A difficult year for the environment

2025 turns out to be the warmest year on record followed by the previous ten years. At the same time the Trump administration has removed the term “climate change” from federal agency websites and declared it to be a “hoax”.

The gently progressive environmental policies of President Biden, culminating in the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act of 2023 incorporated a huge array of provisions designed to improve the environment. Since returning to office, President Trump has produced a whirlwind of policy changes and actions, bold and far-reaching in environmental matters. What follows are just a few of those changes.

On his first day in office, President Trump removed the United States from the 2016 Paris Agreement, the accord signed by nearly 200 nations to move forcefully to arrest climate change. Last Wednesday at the U.N., Trump went further and withdrew the U.S. from the 1992 climate treaty which was a pact between all nations to keep global temperatures at safe levels.

Earlier this year when more than 100 nations were poised to approve a deal to slash pollution from cargo ships, the Trump administration launched a successful pressure campaign to halt it.

In November, the US boycotted the United Nations COP Conference for the first time in thirty years thereby leaving it leaderless and ineffective.

The Trump administration also sided with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran to block part of a U.N. report about the state of the planet because it called for phasing out fossil fuels and the use of plastics.

Trump’s dislike of clean energy became clear soon after his inauguration when he signed an executive order banning both new solar and new wind power installations on federal property. His executive order to stop work on five large off shore wind farms along the Atlantic coast, two of which were nearly complete and would power close to two million homes puts the wind energy industry in dire financial straits imperilling investments and more than 10,000 jobs.

While the Biden administration was beginning to put significant federal money into rebuilding rail service, Trump has been opposed and pulled support from a number of major rail projects already approved including the North River project featuring a new desperately needed rail tunnel under the Hudson River to help facilitate improved rail traffic along the entire east coast.

On December 16, the Trump administration announced plans to dismantle the leading US atmospheric science center. Constructed in 1960 and housed in an I. M. Pei designed structure in Boulder, Colorado, the National Center for Atmospheric Research had become world famous for its research activities.

Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget (and previously the main author of the Federalist Society’s Project 2025) had condemned the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) calling it “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” A wide range of federal officials and scientists, not just from NCAR, have lobbied to save the Center and keep it intact.

No cabinet department has been as involved in undoing the efforts of previous administrations in protecting the environment as the Environmental Protection Agency. During the past year dozens of rules and regulations regarding air and water pollution have been dropped or eased. Promised new controls over “forever chemicals” (PFAS) have been postponed or dropped. Fossil fuel exhaust controls have been severely weakened.

Subsidies for solar collectors and electric vehicles have been drastically cut. At the same time, the administration has actively promoted fossil fuel including massive sales of oil and gas abroad and issuing enormous leases on land and sea for oil and gas drilling. The Trump administration’s recent seizure of the Venezuelan petroleum reserves leaves the U.S. with the largest reserve of what turns out to be probably the world’s dirtiest, most polluting oil. At the same time they spent significant sums to recondition coal burning power plants otherwise at the edge of retirement.

Is there anything we can do to improve this troubling situation we are finding ourselves in? Perhaps the most significant action individuals can take would be to become better informed about environmental issues and vote accordingly.

Architect and landscape designer Mac Gordon lives in Lakeville.