In Power & Progress, we analyze how elected leaders are impacting global climate action, and the economic and societal power dynamics at play. How does power impede and propel progress? How do movements for progress build and use power?
Public Opinion vs. Climate Denial
Across the world, 80-89% of people want their governments to “do more” to address the climate crisis. In the US, the percentage is lower, but not by much. Various studies have found that 66-74% of Americans support government intervention. Despite that, the Trump administration has taken a u-turn on climate action — leaving the Paris Agreement, cutting programs and funding, and rescinding rules that reduced emissions — pledging to “drill, baby drill.”
The Trump administration is leaning heavily on climate denial as public policy, ignoring the overwhelming scientific consensus — and the public’s understanding — that climate change is real and impacting everybody on Earth. A majority of Americans (72%) believe that climate change is already happening; 66% of adults somewhat or strongly support the US economy transition from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050 and support policies that promote climate justice goals, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s 2024 Climate Opinion Maps.
In early March, “climate crisis” and “climate science” appeared on an official list of words to be deleted from US government websites, and over the past few weeks the Trump administration has attacked government efforts to understand, measure, and adapt to climate change. Here’s a sampling:
- The National Climate Assessment report, a congressionally mandated scientific study of the regional risks, impacts, and responses to climate change in the US that’s published every few years, is in jeopardy after NASA cut the funding and fired staff, reports The New York Times.
- An executive order that “raises the possibility that [Trump’s] Department of Justice will go to court against state climate change laws aimed at slashing planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuels,” reports the Associated Press.
- The Environmental Protection Agency plans to discontinue its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, a 25-year-old program requiring “polluters to collect and report their emissions of the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change,” reports ProPublica.
- A $4 million NOAA-funded research program at Princeton University was canceled by the Commerce Department for “[promoting] exaggerated and implausible climate threats” that cause “climate anxiety” in young people, reports E&E News.
- The National Institutes of Health canceled The Climate Change and Health Initiative, a $40 million program that “concentrate[s] on research and training to protect people from the health consequences of extreme weather events,” reports Mother Jones.
- Over the past decade, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence “has formally recognized human-driven warming as a top security risk in its annual threat assessment report, alongside the likes of terrorism and cyberattacks,” reports Inside Climate News. Not this year. It wasn’t mentioned once.
- In March, the Defense Department canceled “more than 90 studies, including some that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed as climate change ‘crap,’” reports Reuters.
- “The administration is planning to slash budgets at both the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, according to internal budget documents, taking aim specifically at programs used to study impacts from the climate crisis,” reports The Guardian.
Scientists warn that the “slashed funding for climate research risks blindfolding the US as the dangers from climate change escalate in the coming years and decades,” write meteorologists Jeff Masters and Bob Henson for Yale Climate Connections.
“This administration is neanderthal and taking us back to even before the 1950s,” Craig McLean, a retired director of research at NOAA, told USA Today. “If you don’t like your cancer diagnosis, just fire your doctor, I’m sure everything will be OK.”
As Damian Carrington writes for The Guardian, all of this is happening at the same time as the UN’s World Meteorological Organization issued a report that declares the “devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe” and a top insurer warns that “the climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism … with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.”
As Phil Newell, Climate Action Against Disinformation’s communications co-chair, noted in CCNow’s Disinfo Disrupter Slack channel recently, “The bottom line is that disinformation is used to give political actors an excuse for inaction. It doesn’t persuade, it normalizes and excuses otherwise anti-social behavior people wouldn’t tolerate unless they thought it was standard and popular.”
Story Ideas
- Interview local climate scientists. Nearly every state has a state climatologist. Are they concerned about federal scientific data and reports that they use for local forecasting and planning being canceled or deleted?
- Explore community-driven climate action at the local level. As the federal government embraces climate denial, how are communities enacting local climate solutions, especially in the absence of government support — local, state, or federal.
- Explore disinformation and its efficacy. In nearly every country, people who say they want more action on climate change think that fewer people agree with them than actually do. How does that contribute to inaction on climate solutions?
- Recommended Source: Stephan Lewandowsky is a psychologist who’s worked on this issue for years. He co-authored these Debunking and Conspiracy theory handbooks.
- Check out Climate Action Against Disinformation’s “Journalist Field Guide: Navigating Climate Misinformation” for support reporting on mis- and disinformation.
- Interview attorneys general about climate laws on the books in their states. Are local officials anticipating being sued by the Trump administration DOJ? How are they preparing for possible legal action?
- Report on state and city climate plans. “Research shows that cities could cut their emissions 90% by 2050 using measures that are already available,” notes the World Resources Institute. What are local officials doing to make up for the loss of federal money and programs that have been cut or frozen?
More From CCNow
Join Covering Climate Now for a webinar about “The Future of Climate Activism” today, April 22, at 12pm US Eastern Time. American University sociologist Dr. Dana Fisher, Sunrise Movement national spokesperson John Paul Mejia, and Drilled executive editor Amy Westervelt will unpack the state of climate activism during the second Trump administration. Theresa Riley, Covering Climate Now’s audience editor, will moderate.
If you’re feeling anxious…
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