The data doesn’t support Trump’s continued claims that the crisis is a hoax. A 2023 Climate Report from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that every month that year ranked among the seven warmest on record. The year 2025 is already on course to be the second warmest on record, just behind 2024. Every fraction of a degree of additional warming effects everybody’s health, and possibly irreversible changes to the earth.
This is not a future threat. It’s happening now. The U.S. continues to reel from the consequences. Asheville and Western North Carolina are still recovering from the catastrophic tropical cyclone that hit last September and now must carry on despite FEMA’s denial to extend 100% cost share needed for clean-up. In May, 55 tornadoes formed an “outbreak” of devastation across the Midwest into Appalachia, killing 27 people. Nature will not stop.
Rather than leading a science-based response, Trump has unleashed a systematic assault on environmental protections. Just hours after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, stating “this accord does not reflect American values.” He then wasted no time dismantling federal climate protections, gutting pollution regulations, and handing a massive victory to the fossil fuel industry. He defunded many NOAA programs and eliminated the National Centers for Environmental Information, the program that tracks damage in excess of $1 billion from individual storms. He is also keeping his promise to “drill, baby, drill” by fast-tracking oil and gas projects under a self-declared American energy emergency and giving the green light by his own authority to expedite construction of oil and gas projects, contributing instead of slowing it. This week, the U.S. government was described as being “alone in its climate denial” by The NY Times.
The administration’s 2026 FY Budget proposal illustrates Trump’s commitment to eliminating funding for the globalist climate agenda. Some of the largest cuts compared to FY 2025 include a 55% reduction at EPA and 56% decrease for the National Science Foundation. This is not protecting American values. It’s sacrificing the planet for political gain.
Climate change doesn’t just harm the earth, it harms our health. We know that a deteriorating environment can lead to adverse health consequences, such as increased asthma, hypertension, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular diseases. In addition, more heat and water in the atmosphere increases the prevalence of ticks and mosquitoes on land, carriers of Lyme disease and the Zika, West Nile and dengue viruses, respectively.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once hailed by Time magazine as a “Hero for the Planet,” has abandoned his commitment to environmental health. Just two days after his confirmation, he terminated HHS funding for climate change and health programs at the National Institute of Health. These initiatives aimed to reduce health threats like vector borne diseases and asthmatic conditions resulting from climate change. The cost of this important research was $40 million a year, less than a single wildfire.
Trump’s White House launched a new website to mark Earth Day 2025: “On Earth Day, We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science.” The reality? Pausing wind projects under the pretense of protecting wildlife, expanding oil, gas, and mineral extraction on public lands and waters while he claims to be protecting public lands, and rolling back plastic straw bans despite their major contribution to marine pollution, is not following science. It’s abandoning it.
The price of denial is staggering — in lives lost, homes destroyed, futures erased. The Earth is in critical condition. Saving it demands action rooted in truth, not political expediency. If we claim to love our country and our planet, we must fight harder than ever to protect it.
Professor Timothy Holtz, M.D., M.P.H. works with Milken Institute School of Public Health and George Washington University.
Teri Mills M.S., R.N. Emeritus, Adult Nurse Practitioner (retired), 2019 Oregon Nurse of the Year and former president of National Nursing Network Organization.