🧵 (1/7) With
@knittelmit.bsky.social and
@cwolfram.bsky.social, happy to announce our new paper on “Who Bears the Burden of Climate Inaction?”, just posted for BPEA
@brookings.edu.
We find large climate cost impacts that vary by both geography and income.
www.brookings.edu/articles/who... Sep 25, 2025 13:07(2/7) Guided by the literature, we examine several key vectors through which climate inaction affects households. Overall, household damages total nearly $600 by one estimate, and damages reach about $900 for ten percent of households.
(3/7) When it comes to climate change, “blue” counties and “red” counties suffer similarly, with slightly higher costs for Trump-voting counties in comparison to Harris-voting counties.
(4/7) In the United States, natural disasters are far more consequential than heat, for both costs and mortality risks. Increased particulate matter from smoke causes more deaths than heat (as cold deaths fall); home insurance price increases are more important than higher cooling costs.
(5/7) Further, climate policy *inaction* is regressive, harming poorer counties and households disproportionately. Poorer counties are more exposed to risks such as wildfire particulates, and the higher costs of home insurance and cooling are a larger share of income for poorer households.
(6/7) While costs are relatively modest so far, the costs of climate inaction are likely to rise steeply in the years ahead, illustrating the importance of climate action. Even focusing *solely* on US benefits, many climate policy interventions will have benefits that exceed their costs.
(7/7) For more on a comparison of relevant climate policy actions for the United States, see this recent work:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
ceepr.mit.edu/wp-content/u...