For years, climate action has been presented as the story of sacrifice: less comfort, less choice, higher costs, more rules, a smaller life justified by a safer planet. That story was never capable of carrying a movement. More importantly, it is not an honest description of the world as it is. Because for the vast majority of us, business as usual is now the real sacrifice.

Families are already sacrificing income to food and energy volatility; citizens are sacrificing health to polluted air and extreme heat; communities are sacrificing resilience as the soils, rivers, forests, and coastlines that they depend on are degraded; and countries are sacrificing freedom and strategic autonomy to dependence on imported fuels.

Fossil fuels have tied us to volatile global markets and unstable suppliers for decades. Europe was reminded just how costly that exposure could be after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: between 2021 and 2024 fossil fuel imports cost the EU about €1.8 trillion, roughly €930 billion more than they would have cost before energy prices spiked. Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz has since delivered the same lesson yet again.

These additional costs, borne by households and businesses, do not build stronger communities, warmer homes, cleaner industry, or greater resilience. They do not train workers, modernise grids, or lower bills for the future. They buy, at best, the same vulnerability at a higher price.

This is the false economy of business as usual: paying ever more for destructive systems when cleaner, safer technologies can already deliver the same services at lower cost.

IRENA data for 2025 show that more than 90% of newly commissioned utility-scale renewable capacity delivered power more cheaply than the lowest-cost new fossil-fuel alternative. New gas plants, by contrast, became more expensive: turbine shortages roughly doubled US capital costs for new combined-cycle plants, while gas-fired generation in higher-cost markets such as Italy, Germany, and Japan moved towards $100/MWh – more than twice the global average cost of new solar and around three times that of new onshore wind. For new power generation, this is no longer a bet on the future. In most markets, it is the cheaper option available today.

This is showing up in household energy bills, not just utility spreadsheets. A May 2026 analysis by Danish climate think tank CONCITO found that the average EU household could save more than €2,200 a year in energy costs by switching from a fossil-fuel boiler and combustion-engine car to a heat pump and an EV.

That does not mean every household can make the switch easily: upfront costs, access to finance, housing stock, charging infrastructure and electricity tariffs still matter. But the barrier is increasingly access to the cheaper path, not proof that a cheaper path exists.

Food tells the same story. In the five years to May 2026, BLS-tracked average retail prices for ground roast coffee rose by about 108%, while regular ground beef rose by about 64%. The causes are not identical, but the pattern is hard to miss: climate stress is moving through the food system.

Drought and extreme heat have damaged coffee harvests; drought has helped shrink cattle herds, raise feed pressures and tighten beef supplies. Yes, shipping costs, demand, and trade disruptions have added to the squeeze, but the mix of causes should not obscure the broader patten: climate risk is becoming an input cost. What once looked like an occasional shock is becoming a recurring pressure on the price of food itself.

Researchers from the Potsdam Institute and the European Central Bank project that rising temperatures will add materially to food inflation by 2035. A UK analysis projects that heatwaves alone could add 11% to the price of the country’s top twenty fruit and vegetables by 2035, and 68% by 2050. By mid-century, climate-related factors could account for more than 60% of total price increases across that fresh-produce basket. This is not the cost of transition, it is the cost of delay.

Continuing to exhaust soils, water, and biodiversity will not keep food cheap. It will make harvests less reliable and price shocks more frequent. More regenerative and resilient food systems mean healthier soils, stronger harvests, less exposure to drought and input shocks, and a better chance of keeping nutritious food affordable in a hotter, less predictable world.

The same is true across the economy: the old systems are not cheap once the damage is counted, and the transition looks far less costly once resilience is valued properly.

This is the reality too many leaders have failed to name. Climate and ecological breakdown are no longer distant risks, but pressures people already recognise in their homes, workplaces, communities and weekly budgets. But, because those pressures are rarely connected to their causes, climate action is still often heard as yet another sacrifice imposed on people who are already stretched. The task of leadership is to make the connection clear: the transition, done well, is not an added burden. It is how we stop these costs and insecurities from spiralling year after year.

When climate action is explained in those terms, it cuts through. Recent research commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Potential Energy Coalition, based on more than 83,000 adults across the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy, found that messages focused on less pollution, better health, affordability, energy security, and protecting future generations increased support for action by more than 10 percentage points. Interestingly, “net zero” was the least popular term tested.

This should not surprise us. Most people do not organise their lives around atmospheric chemistry or energy system transitions. They organise their lives around their children, their homes, their work, their health, and their hope that tomorrow will be more secure than today.

Of course, language alone will not lower bills or global temperatures. Leaders still have to deliver. But delivery starts with telling the truth plainly.

So, let’s retire the language of giving up, and speak in terms that people recognise: less sacrifice, more freedom; less dependence, more security; less delay, more leadership. Not a retreat from the modern economy, but a route to a cheaper, safer, more secure one.

Start there, and the transition stops looking like sacrifice, and starts looking like common sense.

Paul Polman