Bob Sheak, July 15, 2025
Introduction
This position is revealed in many ways. They favor energy from fossil fuels, even coal, and want to produce more oil, gas, and coal for domestic and foreign sales. They are skeptical that fossil fuels are the major cause of global warming. It is a position that puts the U.S. and the world at grave risk at a time when global warming is accelerating. Here are recent articles that identify this myopia and stupidity.
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Slashing clean energy
Marianne Lavelle, et. al., report on how Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is set to slash efforts to clean up the US energy system (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03072025/big-beautiful-bill-will-hurt-clean-energy-environmental-justice). The article was published on July 3, 2025
The $4 trillion, 887-page legislation “erases the landmark investment in cleaner energy, jobs and communities that a Democratic-led Congress made only three years ago in the Inflation Reduction Act.
“It stomps out incentives for purchasing electric vehicles and efficient appliances. It phases out tax credits for wind and solar energy. It opens federal land and water for oil and gas drilling and increases its profitability, while creating new federal support for coal. It ends the historic investment in poor and minority communities that bear a disproportionate pollution burden—money that the Trump administration was already refusing to spend. It wipes out any spending on greening the federal government.”
Lavelle et. al. cite “Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who called the bill ‘a massive hit to both our clean energy economy, the US economy as a whole, and to our future from a climate perspective.’”
Boosting Fossil Fuels
“While the Biden administration had restricted oil and gas leasing in Alaska, the bill reinstates fossil fuel lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with Alaska receiving a majority of the royalties from this new production.”
Lavelle and her colleagues point out,
“An analysis by the REPEAT Project from the Princeton University ZERO Lab and Evolved Energy Research showed that the bill is expected to contribute an additional 470 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2035, the annual equivalent of more than 100 million gas-powered cars on the road.”
“Already Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency had terminated funding for grants awarded under the program, for initiatives aimed at disaster preparedness, workforce development, air quality, flood control and high energy costs. The projects involved things like installing pollution notification systems and replacing lead pipes and were designed to strengthen communities against more damaging weather events while including community members in decision-making that affected their environment and health. Environmental groups had filed a class-action lawsuit to try to reinstate the canceled grants.”
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Trump’s Gutting of Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Response
Lisa Friedman, Maxine Joselow, Coral Davenport and Megan Mineiro consider this issue (https://nytimes.com/2025/07/13/climate-trump-cuts-disaster-preparedness-fema-html).
The journalists point out that experts have warned Trump not to go on “dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.” They continue.
“In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say.
“Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather.
“Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that research the ways a warming planet is changing weather, among other things. That work is essential to more accurately predicting life-threatening hazards. Among the shuttered labs would be one in Miami that sends teams of ‘hurricane hunters to fly into storms to collect critical data. The proposed budget would also make major cuts to a federal program that uses river gauges to predict floods.
Friedman et. al. continue.
“The president is also envisioning a dramatically scaled-down Federal Emergency Management Agency that would shift the costs of disaster response and recovery from the federal government to the states. The administration has already revoked $3.6 billion in grants from FEMA to hundreds of communities around the country, which were to be used to help these areas protect against hurricanes, wildfires and other catastrophes. About 10 percent of the agency’s staff members have left since January, including senior leaders with decades of experience, and another 20 percent are expected to be gone by the end of this year.”
“National security and disaster management experts agreed that FEMA — or any federal agency — could be improved but they said the chaotic changes the Trump administration is making to FEMA, as well as other parts of the government, are harmful.
“The federal government’s retrenchment arrives at a time when climate change is making extreme weather more frequent and severe. Last year, the United States experienced 27 disasters that cost more than $1 billion each.”
“For months, experts have warned that cuts to the National Weather Service, part of NOAA, could endanger local communities. Those fears have grown since the deadly flash floods in Central Texas earlier this month.
“By all accounts, the Weather Service issued the appropriate warnings for the region that was inundated by the Guadalupe River on July 4.
“But the agency had to move employees from other offices to temporarily staff the San Antonio office that handled the flood warnings, and the office lacked a warning coordination meteorologist, whose job it is to communicate with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn residents and help them evacuate. The office’s warning coordination meteorologist had left on April 30, after taking the early retirement package the Trump administration has offered to reduce the number of federal employees.
“Since Mr. Trump took office, the Weather Service has shed about 600 jobs from its work force of roughly 4,200 people. They are part of a greater exodus of nearly 2,000 employees from NOAA. Nearly half of the Weather Service’s 122 forecast offices had lost at least 20 percent of their staff as of April. Thirty offices were lacking their most experienced official, known as the meteorologist-in-charge, as of May.”
“Some forecast offices are no longer staffed overnight, and others have been launching fewer weather balloons, which send data to feed forecasts. The Weather Service has said it is preparing for “degraded operations.”
“The president is preparing to deal another blow to weather forecasting in his spending plan for next year, which would cut funding for NOAA by another $2 billion, or 27 percent. On the chopping block would be the agency’s entire scientific research division, one of the world’s premier weather and climate research centers, preventing the creation of new weather forecasting technologies.”
“Mr. Trump’s sweeping domestic policy and tax law, which Congress passed this month, also rescinds about $60 million in unspent funds at NOAA for atmospheric, climate and weather research. That money had been part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s signature climate law.”
“FEMA has lost about a quarter of its full-time staff in the past six months, including 20 percent of the coordinating officers at the agency, who manage responses to major disasters, as well as the head of FEMA’s disaster command center. Also gone: the deputy regional administrator in the agency’s Region 6 office in Texas.
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Unsurprisingly, Global warming worsens
Climatologist Michael Mann makes the connection between global warming and fossil fuels explicit (https://democracynow.org/2025/7/1/heat_dome-climate-crisis). Mann is the Presidential distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Here is some of what he had to say in an interview on Democracy Now with host Amy Goodman.
Links to articles by Mann.
“Heat domes and flooding have nearly tripled since the ’50s”
“Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis”
Goodman: “Scientists say the burning of fossil fuels by humans is the primary cause of global warming. This week, the Senate is debating measures to include in Trump’s so-called big, beautiful budget bill, is set to shape U.S. fossil fuel policy in ways expected to accelerate fossil fuel extraction, in part by cutting hundreds of billions of dollars of clean energy incentives — in fact, taxing more clean energy incentives.
MICHAEL MANN: “‘you know, at some level, this isn’t that complicated. You make the planet hotter, you’re going to have more frequent and intense heat extremes. And we are seeing that. Our climate models capture that, and they predict that that will get much worse in the future if we, you know, as you allude to, continue to burn fossil fuels and warm up the planet.
Altering the jet stream
At the same time, there are some subtle mechanisms when it comes to how the pattern of warming of the planet is changing the Northern Hemisphere jet stream.”
“And some of our own research suggests that that pattern of warming, in particular, the fact that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, is actually changing the jet stream in such a way that it’s more likely to get stuck in one of those very wavy patterns that you see on a weather map. And those waves are associated with big high- and low-pressure systems, that alternatively mean heat, drought and wildfires in one place, or excessive floods in other places. Those wiggles in the jet stream are tending to get larger, and they get locked in place, so the same location is under a heat dome day after day, like we’ve seen in North America this summer, like we’re seeing in Europe right now.
“And that mechanism is actually not very well captured in the climate models. It’s an important point, because critics of climate policy like to say uncertainty is a reason not to act. It’s just the opposite. Our models may, in fact, be underestimating the impact that climate change is already having when it comes to these damaging and deadly weather extremes.”
The consequences
MICHAEL MANN: “‘History will not judge them kindly, because at a time when we need to be accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels towards clean energy, they’re doing just the opposite. They’re doing everything they can to block, you know, the continued expansion of wind and solar and geothermal and clean energy solutions. And the rest of the world is moving on. So, what we have to recognize here is that this is — even if you don’t care about the climate, even if you don’t care about the human health consequences, any of that, if you care about the economy, this is the worst possible thing for American competitiveness, because the rest of the world recognizes that clean energy is the future, and right now we’re doubling down on antiquated fossil fuel energy in a way that is making us less and less competitive.”
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Big, Beautiful Bill ‘closes remaining pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C’
Sustainability Online considers how Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is disastrous for the environment (https://sustainability.net/news/big-beautiful-bill-closes-remaining-pathways-to-limit-global-warming-to-1-5c). The report was published on July, 2025. Here’s some of what they write.
“The Trump administration’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’, which has now been passed by the US Senate and House of Representatives, cuts off any chance of limiting global warming to below 1.5°C, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute has said.
Responding to the Bill, which promises to phase out tax credits for renewables and ramp up support for fossil fuel producers, EESI president Daniel Bresette said, ‘A little less than three years ago, we applauded the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act because of all the benefits it promised to deliver.
“‘Unfortunately, the opposite applies to the reconciliation bill just passed by the Senate and House of Representatives, so we have to condemn it. This legislation will increase household energy bills, put people out of work, and stall investments in clean energy technologies. Greenhouse gas emissions will increase as a result of this bill becoming law, essentially closing off the few remaining pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change.’
‘An irresponsible plan’
Sustainability Online cites Joanna Slaney, vice president for political and government affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDA), who said that the Bill ‘will raise household utility bills, take away job opportunities and threaten people’s health with more pollution’”.
Describing the Bill as “an irresponsible plan hatched at Mar-a-Lago banquet tables”, Slaney said that by making it “‘much, much harder to build new clean energy projects, the bill is effectively cutting off supply of cheap energy right when the U.S. needs it the most. It’s families and small businesses who will pay the price.
“The largest polluting oil and gas companies, meanwhile, would receive a 10-year reprieve from paying a fee on wasteful methane pollution, which would cause irreversible harm to our climate and public health. It’s clear that this deeply unpopular bill favors burning more fossil fuels while ignoring the damage it will do to people’s lives.”
Dr. David Widawsky, director, World Resources Institute US, added that while other countries are “benefitting from accelerated investment in the clean energy economy, the US is taking a step backwards.
“‘Working families, business owners and local governments will bear the brunt through higher electricity bills, fewer jobs, and reduced energy resilience to extreme weather. Billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, energy savings will be lost; failure to keep pace with growing energy demand will make brownouts and blackouts more likely; air will become less breathable; and American economic growth will be at risk.”
Earlier in the week, Greenpeace USA deputy climate program director, John Noël, described the Senate’s vote on the Bill as one that will “live in infamy”, adding “This bill is what happens when a major political party, in the grips of a personality cult, teams up with oil company CEOs, hedge fund donors, and climate deniers.
“The megabill isn’t about reform—it’s about rewarding the super rich and doling out fossil fuel industry handouts, all while dismantling the social safety nets on which millions depend for stability. It is a bet against the future.”
Concluding thoughts
Trump puts the economic interests of the big corporations and the rich before other interests, including that of most Americans. This bias is revealed in many ways but certainly in his views and policies toward energy. In this regard, he and his administration prioritize fossil fuels in the U.S. energy system. This inevitably means that the existential problem associated with global warming will not only continue but accelerate.
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 