Extreme weather, droughts, floods, and heat waves reduce crop outputs leading to higher prices

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA CONTACT: Stefanie Spear, sspear@asyousow.org, 216-387-1609

BERKELEY, CA—SEPT. 28, 2022—As You Sow today launched the Climate Inflation initiative, an educational initiative to help people understand how climate change is negatively impacting our lives, including driving up supply chain costs.

This full-page ad in the Financial Times, which calls attention to the underlying causes of inflation at the grocery store, kicked off the initiative.

“This is literally a bread and butter issue,” said As You Sow CEO Andrew Behar. “People are already suffering from extreme weather events including climate change-induced mega-droughts, heat waves, and historic flooding. The coverage of these events has focused on the cost of lives and property damage; what hasn’t been discussed in mainstream media is the impact of these events on agriculture and how it reduces supply driving up grocery bills for all Americans. We call this phenomena climate inflation.” 

Climate change-induced droughts, floods, heat waves, and wildfires have damaged crops worldwide, impacting supply and driving up costs for raw commodities like rice, olive oil, cotton, almonds, wheat, dairy, coffee, and many other food staples. By exacerbating severe weather patterns, climate change has created new and unpredictable new costs for the agriculture sector, which ultimately get passed down to consumers.

“You can track high prices directly to climate change,” added Behar. “Literally your milk, coffee, wine, socks, shoes, and shirts are all more expensive because of climate-induced drought that reduces the yields of wheat; heat waves shifting the growing regions for coffee, and cotton fields destroyed by floods. Reduced supply means higher prices. Climate is costing you and your family more and more every day.”

As You Sow’s Climate Inflation initiative comes amid the latest disinformation campaign from regressive investors looking to erase gains made by many public corporations in the fight against climate change. While these anti-ESG pundits ignore and actively distort the impacts of climate change on the global economy, Americans suffer with 13.5% inflation on groceries. 

A social media campaign using #ClimateInflation highlights the impacts of climate on producers of raw commodities, and how these significant changes to climate patterns directly result in higher prices at the checkout stand. 

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As You Sow is the nation’s leading shareholder advocacy nonprofit, with a 30-year track record promoting environmental and social corporate responsibility and advancing values-aligned investing. Its issue areas include climate change, ocean plastics, pesticides, racial justice, workplace diversity, and executive compensation. Click here for As You Sow’s shareholder resolution tracker.