We expected the worst environmental outcomes when Trump ran for and won re-election in November. Unfortunately, Trump and his administration are doing what we expected, though not totally.

At the time of the election in November 2024, I wrote this about Trump’s environmental policies 

“One of Trump’s signature slogans is ‘drill baby drill,’ which means, as he has told us, his upcoming government, once installed after January 20,2025, will (1) increase government support for fossil fuels, (2) reduce support for solar, wind, and geothermal, (3) encourage more export of fracked natural gas, (4) eviscerate or close the Environmental Protection Agency, (5) open up public land to drilling; and (6) serve as a discouraging international model for other countries to follow (https://vitalissuesbobsheak.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=4795&action=edit).

Trump has long been an opponent of green technologies like solar and wind. The most important overall effect of such policies according to the consensus among environmental scientists is that the earth will continue to get hotter and will be accompanied by an increasing incidence of forest fires, droughts, the warming of the oceans, and other extreme weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods. Glaciers will disappear.  There is already extensive hardships, disruption, and death. Some parts of the planet are becoming less and less habitable, if they are not already so (https://earth.com/news/extreme-heat-is-pushing-parts-of-earth-beyond-human-survival). There are water shortages and periods of extreme heat

in the western U.S. The earth’s heating will have effects in virtually all aspects of life – and even on whether such life will continue or continue as we have known it. (See Mark Hertsgaard’s book Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth). 

But clean energy continues to grow

At the same time, the clean energy industry involving solar and wind is still growing, due to the lower costs in building such clean energy capacity. Michael Copley analyzes the situation for NPR (https://npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5319056/trump-clean-energy-electricity-climate-change). As Copley notes, the Trump/Republican agenda calls for increasing funding for fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, as well as for nuclear power, while support for solar and wind projects will also go on rising. Here’s some of what he writes.

“The U.S. needs all the power it can get, because electricity demand is surging for the first time in decades, industry analysts and executives say. That means kickstarting development of nuclear power and geothermal projects, burning more natural gas and, in some cases, delaying retirement of old coal plants. But in the scramble for electricity, renewable-energy and battery plants are crucial, analysts and executives say, because they're quick to build and provide electricity that's relatively cheap.” In this case the market may prevail over the hopes of Trump and Republicans.

Still, it may not be smooth sailing. Copley points out that “the renewables industry faces potential upheaval. The Trump administration tried to withhold federal funding Congress previously approved for climate and clean-energy projects. Trump also ordered the government to temporarily stop issuing or renewing leases for offshore wind projects in federal waters. The Department of the Interior limited who at the agency can issue permits for renewable energy projects on public lands, which could slow permitting. And conservatives are pushing Congress to wipe out tax incentives for clean energy.”

Reduced government funding for Science

Alan Burdick, an editor and occasional reporter of health and science news,

delves into this issue, focusing on the cuts in science research (https://nytimes.com/2025/04/25/briefing/trump-vs-science.html). Here’s some of what he writes.

“Late yesterday, Sethuraman Panchanathan, whom President Trump hired to run the National Science Foundation five years ago, quit. He didn’t say why, but it was clear enough: Last weekend, Trump cut more than 400 active research awards from the N.S.F., and he is pressing Congress to halve the agency’s $9 billion budget.

“The Trump administration” Burdick writes, “has targeted the American scientific enterprise, an engine of research and innovation that has thrummed for decades. It has slashed or frozen budgets at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NASA. It has fired or defunded thousands of researchers.”

There is more.

“He has defunded university studies on AIDS, pediatric cancer and solar physics. (Two prominent researchers are compiling lists of lost N.I.H. grants and N.S.F. awards.) The administration has also laid off thousands of federal scientists, including meteorologists at the National Weather Service; pandemic-preparedness experts at the C.D.C.; black-lung researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. A next-generation space observatory, already built with $3.5 billion over a decade, awaits a launch that now may never happen.”

Trump ignores how the work of scientists yields important discoveries

American scientific research has thrived “under a patronage system that funnels congressionally approved dollars to universities, national labs and institutes. This knowledge factory employs tens of thousands of researchers, draws talent from around the world and generates scientific breakthroughs and Nobel Prizes.”

Burdick points out that “Science is capital. By some measures, every dollar spent on research returns at least $5 to the economy.” Trump doesn’t care or is ignorant of what science does and will hobble the efforts of scientists if he gets what he wants.

Attempts to redefine what is acceptable science

The Trump administration has the audacity to think it can change what counts as science. Burdick writes: 

“One effort aims at what science should show — and at achieving results agreeable to the administration. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wants to reopen research into a long-debunked link between vaccines and autism. He doesn’t want to study vaccine hesitancy. The National Science Foundation says it will no longer fund ‘research with the goal of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’ that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens.” 

Trump’s policies are causing American scientists to leave the U.S.  

“Now some American scientists are looking for the exits. France, Canada and other countries are courting our researchers. In a recent poll by the journal Nature, more than 1,200 American scientists said they were considering working abroad. The journal’s job-search platform saw 32 percent more applications for positions overseas between January and March 2025 than during the same period a year earlier.”

--------------

Trump’s anti-science stance will do catastrophic harm to the U.S. and its citizens.

Max Boot’s argues that “we are witnessing the suicide of a superpower” 

(https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/02/trump-science-cuts). Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

“On June 14 — the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, not so coincidentally, the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump — a gaudy display of U.S. military power will parade through Washington. No doubt Trump thinks that all of the tanks and soldiers on display will make America, and its president, look tough and strong.

“But the planned spectacle is laughably hollow. Even as the president wants to showcase U.S. military power, he is doing grave and possibly irreparable damage to the real sources of U.S. strength, including its long-term investment in scientific research. Trump is declaring war on science, and the casualty will be the U.S. economy.

“Since the 1940s, when the University of Chicago, Columbia University and the University of California played a central role in the Manhattan Project, the engine driving U.S. economic and military competitiveness has been federal support of research universities. That partnership has produced most of the key inventions of the information age, including the internet, GPS, smartphones and artificial intelligence.

“Federal support of university research has also made possible the success of the United States’ world-leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. 

“Advances enabled by federal support include magnetic resonance imaging, the Human Genome Project, LASIK surgery, weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, and drugs that have saved countless AIDS and covid-19 patients.”

Assaults on universities and sources of scientific research

“Now,” Boot writes, “Trump is sabotaging a research and development pipeline that is the envy of the world. The Trump budget would cut the National Science Foundation budget by 55 percent. Already, the U.S. DOGE Service has terminated more than 1,600 active grants from the foundation, worth $1.5 billion. According to the New York Times, the science foundation’s grants this year are being disbursed at the slowest pace in at least 35 years. The NSF directly supports 357,600 researchers and students; many of them will now be out of luck.

“It’s a similar story at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who subscribes to an array of crackpot health theories, has already reduced the HHS workforce by 10,000 people with buyouts or early retirements, and now he intends to lay off an additional 10,000.” 

Boot continues. “These budget cuts are hitting hard at America’s — and the world’s — leading research universities: Johns Hopkins is losing $800 million; Columbia, $400 million; the University of Pennsylvania, $175 million. No school has suffered more than Harvard University, which has lost more than $2.6 billion in federal funds.

Indeed, Trump says he wants to eliminate all of Harvard’s federal contracts and give the money to trade schools. This is populism gone crazy. Valuable as trade schools are, they will not be making breakthroughs in fighting Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, strokes, sickle cell anemia or other diseases that are being researched at Harvard.

Expelling foreign university students

Boot adds this: “Then there is the administration’s assault on foreign students. Trump tried to kick all international students out of Harvard — an order halted by a federal judge Thursday. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has vowed to retaliate against U.S. allies that censor free speech, has sought to expel foreign students for expressing views he dislikes about the war in Gaza. 

The State Department announced last week that it was temporarily halting all interviews for foreign-student visas, and Rubio said the agency would “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students in the United States “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.

About 100 million people belong to the Chinese Communist Party, most for careerist rather than ideological reasons. And of the 277,398 Chinese students currently studying at U.S. universities, more than 110,000 are pursuing degrees in math, science and engineering — all areas of weakness for the U.S. educational system. Expelling a substantial number of foreign students, who typically pay full tuition, would deal another heavy blow to universities already reeling from federal budget cuts.

The entire country benefits from the presence of foreign students

“It isn’t just universities that benefit from the presence of foreign students — so does the entire country. According to the Association of International Educators, the more than 1.1 million international students in the United States create about $44 billion in economic activity and 378,000 jobs. And then there are the benefits they deliver after they graduate, assuming they are allowed to stay in this country. 

“The National Foundation for American Policy reports that one-quarter of all billion-dollar U.S. start-ups have a founder who attended a U.S. university as an international student.”

Other countries now hope to benefit from these students/scientists

Boot writes: “The United States’ competitors are salivating at the prospect of gaining an edge in technological competition at our expense. France, Australia and Canada are throwing out the welcome mat to scientists who can no longer do their work in the United States. But the biggest beneficiary is likely to be China. Even before the Trump cutbacks, China was already catching up to the United States in scientific spending; its research and development budget has been growing by an average of 8.9 percent a year, compared with just 4.7 percent in the United States.”

-------------

Somini Sengupta also writes on the damage Trump and his administration are doing to science in the U.S. (https://nytimes.com/2025/06/03/climate/executive-order-gold-standard-science.html). She is the international climate reporter on the New York Times climate team. Here she reports on one of Trump’s many executive orders on how the president says misleadingly he wants to restore “a gold standard for science”

(https://nytimes.com/2025/06/03/climate/executive/order/gold/standard-science.html). “President Trump has ordered what he called a restoration of a ‘gold standard science’ across federal agencies and national laboratories.

“But the May 23 executive order puts his political appointees in charge of vetting scientific research and gives them the authority to ‘correct scientific information,’ control the way it is communicated to the public and the power to ‘discipline” anyone who violates the way the administration views science.”

“It has prompted an open letter, signed by more than 6,000 scientists, academics, physicians, researchers and others, saying the order would destroy scientific independence.” However, Sengupta writes, Trump is not interested in supporting ‘scientific independence.’ She offers the following examples.

“Among other things, the administration has eviscerated National Science Foundation research funding and fired staff scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, which is responsible for forecasting weather hazards. A government report on child health cited research papers that did not exist.”

Subordinating science to political power

The point, “The letter of protest [referred to previously] says the executive order is ‘co-opting the language of open science to implement a system under which direct presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate many common and important scientific activities as scientific misconduct.’”

The upshot: “As scientists, we are committed to a discipline that is decentralized and self-scrutinizing,” the letter reads. “Instead, this administration mandates a centralized system serving the political beliefs of the President and the whims of those in power.”

“According to a survey carried out last fall by the Pew Research Center, the American people trust scientists far more than the federal government.”

“What’s being demanded here is an unwinding of scientific integrity policies, under the misleading name of ‘Gold Standard Science,’ to serve the values and priorities of the current administration,” the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy organization that has been critical of Trump’s health and environmental policies, said in a blog post.”

Concluding thoughts

The thrust of this analysis is that Trump is opposed to the independence of science and wants to channel scientific research in un-scientific, politically-based directions. If he is successful, the U.S. and the world will be closer to catastrophic and irreparable environmental developments. This is one of the very important reasons to vote against Trump and the Republican Party he dominates.