09-08-2025
Trump administration's climate denialism is a chance for other countries to step up
For nearly 25 years, the US government's National Climate Assessment (NCA) Reports have been seen as among the most comprehensive analyses of global warming and its impact on human health and economy. In a country where wildfires and storms have increased with alarming frequency in recent years, these reports are widely used by planners to devise mitigating strategies. The NCA's insights also inform global policymaking. But in April, the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists working on the latest edition of the NCA. And last month, the US government deleted the website that hosted these reports — some of them are still available elsewhere. On Wednesday, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that the Trump administration would 'update' these studies. The Department of Energy has said that 'Wright was not suggesting he would personally be altering past reports'. But this clarification does not appear convincing in light of the US Energy Secretary's well-known climate scepticism. In the past, Wright, one of the most ardent proponents of the Trump administration credo of 'Drill, Baby, Drill', has criticised the NCA studies for 'not being fair' in their 'broad assessment of climate change'.
In his first term, Trump withdrew his country from the Paris Pact and regularly suppressed or downplayed scientific research, which underlined the need for regulation to protect public health and the environment. In his second tenure so far, his administration has taken an even more disquieting approach — weaponising budget cuts to erode the autonomy of scientific agencies and making climate denialism part of their mandate. Hours after withdrawing from the Paris Pact for the second time, Trump asked the US Environmental Agency to reconsider its 2009 statement, which linked greenhouse gases (GHG) with adverse public health effects. Less than a week before Wright's announcement on revising the NCAs, the Department of Energy produced a report which claimed that 'concern over the climate crisis was overblown'. Criticised by several scientists for cherry-picking data, the study emphasised the positive effect of carbon dioxide — it said that the GHG promotes 'global greening' — without acknowledging its role in extreme weather events. Some experts cited in the study have reportedly criticised it for taking their research out of context.
The cancellation of NCA data could make the world's largest economy and second-largest GHG emitter less informed about one of the most pressing crises facing the world — and less prepared to confront it. America's retreat from the climate fight also comes at a time when the global resolve is nowhere close to what is required to confront the challenge. It's now up to institutions in other parts of the world to step up.
