What 1 Year of Trump 2.0 has Done for Environmentalism and Climate Change
Wow…it’s been a year. Three more to go…sigh
Let’s get into what just one year of Trump 2.0 has done to dismantle climate policy and wreak havoc on the environment.
I made this video pretty shortly after Trump was once again inaugurated. Many environmentalists, myself included, knew that after election day, we would be in for a whirlwind of environmental damage from Trump’s second term. After he signed those initial executive orders, our fears were confirmed. So what’s happened in the last 365 days?
Need a palette cleanser before or after this? Check out some climate wins from 2025. It’s not all despair!
Public Lands
If you’ve spent any amount of time on the short-form content apps, especially if you follow me over there, you for sure saw all of this. From illegally firing rangers on February 14th to wanting to drill on public lands to a huge possible sell-off of public lands, they were always at risk in 2025 and will likely continue to be through the next three years.
Thankfully, things like selling our public lands were not (and won’t ever be) popular with ANY political party. It was people from all sides of the political spectrum who made their voices heard over the Big Beautiful Bill and the language that was sneakily added to sell public lands. Great news!
Bad news, they’re not stopping. We have to continue to pay attention here, as they will likely try to sneak sell-offs into other bills and by other means entirely. American Progress states that these other attempts “will remove protections from approximately 88 million acres of public lands and directly affect more regions of the country than Congress’ proposed Big Beautiful Bill sell-off.” This will include “removing protections for some of the most intact national forest lands, opening sensitive Arctic wildlife habitat for drilling, eliminating restrictions on mining for ecologically sensitive lands and waters, and erasing conservation requirements and habitat protections.”
And this will have far-reaching consequences, and you should care even if you don’t live in these states or even consider yourself outdoorsy. Our public lands keep our water clean (which we drink) as well as our air (which we breathe). These lands protect vital ecosystems that impact the entire web of life…spoiler alert, we’re in that web, too! Learn more about the importance of public lands here.
Ultimately, the lands at risk are due to:
Mining operations: Boundary Waters, MN; Upper Pecos River, NM; Ruby Mountains, NV
Reversing the “Roadless Rule:” according to the USDA, "Rescinding this rule will remove prohibitions on road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on nearly 59 million acres of the National Forest System.”
Changing the land use criteria: broadly applying to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, the Trump administration is trying to remove education, conservation, and recreation as valid land use for public lands. They want to deem only drilling, mining, and logging as valid uses for these lands.
Oil, coal, and gas leasing
And obviously, these broadly impact the environment in more than one way!
Climate Science
The words “climate change,” “global warming,” and others have been scrubbed from numerous government sites, says NPR. This also includes removing climate data and other science. They claim that the information has been totally removed, archived, or heavily edited to suggest that climate change is natural and not man-made.
And if you know anyone who works in climate science or anyone trying to go to grad school right now, you’ll have heard that climate science is being defunded. Projects, entire programs, and even whole divisions have lost federal funding to research and study climate change.
I found this article from Columbia Law School that piqued my interest…and then quickly fell flat: "Trump Issues Executive Order on Climate Change.” I thought, whoa, that was unexpected! Nope, it’s totally expected. This executive order aims to:
Rescind any “carbon dioxide (CO2) emission limits for existing fossil fuel-fired power plants.”
“Review the emission standards for new coal-fired power plants and to rescind or rewrite that rule if appropriate.”
“Review (and potential rescission or rewriting) of several regulations aimed at reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations.”
“Disbands the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon and rescinds the federal estimates for the social cost of carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide.”
“Revokes the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)’s guidance on climate change and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review.”
“Directs the Department of Interior (DOI) to amend or withdraw Secretarial Order 3338, which called for a programmatic environmental review and modernization of the federal coal leasing program, and to lift the moratorium on federal coal leasing that was called for in that order.”
And more
Yikes. This administration truly is undoing YEARS of climate policy. To be fair, other presidents only did the bare minimum. Climate policy in the US, especially post 9/11, is subpar. But this? The bar is below the floor at this point, and it will take years to undo this damage.
Deregulating the EPA
Headed by Trump appointee Lee Zeldin, the EPA has done some major work this year to undo past climate policy alongside Trump himself. Zeldin actually believes in climate change, believe it or not. I surely thought that only a climate denier would enact the changes below. But he must just have his hands in the right pockets and be personally gaining from these decisions. I have no idea why else someone would do these things.
This sentence in the press release made me chuckle. No, it’s really not funny, it’s just such an oxymoron I cannot believe this was published: “While accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment, the agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy.” You cannot protect the environment while drilling for coal and oil, point blank…but you especially cannot protect the environment when you increase drilling for coal, oil, and gas. Those are the very things destroying the environment.
Here are just a few things that the EPA has changed:
Reconsideration of regulations on power plants
Reconsideration of regulations throttling the oil and gas industry
Reconsideration of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that improperly targeted coal-fired power plants
Reconsideration of the mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that imposed high costs on the American energy supply
Reconsideration of wastewater regulations for oil and gas development to help unleash American energy
And more!
And the language in these is just so propagandized.
Slashing Green Energy
According to the BBC, “in January the president signed an executive order freezing federal approval of pending offshore and onshore wind permits, scrambling plans for many projects in the US that were already underway.” Funny…because just recently (as I’m writing this) the administration had zero problems opening over 1.3 billion acres of US coastline for oil drilling. Classic.
Anyway, a tiny shred of hope is that “17 states and a New York-based clean energy group sued the government” and in early December, “Massachusetts district court judge Patti B Saris vacated Trump's order, saying it was ‘arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law.’” I say tiny shred of hope because in summer 2025, the US Supreme Court “held that universal injunctions exceed the authority of federal courts under the Judiciary Act of 1789.” So while this ruling by a district court judge matters and is counted as a win, it’s winning a small fight and not the whole war just yet.
Besides this, the last year has been full of defunding green energy, cancelling projects, and doing nothing but opening more land for drilling. Third Way has a well-done timeline of these attacks on solar and wind energy but here are some prominent events from 2025:
Cancelled the Grain Belt Express: means of transporting abundant wind energy generated in Kansas to other nearby areas
Singing the Big Beautiful Bill which “will reduce generating capacity of new clean power by 53-59% over the next ten years, increasing household energy costs nationwide.”
Cancelling “$679 million in offshore wind funding, threatening to withdraw the grants for 12 projects across the US.”
Several agencies such as the EPA, USDA, and DOI cancelling a number of wind and solar projects fully outlined in the timeline below
And more
Villainizing EVs
Listen, I’m not here to say that EVs (electric vehicles) are the savior of the planet on their own. But they do have a role to play in reducing carbon emissions. Learn more about the nuance of EVs here. In recent years, California has made it a goal to reduce the sale of new gasoline and deisel cars in the state by 2035. Notice two things:
The sale of NEW cars. You can still buy used gas cars in the state after that date and,
The sale of gas cars in California. You can buy a gas car in another state to bring home.
Trump hated this so much that he signed an executive order in early December to dismantle this state-wide goal. I’m not sure how, but he can somehow force California (and other states that wished to follow suit) to get rid of this mandate, and the executive order is, no surprise, once again, riddled with propaganda.
So what does this executive order do? The proposed lowering of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to an average of 34.5 miles per gallon by 2031, a significant reversal from the Biden administration's target of 50.4 miles per gallon.
Not only this, but earlier in 2025, the federal government completely slashed EV incentives. You could get $7,500 in just tax credits before, but now you get none. This is simply a dollar amount you subtract from the taxes you owe that year. It’s not a cash bonus, it’s not a discount on the car.
Other attacks on EVs include halting federal funding for any charging stations and the EPA continuously rolling back emissions standards, which was most of the incentivization for US automakers to go green.
Rampant Climate Denial
The icing on the cake, right? Trump and his cronies continuously peddle climate doubt, skepticism, and misinformation to ensure that the US remains divided on this scientifically proven fact. Trump gave a speech to the United Nations Assembly itself, and this is what he had to say to other world leaders, according to PBS:
“This ‘climate change,’ it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” Trump said. “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people who have cost their countries’ fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”
Yikes. Not only is it wrong, but it’s also entirely unprofessional and embarrassing. Man-made climate change is proven factual by many scientists throughout dozens of scientific organizations. This fact has been known for literal decades, if not over a century. It does nothing but serve personal agendas to deny climate change and call it a con and a scam.
This is precisely how he can get away with everything else we just discussed.
Conclusion
Yikes, we made it. As much as I hated reading these articles and having to relive this experience several times through the editing process, it is important. I encourage you to read these executive orders for yourselves to hear the propaganda and understand their tactics. But it’s not necessary. I hope my message was clear and succinct.
My blood pressure has been raised, and I have a headache coming on, but I’m still glad that I know these things. We cannot fight for the planet and the justice of all of her people while being ignorant. No, I’m not saying you need to inundate yourself with 24/7 news. Take phone breaks, enjoy your hobbies, touch grass, whatever. But please don’t look away forever. I do highly encourage you to seek out good news, too. Good things are still happening when we work together. Enjoy this palette cleanser of a good news compilation!
Thank you for reading along. I hope that you learned something and maybe it even got you fired up to take action. But how? Start small. You sure can email Trump himself but that may be a useless endeavor. Try finding ways to eco-fy your towns. Protest their goals for offshore drilling. Support your local public lands. Share petitions and resources with others. The more of us fired up and educated on these topics, the better we can stop them. We outnumber them. And even though our system is increasingly more corrupt every day, they still listen to us when we make these issues become bipartisan like this summer’s fight for public lands.
Stay aware and keep fighting. Thank you for learning and thank you for caring about the planet. Come back next year for another similar update and stay tuned throughout the year for more inspiration on living a sustainable life and how we can all become activists to fight this system.
As always, remember that your small actions make a big difference in the long run :)
Emma
