Combatting Climate Change

The failure to address climate change, both in the United States and worldwide, is the most significant public policy dereliction in our lifetime. We are now reaping the consequences of decades of denial, corporate greed and pushback, concerted efforts to distort and malign scientific analyses, inaction, domestic and international squabbling, and failure of policymakers to heed the decades-long dire predictions of climate science. In America, climate change has even become a part of the grinding culture war. For a time, the US and other nations were trying to make up for lost time, most recently with the COP (Conference of Parties) 28 conference held in Dubai in late 2023, but facing many technical, cultural, political, and diplomatic challenges. America’s tentative leadership in global climate mitigation came to a crashing halt with Donald Trump’s second term as president. Trump immediately rejected membership in the Paris Climate Accord, cancelled Biden’s International Climate Finance Plan, and again permitted extensive oil drilling in Alaska.

International Leadership on the Environment: Sinking Fast

With the Republican Party recapturing the White House and Congress in 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation already had the answer to America’s climate problems. It was a “battle plan” for the first 180 days of a Republican in the White House. Called Project 2025, it would lead to “dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels,” reported journalist Lisa Friedman. Project 2025 calls for “shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels.” The nearly 1,000-page plan was created by the Heritage Foundation, working closely with at least a dozen conservative and climate-denying think thanks and advocacy groups like the Heartland Institute or the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The plan called for the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act with its landmark climate change programs. “This agenda would be laughable if the consequences of it weren’t so dire,” said Christy Goldfuss, chief policy impact officer for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The actions by the Trump administration and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, listed below, demonstrate conclusively that the United States abandoned any pretense of international leadership on the environment and especially climate change.

Source: Lisa Friedman, “A Republican 2024 Climate Strategy: More Drilling, Less Clean Energy,” New York Times, August 4, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/climate/republicans-climate-project2025.html.

Updates on Trump Climate Change and Environmental Action

👎 Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord (January 2025)

Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements.” This E.O. withdraws the US from the Paris Climate Accord. Trump, in his first term, had withdrawn the US from the Paris Accord, the Biden returned the US to membership in the Accord. The Trump E.O. also cancelled the Biden administration’s International Climate Finance Plan.

👎 “Drill, Baby, Drill.” (January 20, 2025)

Trump signed an Executive Order “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” Part of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” campaign. The E.O. prioritized Alaska’s natural gas reserves for export as Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and rolls back restrictions on drilling, mining, and road building in Alaska that were implemented by the Biden administration.

👎 Opening up Alaska lands for oil drilling (March 20, 2025)

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that 82 percent of the 23 million acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska will be opened up for oil and gas leases; a new pipeline will be permitted to cross the state. This overturns the Biden administration protections finalized in 2023. Further, the Trump administration will permit drilling in the 1.56 million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

👎 EPA administrator Lee Zeldin: “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion” (March 21, 2025)

Press release from the EPA: “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will undertake 31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history, to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and Power the Great American Comeback. Combined, these announcements represent the most momentous day in the history of the EPA. While accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment, the agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions.”  

“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” said EPA Administrator Zeldin. 

👎 EPA plans to stop collecting greenhouse gas emissions data from most polluters.

Roughly 8,000 oil refineries, coal mines, power plants, and those plants dealing with petrochemicals, iron and steel, glass, and cement would no longer have to report their emissions of heat-trapping gases. Under the new EPA rule, reporting requirements would apply to only 2,300 facilities in the oil and gas industry. “How in the world can we possibly manage this incredible threat to America’s well-being and humanity’s well-being if we’re not actually monitoring what we’re doing to exacerbate the problem,” asked professor Edward Maibach of George Mason University.

Shannon Lerner, “Trump’s EPA Plans to Stop collecting Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data From Most Polluters,” ProPublica, April 10, 2025, https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-epa-greenhouse-gas-reporting-climate-crisis.

👎 Hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s major report on the impact of global warming were dismissed. The National Climate Assessment, as the report is known, is required by Congress, but now, with the termination of all scientists involved, future reports, required every four years, are in serious jeopardy.