US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 03/11/25
By Dr. Michael Shank and US Congressman Hank Johnson

In less than two months since taking office, President Donald Trump has reversed decades of progress against climate change, putting our economy, our lives and the planet in grave danger.

On Monday, Trump’s new energy secretary, Chris Wright, a former fracking executive, told a packed conference of oil and gas executives in Houston that global warming is simply a “side effect of building the modern world” and promised a “180-degree pivot” from previous administrations’ efforts to invest in clean, renewable energy.

As a member of Congress from a region hard hit by destructive weather fueled by climate change and an expert on low-carbon energy alternatives, we want American voters to understand how the Trump administration is endangering our safety, health and property by turning its back on established science.

The future of American jobs, real estate and infrastructure – not to mention our lives – depends on tackling the climate crisis. That’s a reality that scientists agree on, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which was created by Congress. With the recent devastation from wildfires in Los Angeles and record-breaking winter storms across the southern United States, the nation should be going full throttle to address climate change, not slamming on the brakes.

More than a decade ago, the Pentagon outlined the many threats that climate change poses to our national security, from bringing climate migrants to our borders to fueling conflicts over natural resources and weather-related disaster and disease. Climate change has outpaced war as the biggest threat to humanity, according to the United Nations secretary general. It has created  tens of millions more refugees than all current wars combined. As of 2023, more than 3 million Americans had been uprooted from their homes because of climate-fueled weather disasters, according to First Street Foundation, a nonprofit organization that studies flood risk.

Ignoring these warnings, the president has gutted nearly every federal effort to slow climate change. He has withdrawn the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accords, halted lucrative green energy initiatives that were creating jobs at home and has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” by expanding oil drilling offshore and on protected federal lands, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The administration has removed climate research and scrubbed references to “climate change” from federal agencies’ websites; halted grants and yanked support for any research that mentions “climate;” reversed curbs on pollution; fired hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the climate research agency; and vowed to ramp up fossil fuel production.

The Trump administration and its allies deny the clear evidence of the catastrophic effects of climate change. More than 120 members of the last Congress – nearly 1 in 4 elected representatives – denies the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress. The new Congress is pushing to permanently remove rules that protect communities from deadly air pollution – and to replace good-paying renewable energy jobs with a return to toxic fossil fuels.

Last year was the single hottest year in recorded history, and it was the first time temperatures hit 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The hotter it gets, the more catastrophic the extreme weather changes – from floods and hurricanes to droughts and wildfires. With rising air and ocean temperatures, extreme weather is more frequent and more ferocious. We’re witnessing more flooded coastlines, more disastrous hurricanes, more heat waves and droughts, and more fires. We’ve seen it in Los Angeles; Asheville, North Carolina; Montpelier, Vermont; and across the southeast, including in Georgia.

We know what’s causing climate change, and we know how to stop it, but fossil fuel companies are funding climate deniers and spreading misinformation at the expense of ordinary Americans. Elected officials who deny science and delay action to save the climate are threatening the lives and livelihoods of their constituents.

Fortunately, lawsuits are moving forward in states from Hawaii and Montana to New York and Vermont to hold corporate actors accountable, seeking millions or billions of dollars to pay for damages caused by climate change. These cases include a Feb. 24 lawsuit filed by farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for deleting vital climate data from their website.

It’s time for every corporate polluter to be held accountable in court. If federal officials are derelict in their duty to protect us, then governors, legislators, pressure groups and citizens must take up the slack. The planet won’t survive four more years of climate-denying policies.

Hank Johnson, a U.S. congressman from Georgia, is a senior member of the House Judiciary and Transportation & Infrastructure committees and a longtime advocate for the environment and clean energy.

Michael Shank is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and a visiting professor at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

 

 

 

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