America’s pristine natural resources are threatened in the wake of Donald Trump’s second coming to political office.
As a young man, I had the pleasure once of biking and hiking in the beautiful mountains and forests of Vermont. The name of the state is originally French and means green mountains. Vermont, as I remember it, was America at its best: a vast wilderness, an environmental champion, a lively culture, and pancakes and maple syrup.
Whilst briefly thinking back on Vermont, the name of the nature philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) pops up in my mind. In his seminal work, Walden (1854), man and nature are fused together in a novel quest for harmony. Thoreau often presented his beloved America as the greatest and freest land on earth. But alas, those days are gone. The American landscape and psyche are severely scarred. Where will it all end?
Two Different Administrations
The incumbent President Trump campaigned hard in 2024 on a platform of climate denial and a promise to reverse federal policies having to do with environmental protection. Today, most professionals, bureaucrats and experts are stunned at the speed and the magnitude of the environmental protection he has called to a halt.
The current administration seems little interested in real environmental issues. I would forward the idea that they rather tend to see immigrants as an environmental problem. As a result, the use of force against Hispanics and others across several cities in 2025 and 2026 has been mind-blowing. The Trump administration demonizes marginalized populations, using racial slurs and hate speech. Immigrants are “aliens”, rapists, and are “poisoning the blood.” This all sounds like someone describing dangerous pollution.
Already during his first period in office, 2017 – 2021, Trump pulled the USA out of the global Paris Agreement on climate. He issued several executive orders for more coal- and oil production, and curtailed pollution laws. Much of this was then overturned when Joe Biden came to power in 2021. The Biden administration also inaugurated an ambitious environmental plan, known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which included the largest federal climate change investment in American history.
But American right-wing hardliners had learned a lesson during Trump’s first period, where he muddled through, so to speak, without much of a strategy behind his anti-establishment and anti-nature policies. This led to endless fights with the judicial system, and several of his close collaborators were also forced to resign.
To make more of an impact the second time around, close to 100 conservative organizations and various business leaders therefore joined together in order to better prepare for lasting changes. This included lists of environmental executives and scientists to be sacked, and often with political appointees ready to take over for merited bureaucrats. The second coming of the new Messiah was well prepared.
The 2025 Project
At the helm of this organized endeavor was The Heritage Foundation, a conservative group, with a mission “…to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense”.
They, and their collaborators, formulated a right-wing Bible for the upcoming administration, named Project 2025. In short, the project rejects climate science. Put simply, this fits into what we might call the worldview of Big Oil. The plan sets out the goals of cutting back on federal agencies that protect the environment. Furthermore, there were plans to dismantle regulations to allow more oil and gas exploration on protected federal lands.
Some of this really makes no sense. What is the rationale behind curtailing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration? This federal agency tracks hurricanes and provides potentially life-saving information to those in a storm’s path. Something in the interest of the inhabitants in Florida, e.g. They live, and sometimes die, due to hurricanes hitting the Sunshine State. These types of hurricanes and storm patterns will become harder and more severe in the years to come. To spell it out: lives sometimes depend on what the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service forecast.
More is to come, according to a piece in the New York Times signed by Lisa Friedman, on the 10th of February 20226. According to the article, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to overturn what is known as the “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific determination that climate change threatens public health and welfare. By doing so, the federal government will effectively be relinquishing its authority to regulate the emissions that are dangerously warming the planet.
The New York Times warns that this could make it harder for future administration to reverse course and curb emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other chemicals from automobile tailpipes and factory or power plant smokestacks.
Goodbye to Climate Solidarity
This side of the year 2000 has seen some of the hottest and crisis-prone years ever on record, as prophesized by international climate science. But not only did the second Trump administration, again, now on January 27, 2026, withdraw from the landmark Paris Agreement. Trump also ordered the U.S.’s departure from over 60 international organizations, including several related to climate change, biodiversity and renewable energy, calling them ‘wasteful, ineffective, or harmful.’
Trump also refused to spend money appropriated by Congress for foreign assistance, including to UN agencies, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other U.S. agencies that provide direct support to communities harmed by climate change, and has repeatedly attacked programs that address climate change.
Trump called climate change a “scam” when speaking at the UN General Assembly in 2025. He travelled to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026. Here, he called sustainable energy policies the “greatest hoax in history”.
The Trump administration doesn’t want to sign any global plastic treaty and is opposed to cuts in plastic production. Furthermore, the U.S. government is reducing both the availability and collection of air pollution, weather and a host of other environmental and climate data that are used in the U.S. and around the world. Academic freedom and the right to access information, including on climate change, are under serious threat. Norway and other European countries have responded quickly and offered grants and positions for American scientists moving to Europe in search of academic freedom.
A Severe Crackdown on Activism – and “pollutant” Immigrants
Climate activists also feel threatened, as the U.S. government has cracked down on protest and dissent, often describing protesters as “ecoterrorists”. The threat of litigation against environmentalists is growing. There are lists of words, like “climate change,” “green”, and “decarbonization”, which the administration wants to get rid of.
The current administration seems little interested in real environmental issues. I would forward the idea that they rather tend to see immigrants as an environmental problem. As a result, the use of force against Hispanics and others across several cities in 2025 and 2026 has been mind-blowing. The Trump administration demonizes marginalized populations, using racial slurs and hate speech. Immigrants are “aliens”, rapists, and are “poisoning the blood.” This all sounds like someone describing dangerous pollution.
Trump and his administration are fighting windmills, literally, but maybe also in a Don Quixote sense. Green energy continues to grow in the US. States like California and Texas keep expanding solar, wind, and storage capacity, showing that the market believes in energy transition. Utilities have also been building huge battery banks for storage when the sun isn’t shining: California added nearly 70 percent more storage capacity in 2024 than the year before.
Public lands are being misused
But time is of the essence. The Trump administration has already opened millions of acres of public lands to private interests. These are lands that were once set aside for recreation and conservation. What will they become when they are now open to oil and gas development and logging instead?
Some of the nation’s most pristine landscapes are at risk. The administration has decided to end protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which covers 19 million acres. Let’s hope business companies decline the option. Other natural pearls are under threat, like the forestland in the Boundary Waters region of Minnesota, the high desert mesas and canyons surrounding New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park, approximately 58 million acres of roadless wilderness throughout the national forest system, and roughly 87 million acres of unique habitat for threatened and endangered species. As several sources state, this also puts cultural sites, tribal lands and local communities at risk.
Vermont isn’t What It used to be
But America is so big and versatile, you might argue. She and her nature will survive. Wilderness, like the mountainous slopes and forests of Vermont are there forever. News reports tell us a different story. Wildfire smoke and shuttered beaches have pushed Vermonters to reexamine the state’s reputation as a refuge from the worst effects of climate change. Unrelenting rainfall has reportedly left towns underwater. Tropical storms are gathering strength.
Vermont is no safe haven any longer. The second coming of Donald Trump has worsened every outlook. America is under siege. There is a manmade disaster in the main office of the land. Nature can but hit back.
Additional sources used:
My Green Planet – The Environmental Fallout of Donald Trump’s Executive Actions in 2025
The consequences of Trump’s war on climate in 7 charts | Grist
How is President Trump Impacting Global Climate Action? | Amnesty International USA
