The threat that shall not be named

For anyone who has read 1984, it’s fascinating to observe this moment in time here in the United States. For example, the unsubtle altering of history, such as the National Park Service’s web pages on the Underground Railroad and the Civil Rights movement to deemphasize “divisive narratives.” It’s outrageous but also so ridiculous, that if it were in a novel, you’d probably chuckle and silently reprimand the author for not being more believable. But it’s happening, especially in how climate change is being addressed, or, more correctly covered over.

Once upon a time, I laughed (admittedly one of those, scoffing angry laughs) when hearing about efforts to suppress climate awareness—such as when Florida governors banned government officials from talking about it (2017) and then actually erased references to the term from state law (2024).

But now, this has penetrated the U.S. government at a deeply destabilizing level—everything from removing climate references on government websites to directing the Department of Homeland Security to eliminate “all climate change activities.” (The irony, of course, is that a stable climate is essential to America’s security.) Some is laughable still, like the Commerce Department defunding climate research at Princeton University because the results will cause “climate anxiety” in “America’s youth.” No, the research won’t cause climate anxiety, the effects of climate change will!

Other fronts are subtle enough to perhaps only worry wonks like me. Last week, the Trump Administration issued stop-work orders on payments to contractors who coordinate the National Climate Assessment. This is a report produced every four years (with the next scheduled in 2027) that summarizes the threat climate change poses to America and how to respond. It also “serves as a crucial guide to state and community efforts to prepare for the effects,” as noted in this Politico article. This is a report mandated by Congress, but if there’s no one to produce it, how will it get done? Perhaps a White House intern can use ChatGPT to write it? We’ll find out in a few years.

But it gets far worse: last week, Trump also issued an executive order to stop states from enacting laws that charged polluters from producing greenhouse gases, mentioning specifically New York and Vermont’s climate superfund laws. While it’s unclear whether he can actually stop these, it’s another attempt to stop discussion of and responses to climate change. He also withdrew the U.S. from global negotiations around taxing emissions from ships. While seemingly minor compared to withdrawing from the Paris Agreement (again), this further alienates and isolates the U.S. from the vast majority of countries working to address the climate crisis. (Fortunately, the negotiations still succeeded.)

Finally, saving what might be the worst for last, last week (yes, it’s been a busy one!), the EPA said it was going to stop requiring almost all monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions at industrial facilities. These have been tracked for at least 15 years, since 2010. As noted in a New York Times article, even executives at the American Petroleum Institute aren’t opposed to the reporting program (in part because the law only requires monitoring not reducing emissions) but that’s saying something! And yet, the EPA is vastly scaling back this program, preventing the very monitoring of the pollutants that will destabilize America’s security (if climate change were recognized as a threat to security, of course).¹

So now we’re going to be flying blind. Which again, makes sense in this strategy: erase climate change from policies, government programs, from the media, schools, research and culture, and it’ll no longer hinder the development of oil, gas, and “beautiful, clean coal,” which is how Trump wants his administration to call coal, as he explained while issuing an executive order (also this past week!) to ramp up coal production, mining, use, and export.²

None of this is surprising—the fossil fuel industry bankrolled Trump’s campaign after all (after Trump’s request for $1 billion in support)—but still it’s demoralizing.³ We can’t just hide from climate change, whether extracting it from government policies or walking away from global agreements. Not addressing it will exacerbate climate change. It will make the U.S. a pariah state and derail U.S. progress on green technologies.

All that’s bad. Even worse is it will also prevent Americans from being prepared for what’s coming. 63% of Americans are worried about climate change, according to a 2024 Yale Climate survey. Even more think global warming will harm future generations (71%) and plants and animals (70%). And many want the government and corporations to take action (from 53-68% depending on which institutions). That’s positive. But only 36% of respondents discuss global warming at least occasionally, and just 28% hear about climate change in the media at least once a week!

That’s shocking. I’m bombarded by at least a dozen climate stories before breakfast! And yes, that’s intentional (and self-selected), but I’m not sure how one can avoid climate news any longer. Every weird weather event, every fire, every shift in seasonal norms, every new report, it’s a daily drum beat of climate news (except of course in the self-censored conservative media reality that a large portion of America now consumes).

By Naming We Draw Climate Change from the Shadows

In the world of Harry Potter, if one used Voldemort’s name, it triggered the appearance of his agents, the Death Eaters. I’m sure it’s already the same for government officials. They’re probably increasingly afraid of simply mentioning climate change, even when that’s they’re primary focus. But allowing for the erasure of climate change from our collective reality is incredibly dangerous (even as we also continue to recognize that climate change is just one of the horrific environmental catastrophes we’re driving and must address all of them).

So as we come to the end of this chronicle of climate censorship, what positive words can I leave you with? We must keep fighting for climate action and resist every newspeak effort, all while not losing sight of the fact that climate change (and the biodiversity crisis, plastics crisis, and chemicals crisis) are just symptoms of the deeper problem we face: an excessively large human population (and its dependent livestock and pet species) overconsuming resources as part of an extractionary consumer-corporate culture that attempts to substitute stuff for community, purpose, and joy. Instead, we must recognize how far we’ve transcended Earth’s boundaries and acting accordingly: consuming dramatically less, prioritizing strategies to degrow economies, normalizing smaller families (including pet children!), and so on.

Realistically, we won’t, and in a few years, Americans will be less socially, politically, economically, and psychologically prepared to deal with cascading climate and environmental crises—which may mean outlandish responses to these crises.⁴ But it is up to the climate literate and climate engaged Americans to continue to educate, resist, and build positive climate action (at any scale possible) in hopes of navigating the polycrisis in a way that limits suffering of humans and non-humans as much as possible. And it will be up to Gaians to promote a right relationship with the living Earth, based on respect, deference, and atoning for decades of exploitation—just not as individuals, but as economic, political, and cultural systems, even as the levels of climate denial and climate disruptions crescendo and pull apart the economic, political and social realities we’ve known our entire lives.

Endnotes

1) Ironically, with satellite technology, other governments or NGOs will most likely still track these emissions, and reveal the data against the Trump Administration’s will, making the country look even more like a rogue state (kind of like WMD monitoring).

2) Here’s Trump’s ridiculous statement: “I call it beautiful, clean coal. I told my people, never use the word coal unless you put beautiful, clean before it” (From this AP article).

3) Especially as fossil fuel executives now have a direct line to the EPA to request presidential exemptions from Clean Air Act requirements. Sigh….

4) Will people blame conspiracy theories? God? The devil? Radical eco-terrorists with space lasers funded by Bill Gates? With a vacuum of scientific understanding coupled with radical right-wing rhetoric, anything is possible.