Two years ago the northern hemisphere had just experienced the hottest summer in recorded history, including month by month the warmest June, July, August, and (by a country mile) September ever. Staggering heat records were set in place after place globally. Fires from Canada to Hawaii to Europe broke all records. The southern hemisphere had a “winter” from — yes! — hell. Europe was burning up, Greece experienced unprecedented fires and floods as well. Libya had a significant part of a major city washed away. China, too, experienced unprecedented flooding around its capital, where 1.2 million people had to be evacuated, and in Hong Kong, too.
Meanwhile the sea ice in the Antarctic fell to the lowest levels (yes again!) in recorded history, as did sea ice in the Arctic, helping to ensure a future in which rising sea levels could flood coastal cities. And Greenland has been lending a hand to that same future, starting 2023 with temperatures unmatched in at least 1,000 years and still setting new temperature records in July. Worse yet, that’s just to begin down a list that increasingly seems unending.
In certain parts of the United States, the summer of 2023 was literally a hell on Earth and, as a New York Times piece headlined it recently, also “A Summer Preview of the Future; Floods, Fires, and Stifling Heat. It felt like the opening minutes of a disaster movie.”.
A stunning heat wave, for instance, stretched across a drought-stricken Southwest all the way to California, while Phoenix, Arizona, hit an almost unbelievable temperature record of 54 days of 110-degree heat or higher! (Oh, wait, make that 55!)
And that, of course, was just to begin down a seemingly endless list. I haven’t even mentioned disappearing mountain glaciers or the soaring temperatures of South Asia or the Middle East. (Iran hit a record heat index temperature of 158 degrees in August.) But let me stop there. It isn’t hard to see that, if we humans continue to use staggering amounts of fossil fuels and so pour ever more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere — and the latest study indicates that they are heading in that direction at record levels — the Earth, or at least life as we humans have known it on this planet, will, in the long run, almost literally go down in… what else?… flames.
That was two years ago. Now, thanks to the short sighted voting choices of millions (including Gen Z whose futures will be cratered), the orange felon has returned to power and vowed to burn the rest of the planet to a crisp. In barely two months, Dotard Trump has severely damaged the world’s
ability to fight climate change, and likely set us back twenty ‘Earth days’.
This ignorant tyrant has upended U.S. environmental policy with cynical, short-sighted moves that will have lasting implications for this country, and the planet. With a flurry of bogus executive orders- that have exceeded the limits of presidential power- Trump has gutted federal climate efforts, rolled back regulations aimed at limiting pollution and given a major boost to the fossil fuel industry.
He's also abandoned efforts to reduce global warming, even as the world has reached record levels of heat that scientists say is driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels. After all, on Inauguration Day, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, making it the only nation to walk away.
Process that! The only nation to walk away.
Every corner of the world is now experiencing the effects of these rising temperatures in the form of deadlier hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts, as well as species extinction. Much worse, for many of his MAGA base, he has gutted NOAA - especially the section responsible for deploying weather balloons to detect violent super cells, tornadoes. That means millions will now be in the path of these storms and not know until it's too late, costing untold losses in lives, property.
In addition to achieve such a wholesale overhaul of the country’s climate policies in such a short time, the Trump administration has reneged on federal grants, fired workers en masse (E.g. at NOAA) and attacked longstanding environmental regulations. Relatively unpolluted air and water from now on? Forget about it! So expect lung diseases, respiration disabilities and cancers to multiply.
Trump has also frozen funds appropriated by Congress for clean
energy projects, taking particular aim at wind energy, the country’s largest
source of renewable power. He has
stopped approvals for wind farms on public land and in federal waters
and has threatened to block projects on private land.
The bottom line is that given the climate havoc he's wrought, the world and particularly the younger generations inhabiting it, will be left to live fraught and destitute lives as the worst of climate change transpires between now and 2100. Much of this will be because Trump's actions will have accelerated Earth's crossing of severe climate tipping points, e.g.
As noted in the above graphic, a tipping point arises when a previous stable equilibrium is suddenly upended for a more violent, hostile one. Say, for example, we are now at Equilibrium 1 where we expect (in the U.S., Canada) heat waves that can last 1 -2 weeks on average. By all accounts and measures (e.g. rate of increase in CO2 concentration), Trump's insane actions could have us at Equilibrium 2 by 2035. In this new scenario we could be looking at heat waves (110F- 120F /day) lasting up to 2 months. In an SSP5 -8.5 scenario (issued by the IPCC) we would see an increase of 5.7 C by 2100, which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted.
It seems likely that by the time Trump leaves office (hopefully) in 2028 the Earth will be on that SSP-8.5 extreme trajectory.
See Also:
by Robert C. Koehler | April 26, 2025 - 4:39am | permalink
Let Earth Day be every day! Let it transcend the present state of politics and our economic hierarchy. Let it open us to the future we long for but do not yet envision.
We live on one vulnerable, extraordinary planet. We are not its overlords; we are part of an evolving circle of life, which we are still trying to understand. And we can only understand it if we also value it, ever so deeply. Earth Day is also Love Day.
Oh God, let it flow beyond the invisible borders we have created. To that end, I call forth the late Pope Francis, who died two days ago as I write—a day before Earth Day 2025. He was 88. Unlike most world leaders, he saw the need to transcend the present worldview—including religion—that currently holds the planet hostage.
And:
by Tom Engelhardt | September 12, 2023 - 5:09am | permalink
And:
by Basav Sen | April 25, 2025 - 4:51am | permalink
On April 22, Earth Day, the White House issued a press release that reads like parody. It would be comical if the consequences weren’t so dire.
The release proclaims that President Trump “follows science.” This is a laughable lie.
In a few short months, this administration has censored scientific information on government websites, tried to eviscerate funding for scientific research, turned its back on global scientific cooperation, and fired government scientists.
Leading administration officials have publicly repeated fossil fuel industry-backed disinformation. And in a very disturbing recent move, a federal prosecutor has sent threatening letters to medical journals, revealing the administration’s authoritarian impulse to censor scientific findings that challenge their agenda.
And:
The Intelligent Irrationalists: Why So Many High IQ Folks Deny Sound Science
And:
Five Major Climate Tipping Point Manifestations & What They Mean
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