise, with backup links. Please use and share.
- Climate change is spiking food prices
Historically extreme weather conditions, caused by climate change, are driving up the food prices worldwide and posing wider risks to society, namely political and economic upheaval. We should expect “persistently higher food prices under future temperature increases,” reports the widely quoted Spanish researcher Maximillion Kotz. Current examples range from your morning cup of joe to the dinner plate:
- Heat, drought and extreme weather have hurt coffee production around the world in recent years, resulting in a 40% surge in prices worldwide.
- The price of vegetables rose by 80% in California and Arizona in November 2022, compared with the previous November, as the western US states suffered extreme heat and water shortages over the summer of 2022.
- Climate change is behind soaring energy bills
This is a complex issue with differences state to state, but California has seen some of the largest electricity rate increases in the country, in large part because our disastrous wildfires, worsened by climate change, have forced utilities to upgrade their aging electric grid infrastructure. Record heat and hotter days are making people to run their AC more often, too, forcing some to choose between power and necessities like food and medicine. “My May usage was up 10% from last year because of rising heat,” David Coleman, a Florida retiree told Food and Water Watch. “I pay that bill out of my United Healthcare healthy food benefit. Less for food; more for energy.”
- Climate change is causing homeowners insurance costs to skyrocket
A growing number of extreme weather events is dramatically driving up homeowner insurance costs, according to Harvard, noting that insurance prices rose by a staggering 74% from 2008 to 2024. Furthermore, like others, State Farm stopped offering new homeowners’ policies in California, again no thanks to our January wildfires. A congressional committee has termed the climate-driven home insurance crisis a “looming economic threat” with the potential to trigger a full-scale financial crisis similar to what occurred in 2008. Update, 11-20-2025. Just in from the New York Times: “high insurance costs are cascading into the broader real estate market, suppressing home values by an average of $44,000 in the top 10 percent of U.S. ZIP codes most vulnerable to hurricanes and wildfires.”
- Climate Change is raising our taxes, bigly
Through taxes, state, local and the federal government are recovering costs they’re bearing to clean up and help people recover from natural disasters worsened by climate change.
- Heat is disproportionately killing older adults
Heat, worsened by human-caused climate change, is the deadliest form of extreme weather. More than 80 percent of the estimated 12,000 people in the United States who die of heat-related causes annually are over age 60. As Earth gets hotter and human populations skew older, heat-related fatalities among older adults are expected to grow.
Painful as these points are to consider, we hope again you’ll use them in conversations about climate change. Adding positive notes and solutions is always good, too:
- Policy experts analyzing November’s elections say the democratic wins were not only a bellwether for the 2026 midterms, but a strong signal that Americans support the clean energy transition.
- There is still time to lessen the impacts and severity of climate change. We already know many of the problems and solutions, and researchers continue to find new ones. Experts believe we can avoid the worst outcomes by reducing emissions to zero as quickly as possible, which will limit warming.
By Third Act SoCal member Zan Dubin – you can subscribe to Zan’s substack here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-178551223