As the US midterm elections approach, one word keeps coming up in campaign promises and headlines: “affordability.” That working people in the United States are struggling to afford basic necessities is a problem that many are willing to acknowledge, but there is very little agreement on what should be done to tackle a core driver of the affordability crisis: climate change.

The climate crisis is already making life more expensive. Electricity rates skyrocketed in 2025 due to historic heat waves; home insurance rates are rising as disasters and extreme weather patterns increase; transportation costs have become one of the biggest sources of financial burden because of the volatile price of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has withdrawn from global climate commitments, leaped into costly oil wars abroad, backed the deeply unpopular expansion of AI build-out across the country, and continuously decried renewable energy as a “green new scam.”

Failing to act on climate change while entrenching fossil fuel dependency deepens the affordability crisis, inflating the cost of living for working people as the economy buckles under the weight of various forms of environmental instability. And it also threatens the planet in both the environmental and political senses.