President Donald Trump has only been in office for six weeks, yet the assault on the environment is at warp speed. The consequences will make life much harder for Americans, and some remain clueless.
Project 2025 laid out Trump’s agenda despite his denials, but his followers clearly didn’t read it. Unfortunately, they still support him despite the heavy costs his actions bring. A recent NPR/Marist Poll found that 77 percent of Republicans think the nation is strong or very strong. That is far less than what most Americans believe, with 53 percent saying the country is not very strong or not strong at all.
We screamed into a void during the election when we warned his supporters what Trump’s agenda would do to the nation. Perhaps the most famous warning came from former President Obama during a campaign rally for Kamala Harris in Madison, Wisconsin. “There are questions about his competence. I mean, he’s out there giving two-hour speeches. It’s like Fidel Castro – just keeps on talking. It’s just word salads,” he said.
Those word salads included his plans for the environment. During a campaign speech in North Carolina last fall, Trump said, “And for the people in Pennsylvania, we’re going to frac, frac, frac. But we’re going to drill baby, drill, and we’re going to frac in certain areas. We’re going to frac like we’ve never frac-ed before because we have more energy than any country in the world including Russia. We’re lucky in that regard, including Russia and Saudi Arabia.”
Trump Energy Plan Prioritizes Fossil Fuels
On January 20, the first day of Trump’s second term, he issued an executive order declaring a “national energy emergency.” No energy emergency exists. The U.S. produces more oil and natural gas than it ever has. It has been the top crude oil producer for six consecutive years. Natural gas production will increase by one percent and three percent in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
While fossil fuels are the shiny jewels in Trump’s energy plan, wind energy is on his hit list. His energy plan includes stopping wind energy development in favor of a fossil fuel energy plan. Among his flurry of first-day executive orders is one that halts offshore wind leasing and reviews leasing and permitting for all wind projects. While the plan hasn’t targeted solar energy, it doesn’t prioritize it either.
In 2024, clean energy dominated the energy industry, and 93 percent of all new capacity was clean energy. The previous five-year average was 75 percent. According to a report by American Clean Power, the overall wind pipeline is 40 gigawatts, with 20 GW under construction. Last year, 46 primary component manufacturing projects across wind, solar, and storage supply chains came online.
The clean energy sector creates jobs. Over 40 percent of the 8.35 million people in the energy industry work in clean energy. In 2023, half of the 250,000 new energy jobs were in clean energy. A recent analysis shows that 42,493 pledged clean energy jobs have been stalled or lost since his election. Electricity prices are on track to be higher than they have been since the 1990s.
The health costs of Trump’s energy plan are steep. The 2024 edition of the American Lung Association’s State of the Air report found that 39 percent of people in the U.S. live in areas with failing grades for ozone or particle pollution levels, an increase of 11.7 million from the 2023 report.
Resist the Orange Man
It’s tempting to read an article about the horrors of the current Trump administration and give into despair. Fight that temptation. Trump and his administration want us to be without hope. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.” And our hope is in our resistance.
There are many ways to resist, one of which is to share information. Post this article on your social media accounts and inform your followers about the economic and health costs of the current environmental assault.
