Climate Action U-Turn Part 1
By the end of 2024, throughout the world, climate awareness reached its highest level of comprehension in history. For decades, climate scientists had made steady progress in their efforts to educate world leaders in the reasoning behind extreme weather events and the warming of our planet. Yet it wasn’t until about ten years ago that everyday people began experiencing the tragic consequences of climate change, and environmental awareness became a reality.
And much of humanity awoke to a new threat that wouldn’t go away. To this very day, the visual, financial, and health evidence of climate change is abundant. While it took only a decade to reach this point of acceptance, our climate crisis would not have happened in the first place had what occurred in the past seventy-five years never existed.
When Earth’s population more than tripled from 2.5 billion to over 8 billion.
When approximately 1.6 trillion tons of greenhouse gas became a fixture in the planet’s atmosphere.
The United States of America recognized what was coming, and our nation woke up to this reality in a big way before the other developed nations. The reaction by America’s government was spectacular in every sense of the word. As early as 1963, it introduced the Clean Air Act federal law to control industrial chemical use. Next, in 1970, it created the Environmental Protection Agency EPA to maintain and enforce national standards to protect our environment and people from various forms of pollution. The Department of the Interior, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA, the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service, and the Department of Energy were created as our nation’s population skyrocketed from 151 million in 1950 to 249 million by 1990. With so many vulnerable people, industrialized America had to be regulated.
With the rapid development of our civilization, other agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Geological Survey, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the Council on Environmental Quality were soon implemented.
We did everything we could to make our nation safe from ourselves and led the world in that kind of mentality. We had to. There was no other choice. Why? Because in the modern world, we have always been the leading global economy, the second largest democracy (second to India when considering population), and the third largest country.
A nation now with 347 million people, better get it right!
And it wasn’t just about us. As the greatest emitters of greenhouse gas, the USA and China ushered in what is now known as the 2015 Paris Agreement. Once they accepted their roles in the destruction of the environment, it was only a matter of time until an executive agreement of such global climate significance would be agreed upon. Nothing in the future history of mankind will be more valuable than limiting the increase in the global average temperature below 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. The two economic powerhouses led the original effort.
That is, up until 2019. Embarrassingly, a climate denier was elected president of the United States in 2016, and on November 4, 2019, the Trump administration announced the United States would withdraw from the landmark Paris Accord, leaving the balance of nations without the support of the world’s second biggest polluter. Thankfully, the actual withdrawal took place on November 4, 2020, and was short-lived. Climate action magic occurred when the newly elected Biden administration signed an executive order on January 20, 2021, to rejoin the vital Paris Agreement.
And did this pro-climate administration ever rise to the challenge! Given the goal of reducing America’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 (when compared to 2005), the grandest climate action rules and regulations ever were introduced. They reinforced the National Environmental Policy Act, supported climate justice, bolstered sustainable transportation, reversed many anti-environment policies of the former administration, created incentives for green energy, and sparked organizations to implement 322 actions to protect our land, water, and air. But it was the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that included the largest U.S. federal climate change investment in history, President Biden’s greatest legacy. $3 trillion over ten years in climate investments, plus $11 trillion in infrastructure development until 2050, was brilliantly budgeted to prepare our nation to meet the climate threat head-on.
The United States of America’s federal leadership literally embraced the climate science findings improved upon over decades of worldwide scientific research and publication. Our nation joined its international partners in the passionate efforts to avoid a future climate meltdown. The former president saw global warming as an “existential threat” and insisted that “A cry for survival comes from the planet itself, a cry that can’t be any more desperate and any more clear.”
A cry that was silenced on November 5, 2024, when a sweeping majority of the electoral states decided to be led by a climate denier. Nearly three months later, a U-Turn devoured the prior federal commitment to the climate crisis when President Trump took office on January 20, 2025, and an unconscionable attitude unraveled across our bewildered nation. Numerous executive orders would be implemented that would boost dirty energy production, shut the door in the face of clean energy progress, and reduce chemical pollution regulations.
The unthinkable.
The current president declared war on climate and emissions, so from this point on, I will respectfully refer to him as President Pollute. PP for short.To date, this president has released sixteen directives that reverse the prior federal government’s ideology regarding energy, chemical emissions, and land management practices. I will chronologically list each unimaginable Executive Order (EO) below. To better understand the severity and implications for public health, private property, and the natural environment, I encourage you to research them as much as possible.
Then joined me in tracking their implementation and impacts.
EO 14035: Temporary Withdrawal of all Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing, etc, ie, cripple American renewable energy progress.
EO 14153: Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential, ie, on behalf of oil, gas, minerals, and timber, obliterate much of the Alaskan natural wilderness and sacred lands.
EO 14154: Unleashing American Energy, ie, promote fossil fuel enhancement.
EO 14156: Declaring a National Energy Emergency, ie, dictate a false premise to bolster dirty energy production. (The U.S. is the world’s number one producer of oil and natural gas!)
EO 14162: Putting America First in International Agreements, ie, withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement. PP’s second such tactic.
EO 14181: Emergency Measures to Provide Water Resources in CA and Improve Disaster Response in Certain Areas, ie, release water from Northern CA reservoirs intended for the LA area that was impossible to reach!
EO 14213: Establishing the National Energy Dominance Council, ie, further a rapid expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure.
EO 14225: Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production, ie, subject about 60% of our previously protected national forest land to a logging blitz, our natural wilderness be damned!
EO 14239: Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response, ie, cut or retire about 7,500 U.S. Forest Service employees before the 2025 wildfire season.
EO 14241: Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production, ie, diminish fragile environmental issues such as water scarcity and contamination, ecosystem manipulation, and mining waste while repurposing virgin lands.
EO 14260: Protecting American Energy from State Overreach, ie, eliminate state efforts to prosecute big oil, gas, and coal for excessive greenhouse gas emissions. Also, target state regulatory programs that impede fossil fuel development.
EO 14261: Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry, ie, bring back the most costly and polluting form of dirty energy that has been on the decline for the last thirty years. Does President Pollute really want more cases of the black lung disease, COPD, and severe cancer from exposure to coal mine dust and silica? This is insane!
EO 14270: Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy, ie, seek to U-Turn most environmental protections for safe drinking water, clean air, freedom from nuclear waste, and other toxic waste. Time to once again embolden the polluters and the billionaires!
EO 14313: Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Establishes Make America Beautiful Again Commission, ie, make us forget the prior EOs that expose sensitive lands and streams to mining, drilling, National Park Service staff slashing, and sale. Who knew America wasn’t beautiful anymore?
EO 14314: Making America Beautiful Again by Improving Our National Parks, ie, require proof of U.S. residency, and charge a higher entry fee for foreign visitors.
EO 14315: Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign-Controlled Energy Sources, ie, limit the availability of wind and solar energy tax credits and federal permitting.
Please take a minute to realize what’s happening here. When combining all the above into one lethal climate crisis bomb to blow up fifty years of climate science research for the sake of profits over people, it, well, it shatters your mind!
Is this really happening? Yes, he’s certainly trying.
Note: This post is the first of three that examine President Pollute’s attack on climate science. The forthcoming November 12th post will detail his energy and chemical emission U-Turns evolving from the above Executive Orders.