How Trump’s Attack on the Environment Can Impact Your Children
The ultranationalist, wannabe dictator will remove America from the global effort to respond to Climate Change. Ask yourself where that leaves your offspring.
Hold this one image in your mind if you want to know how Donald Trump feels about saving the environment for your children:
In April of this year, he asked oil companies for $1 billion to help return him to the White House. To repay them, he said he would overturn the Biden administration’s pro-environmental policies which the oil execs spent $400 million lobbying to prevent.
Image from America The Jesuit Review
He didn’t get that much. The global petroleum pushers did give him $2.3 million, more than the $1.5 million they forked over to Kamala Harris’s campaign.
If you need a second image to understand Trump’s environmental concern, recall that when he moved into the White House in 2017, he ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to remove its climate page from its website. That order then extended to other federal agencies. President Biden had the vital climate information replaced.
Expect more of the same from Trump in 2025, and it’s already affecting the globe.
As The Washington Post noted in its coverage of this week’s annual meeting of the Group of 20 largest economies:
For Biden, the trip that was supposed to be his swan song seemed to underscore his status as a lame duck. He became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest, where he hailed the progress made by his administration and that of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in advancing shared climate goals. But looming over his foray into the jungle was the imminent return to the White House of President-elect Donald Trump, who is bent on reversing much of Biden’s environmental record and again pulling out of the Paris climate agreement…
…For onlookers at the G-20, the mood was somber. Biden’s farewells prefigure a more uncertain era, with Trump poised to once more roil the global scene with his ultranationalism, protectionism and unpredictability.
Climate Change and the Young
The Lancet is a British weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. One of the oldest of its kind, it’s also one of the world's highest-impact academic journals.
This month, it issued a study showing human-caused climate change is having widespread negative effects on young people's mental health across the United States.
The online news site Axios reported:
The study is one of the largest to date to examine how young people are responding to global climate change and government action.
The research also reveals new insights into the mental toll on adolescents and young adults of extreme weather events that climate change either propelled or made worse, depending on the type of event.
The peer-reviewed study…provides the latest — and perhaps the most authoritative — look at what the authors refer to as "climate emotions," including despair, fear, anxiety and depression, among others.
The researchers analyzed the results of an online survey of about 16,000 U.S. youth between the ages of 16 to 25 between July and November of last year.
They found a large majority, or 85% of respondents, are at least moderately worried, with about 58% "very or extremely worried," about climate change and its impacts.
A smaller but still sizable group reported that these concerns were harming their mental health, with 38% stating their feelings about climate change were interfering with their daily lives.
The survey used includes respondents from every state.
Intriguingly, the study noted that young folks identifying as Democrats or Independents tended to be more worried than those identifying as Republicans. Which indicates that, like Trump, they place concern for making money over care for the environment.
Educating the Young
The key, of course, to stabilizing our young people and their response to Climate Change is both simple and vital: they must be educated to the scientific realities of Climate Change and how to confront it.
But education of the young is an enemy to Trump. It’s why he pulled references to Climate Change off the EPA’s and other agencies’ websites his first term.
It’s also why he’s planning to dismantle the federal Department of Education, which like any large government agency, may have its problems. But it has been a consistent important funder to states and their public schools and colleges, aiding them to help our children learn skills necessary for growth, and guide them in becoming contributing members of society…both to America and the world.
And remember this: It’s our tax money federal agencies distribute. Not Trump’s or Congress’s.
You might also recall that Trump, once upon a time, offered to the public courses through now-defunct Trump University. But he ended up settling lawsuits by paying $25 million back to students who sued him for his bogus scheme. We don’t know how much money he actually made from the con job. But it’s clear that, to him, profit is more important than educating others.
We the People…
If you don’t want the federal government to respond to the growing disaster of Climate Change, and if you don’t want Congress to continue supporting public education, then you can let Trump romp.
If you do want to protect your children, their future environment and educational opportunities, you’ll need to get organized (you can’t do it alone), educate yourself to the issues, and get active in your own protection effort.
You’ll need to communicate to the White House and to Congress your views. And you’ll need to vote in the midterm elections in 2026 to keep those in Congress who agree with you…and remove those who don’t.
Trump seeks $1 billion from oil CEOs, vows to limit EVs - The Washington Post
Oil & Gas Recipients • OpenSecrets
Climate Web Pages Erased and Obscured under Trump | Scientific American
Climate change harming young Americans' mental health (axios.com)
Trump paying $25M after judge approves Trump University deal | AP News
What happens if Trump eliminates the Department of Education (msn.com)
To read more about Trump’s fascism and other vital issues, see my book published by Parkhurst Brothers Publishers: