New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that climate change has already reduced US income by about 12%, suggesting the economic effects are not just a future problem. The study’s author argues that treating climate change as a persistent, nationwide force—rather than only local, short-term weather variation—reveals substantially larger economic consequences that ripple through prices and trade across regions. Alongside the national estimate, discussion around the findings highlights that climate-driven costs can fall hardest on people with the least financial cushion, sharpening cost-of-living pressures.

Highlights:

• Model comparison: The researcher says earlier approaches that focused mainly on short-term, local weather changes implied an income hit of less than 1%, but adding persistence, nationwide reach, and inter-regional economic links produced a much larger estimate.
• County-level inputs: The analysis combines county daily temperature records with county personal income per capita data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to connect climate conditions to economic outcomes at fine geographic scale.
• Two-world approach: To isolate the role of human-caused emissions, the study uses climate-model simulations of a world with emissions versus a counterfactual world without them to estimate how each county’s weather would have differed.
• Distributional worries: A related discussion emphasizes that warming can worsen affordability challenges and disproportionately strain lower-income households, who often have fewer resources to absorb rising costs.

If we can’t figure out what climate change is already costing us with the data we have, projecting the future becomes almost hopeless. - Derek Lemoine

Perspectives:

• Study author (Derek Lemoine, University of Arizona): He argues that measuring present-day economic costs is crucial for policymaking and business investment, and that national, persistent warming effects and cross-region linkages can drive much larger losses than short-term local-weather analyses suggest. (Futurity)
• Public commenters sharing related coverage: They frame the economic burden as uneven, saying climate-related costs can intensify cost-of-living pressures for people with the least financial flexibility. (Reddit)

Sources:

• Climate change has already taken a toll on Americans’ income - futurity.org
• ‘The Poor Are in a Very Bad State’: Climate Change Accelerates California’s Cost-of-Living Crisis | In ways subtle and extreme, the warming climate is hitting those with the least the hardest. - reddit.com