If you hate everything in nature and the outdoors, you must love Donald Trump. In the short time he's been in office, he's done his best to sell off public lands, open more public lands to oil and gas drilling, open roadless areas to increased logging, increased air and water pollution, reduced protection for wildlife, and cut several thousand employees from agencies that manage public lands and the environment.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Trump installed a non-scientist (Lee Zeldin) as the head of the EPA. Now the EPA allows more mercury and other toxins to be emitted from coal-burning power plants, allows more wasting of natural gas from oil fields, allows more pollution from internal combustion engines, allows more hazardous air pollutants from industrial plants, and, with reduced field staffing, enforcement is limited. Trump has directed the EPA to no longer consider climate change a major concern, and he had the words "climate change" removed from their website.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Trump installed his friend Neil Jacobs to head NOAA. Trump likes Jacobs because he is willing to do whatever Trump wants, which is to cut science from the agency. Plans are in place to cut the research arm of NOAA so they can no longer study climate change, basic science on weather, or how the oceans are changing due to climate change. More than 1,000 employees have lost their jobs so far, leading to worries about whether the agency can still reliably forecast hurricanes and other severe weather events.
U.S. Department of the Interior
The Department of the Interior oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey, which accounts for a total of 425 million acres. Trump appointed Doug Burgum to head the agency. Burgum was a former software and real estate developer who became the governor of North Dakota. He will also run Trump's new Energy Department. Burgum gets mixed reviews. He admits climate change is real and does believe in science, but at the same time, he promotes oil and gas development and restricts renewable energy development.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
USFWS lost 420 employees in the initial round of cuts to federal agencies. USFWS manages 570 wildlife refuges and 70 national fish hatcheries. Trump plans to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and open other refuges to mineral exploration. Brian Nesvik, who previously worked for the Wyoming Department of Fish and Game, has been appointed as the agency's new director. Mr. Nesvik does care about fish and wildlife, so it will be interesting to see how long he lasts under Burgum and Trump.
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Trump originally appointed Kathleen Sgamma, a former petroleum industry lobbyist who contributed to Project 2025, to lead the BLM. She was on her way to her confirmation hearing when Trump discovered a memo she had written criticizing his response to the January 6 protest at the Capitol. She immediately withdrew after a call from Doug Burgum telling her she no longer had the support of the President.
Leadership by Gut Instinct.
Trump leads by gut instinct. He pays no attention to real data or advice from anyone outside his inner circle. Trump is doing the best he can to develop an anti-science and anti-environmental agenda. His withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement puts us in the camp of three other countries that have not signed the Agreement: Iran, Libya, and Yemen. The purpose of the Agreement was to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a threshold that we are now rapidly approaching, if in fact we have not already reached it. Most Trump appointees are anti-science and support his focus on denying climate science and expanding fossil fuel use. This will only help accelerate climate change and its impacts - severe flooding, extended periods of drought, stronger hurricanes, and a hotter world. He has cut all funding for cooperative international programs involved in addressing climate change.
His cuts to renewable energy sources are resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs across America. Since wind and solar provide the cheapest form of electricity, his cuts will also cause increases in utility bills for most Americans. His Big Beautiful Bill cuts nearly all incentives for people to convert to electric vehicles and energy efficiency savings for their homes. Trump's "America First Policy" is resulting in an "America Alone Policy" as other nations are banding together to avoid dealing with his unpredictability, chaotic leadership, and tariffs. China will now become the world leader in renewable energy, solar panel production, electric vehicles, and batteries. America will fall further behind in the race to convert to renewable energy. It will take America decades to recover from Trump's destructive environmental and economic policies, if it can recover at all. Once climate change reaches a tipping point where the world's ice fields collapse and the ocean currents change, it will take centuries to restore a normal climate, if not millennia. Think about this the next time you vote.