Chapter 11: The Climate Collapse Presidency
Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: "The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink"
FYI, I’ll be a guest on Ali Velshi’s MSNOW show at 11 AM ET this morning, internet and news gods allowing…
Chapter 11: The Climate Collapse Presidency
Climate change is the single greatest threat to a sustainable future
but, at the same time, addressing the climate challenge presents a
golden opportunity to promote prosperity, security and a brighter
future for all. —Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General,
Remarks at Climate Leaders’ Summit, April 11, 2024
The greatest existential threat humanity faces isn’t hiding in a military bunker or a terrorist cell. It’s in plain sight: the accelerating collapse of our only home’s life-support systems.
Trump’s first term was environmental arson. He gutted the EPA, installed fossil fuel executives in key positions, shredded over one hundred environmental protections, and abandoned the Paris Climate Agreement.1 Scientists were silenced. Research was suppressed. The words “climate change” vanished from government websites as if deleting terms could delete reality.2
When confronted about climate’s role in the devastating 2020 wildfires, Trump smirked: “I don’t think science knows, actually.”3 Tell that to thirteen-year-old Wyatt Tofte, who died in Oregon’s inferno embracing his dog as he tried desperately to save his grandmother.4 As our Western skies turned blood-orange, Louise and I choked from a summer of wild forest fires, and record hurricanes pummeled our coasts, Trump mocked renewable energy and praised coal.
But his second term has proved apocalyptically worse. By April 2025, Trump had reinstated his “Schedule F” executive order, purging government agencies of climate scientists.5 His new EPA administrator—formerly chief counsel for a coal conglomerate—is suspending methane regulations, gutting emissions standards, and fast-tracking permits for drilling in previously protected Arctic wilderness.6 The phrase “climate emergency” is now prohibited in federal communications, while years of expensive-to-compile government climate data are being systematically altered, hidden, or outright deleted.
Climate collapse reveals democracy’s most fundamental challenge: can we save our planet for our children and grandchildren when fossil fuel profits demand Republicans force inaction? The answer is becoming horrifyingly clear as tipping points approach: permafrost is thawing, ice sheets are destabilizing, and ocean currents are weakening.7
These aren’t distant threats: they’re happening now, accelerated by policies designed to benefit the donor class while sacrificing everyone else.
This betrayal falls hardest on poor and minority communities. Environmental justice and racial justice are inseparable.8 Studies consistently show that communities of color consistently face the highest levels of air pollution, toxic waste, and climate disasters while having the fewest resources to fight back. And to add further injury, Trump and Musk have now gutted FEMA.9
As droughts intensify, coastlines disappear, and climate refugees multiply, the social fabric unravels. Democracy requires at least a modicum of stability, but climate chaos breeds authoritarian “solutions.” The Pentagon itself identifies climate change as a “threat multiplier” that endangers national security. Scientists warn we have less than a decade to halve emissions before crossing irreversible tipping points.10
Our children will judge us not by our tweets or culture wars, but by whether we protected their right to a livable planet. The machinery of climate destruction doesn’t operate in isolation: it’s connected to the plutocracy that captured our courts, the propagandists who poison our media, and the authoritarians who threaten our democratic foundations.
This is the ultimate test of our republic: Can we break the stranglehold of fossil fuel money on our politics? Can we choose a habitable planet over quarterly profits?
Time is running out, and the climate doesn’t negotiate. Physics doesn’t care about political convenience. Either we reclaim our democracy from corporate capture and dark money in politics, or we surrender both a livable planet and our system of government to collapse.
I asked AI what is the effect of Trump #47 on the climate? Ans. below:
In his second term as the 47th President, Donald Trump has moved aggressively to reverse U.S. climate progress by prioritizing fossil fuel production and dismantling federal environmental oversight.
Key effects on the climate and policy include:
Withdrawal from International Agreements: On January 27, 2026, the U.S. officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement for the second time. Additionally, the administration has announced departures from over 60 international bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Increased Carbon Emissions: Projections suggest that the administration's rollbacks could lead to an additional 4 billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions by 2030 compared to previous trajectories.
Dismantling Regulatory Foundations: The EPA is currently working to repeal the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which is the legal basis for nearly all federal greenhouse gas regulations.
Expansion of Fossil Fuels: Under the mantra "drill, baby, drill," the administration has fast-tracked deep-sea mining, reopened Alaskan refuges for oil development, and granted roughly $40 billion in new subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
Stalling Clean Energy: Federal support for wind and solar has been slashed, including the elimination of the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit and nearly $13 billion in green energy funding.
Information and Data Gaps: The administration has removed past National Climate Assessments from federal sites, deleted climate science webpages, and cut funding for climate research programs, creating significant gaps in global climate tracking.
While federal action has stalled, market forces and state-led initiatives—particularly in California and Texas—continue to drive some growth in renewable capacity despite federal headwinds.
Climate change is a Hoax! Here on the Florida barrier islands, somebody snuck around and changed everybody's thermometers to 26 degrees in the middle of the night. Preposterous joke. We have not had a drop that low in 16 years. Trump is such a kidder. Then there are all those hurricanes started by Jewish space lasers and those occasional wildfires too. Who thinks that building houses out of flimsy wood with flammable shingle roofs causes such destruction? You think we lost houses to floods just because they were built in floodplains? Ridiculous! Trump is a genius. He will figure out who is doing this and have his ICE Gestapo put them in prison.
I learned all this from MAGA posts on TS and X, so it must be true.