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Trump 2.0 Is Killing Us With His Assault On Climate
7 hours ago
Carolyn Fortuna
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This week marks the one-year anniversary of President Donald J. Trump’s second term. The Trump administration has rejected emissions-cutting policies in favor of enhanced burning of fossil fuels, and this is an existential threat to human health and the continued vitality of our planet.
While the Trump legacy of authoritarianism will be symbolic of democracy’s fragility for decades to come, it’s also clear how devastating Trump 2.0 climate science denial is right now for people in the US and around the world. We must not succumb to his duplicity, bluster, and backhanded attempts to stall climate progress. We need to fight back with fury and engage in what Congressman John Lewis called “good trouble” to rebel against the Trump regime’s dire consequences for life on Earth.
The Climate Proof is in the Policy
Sabin Center’s Climate Backtracker, which identifies steps taken by the Trump–Vance administration to scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures, tallies nearly 300 Trump 2.0 actions to scale back or halt climate and clean energy progress. Trump 2.0 has reneged on federal subsidies that would have ushered much more wind and solar power onto the grid — and so much more. Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, argues that Trump’s intention to undermine clean energy is a direct threat to US well-being, economic success, and innovation.“This increasingly authoritarian regime has operated with impunity to tear up climate and clean energy policies, lie about the scientific realities of climate change and the facts on renewable energy, and ram through measures to boost fossil fuels and the profits of polluters. They have attacked the federal scientific enterprise built up over decades through taxpayer investments, fired or forced out agency experts, and cut funding for critical science.” As it pursues a fossil fuel agenda, this anti-science administration is backed by an obsequious, compliant Congress, Cleetus continues. Trump 2.0 has done all it can to decimate climate and clean energy, she continues, including:- dismantling agencies and organizations engaged in life-saving climate science research, data collection, and monitoring;
- clawing back renewable energy funding and attacking clean energy projects;
- gutting pollution standards and boosting fossil fuels;
- attacking FEMA’s disaster response capabilities and investments in climate resilience;
- taking down or altering climate-related websites and datasets;
- lying about the facts on climate science; and,
- withdrawing from international climate agreements and organizations.
A CNN poll released Friday shows that 58% of people in the US believe that Trump’s first year in office has been a failure. Robert Reich has called for US citizens loudly “demand that our members of Congress impeach and convict him of his high crimes.”
Looking Back on Biden’s Climate Progress
Trump 2.0 stands in direct contrast to former President Joe Biden’s tenure, the latter of which had set the US on a more robust climate course than any other US president. Biden had been preparing to finalize pollution standards on power plants and vehicles, energy standards on furnaces, management plans for old-growth forests, and more if he had been returned to the White House for four more years. Instead, the Trump administration is exacerbating climate change.
The Inflation Reduction Act has been oft described as the most consequential climate legislation in history. Yet every single Republican member of Congress opposed the legislation, and House Republicans voted 31 times to repeal climate provisions of the law. Now, instead of building a 100% clean energy economy, Trump 2.0 has sought to dismantle net zero greenhouse gas emissions goals that were set to kick in no later than mid-century. Those goals were meant to stabilize global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. Under Trump, the US has become the only nation to renege on a pledge to try to keep warming to 1.5 degrees.
Because US manufacturing needed to be competitive in the new global clean energy economy, the Biden administration set to building economic momentum for the transition to clean energy. The Biden administration’s investments in clean energy would have cut household energy costs by more than 10% over the next decade, with cost savings touching every region of the US. Pausing the approval of any new terminals for gas exports was one Biden policy designed to keep the natural gas industry from taking $11 billion to $18 billion in profits from higher consumer bills.
Instead, manufacturing investments to benefit the future through solar, wind, batteries, and other technologies have been bundled in the Trump 2.0 constant Orwellian diatribe of lies and false promises as an expensive climate “hoax” and “scam.” Nonetheless, a study about the relationship between climate change and poverty illustrates how unmitigated global heating is already expensive. Rising temperatures have been methodically reducing US consumers’ earning power for more than two decades. If our world was not experiencing global heating, incomes would be on average 12% higher today than they were at the start of the millennium.
In November 2023 Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for talks about meaningful climate action. Think of it: the most polluting country historically and the most polluting country at the time were agreeing to economy-wide emissions reductions, which was a critical step toward global success. Zeyi Yang and Louise Matsakis write in Wired this week, “At a moment when America’s infrastructure is crumbling and once-unthinkable forms of state violence are being normalized, China is starting to look pretty good in contrast.” Certainly, narratives about China’s massive clean energy investments need to make transparent “the uglier facets of its development,” Yang and Matsakis offer, but China’s embrace of clean energy is increasingly used as a contemporary counterbalance to “highlight America’s climate policy failures.”
Final Thoughts about Trump 2.0 and his Assault on Climate Stability
Dr. Carlos Martinez, a senior climate scientist with the UCS Climate and Energy program, offers this insight into the Trump treachery on climate.“The new data is the latest unequivocal evidence that our climate is in crisis. The actions of policymakers and the duplicitous fossil fuel industry are heating the planet, and people around the world are bearing the steep costs. The consequences are in full view: climate-driven weather disasters including catastrophic storms, floods, wildfires and extreme heatwaves are stealing lives and livelihoods and harming the economy.
“The Trump administration is not simply refusing to face the reality of climate change we are experiencing, it is actively lying about the science and undermining our nation’s federal scientific resources. It is acting like there’s no tomorrow by trying to force even more burning of coal, oil and gas, which will cost lives and make the Earth a harder place to live in the years to come. The administration is also abdicating any semblance of international leadership through its radical actions to increase heat-trapping emissions and drop out of global climate agreements designed to limit warming and help protect people and ecosystems.
“We have the technology and scientific knowledge to power the world through cleaner energy while also investing in climate resilience. Clinging to an obsolete and dangerous fixation on fossil fuels will bring profits to a few and deprive billions of others on the planet of a secure and livable future.” Thanks for reading and supporting CleanTechnica.
Carolyn — AWFUL and proud
Resources - “Climate backtracker.” Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Columbia Law School | Columbia Climate School. Retrieved January 19, 2026.
- “Climate change has already made the United States poorer.” Derek Lemoine. PNAS. December 16, 2025.
- “CNN poll: 58% declare Trump’s second term so far a ‘failure.'” CNN. January 16, 2026.
- “One year of the Trump administration’s all-out assault on climate and clean energy.” Rachel Cletus. Union of Concerned Scientists. January 15, 2026 .
- “The Biden Administration has taken more climate action than any other in history.” The Center for American Progress. March 6, 2024.
- “Sunday thought: It’s time again for good trouble.” Robert Reich. January 18, 2026.
- “Trump’s anti-climate agenda won’t just hurt the planet, but American incomes, too.” Dharna Noor. The Guardian. Friday, January 16, 2026.
- “Under Trump, US adds fuel to a heating planet.” Lisa Friedman. New York Times. January 12, 2026.
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