On Sept. 23, Donald Trump delivered a typically long disjointed and incoherent speech to all the world leaders assembled at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on climate. The leaders of some of those nations have been watching rising seas flooding their cities, seeing citizens die in floods, hurricanes and heat waves, all intensified by a warming planet.
“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 that 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.”
Dr. Adelle Thomas from the Bahamas, who is the vice chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top body on climate science, stated that, “Millions of people around the world can already testify to the devastation that climate change has brought to their lives. The evidence is not abstract. It is lived, it is deadly, and it demands urgent action.”
Trump declared renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power a “joke” and “pathetic,” falsely stating they are flawed, too costly and too weak, according to the Associated Press. In fact, solar and wind are the cheapest and fastest alternatives for new electricity generation. Sadly, it’s our president who was on full display as pathetic and a joke.
Rhode Island’s $6.2 billion offshore Revolution Wind project, which was halted last month by the Interior Department, was just granted permission to proceed by a Reagan-era appointed judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This offshore project is 80% complete and the judge stated that there were no “factual findings” to support the Interior Department’s decision.
“The Trump Administration’s erratic action was the height of arbitrary and capricious, and failed to satisfy any statutory provisions needed to halt work on a fully approved and nearly complete project. It was not a close call,” Connecticut’s Attorney General stated in response to the judge’s decision. The Trump administration has said it wanted to assess how offshore wind farms might affect national security — a very lame excuse.
Trump has been especially blunt in attacking wind turbines and has made unfounded claims about them, including that they cause cancer and are responsible for whale deaths, because he doesn’t like to see them from his golf course in Scotland. “Windmills, we’re just not going to allow them,” he said at a recent cabinet meeting.
Meanwhile, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that his department will return $13 billion set aside for green projects to the treasury, while avoiding direct answers about affordability and grid reliability, according to The Guardian. Before appointed by Trump to lead the Department of Energy, Wright was the CEO of Liberty Energy, the second largest hydraulic fracturing company in North America.
However, because of the massive reduction of the federal workforce led by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year, the Department of Energy doesn’t have enough legal expertise left in-house to carry out the award cancellations the Trump administration has promised. Per Latitude Media, “Instead of replacing those attorneys, the Energy Department will spend up to $50 million on external legal counsel for the agency’s day-to-day operational work,” traditionally done by in-house counsel. And this was supposed to be a budget-cutting maneuver.
The Department of Energy recently added “climate change,” “green” and “decarbonization” to its expanding list of banned words at its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, read an email issued Sept. 26, obtained by POLITICO.
“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid — and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration’s perspectives and priorities,” acting director of external affairs Rachel Overbey decreed.
Additionally, officials were forbidden from using “emissions,” to not suggest that they are a concern, nor “energy transition,” “sustainability/sustainable,” “‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ energy,” “Carbon/CO2 ‘Footprint’” and “tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies.” Does this sound like censorship?
At the same time, despite Trump’s promises to lower the costs of electricity, rising electricity rates are hitting consumers just about everywhere as utilities struggle to build or reopen closed power plants to meet rising demand from rapidly multiplying data centers. Inside Climate News states, “As of July, the average household price of electricity in the United States had risen by 9.5 percent this year, according to the Energy Information Administration,” and this was just halfway through the year.
The administration also announced last week that they plan to open millions of acres of federal land to coal leasing and mining and provide hundreds of millions of dollars to support more coal-fired power generation, which is the dirtiest fuel and produces significant health hazards. Does this sound like cost-cutting?
Costs for building and running new wind and solar plants are now cheaper than continuing to operate most existing coal plants in the United States. This move is part of a broader effort by the administration to reverse the decline of coal use in the U.S., a fossil fuel that has been hard hit by environmental regulation and economic competition from natural gas in recent years. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said his department would open 13.1 million acres (20,500 square miles) of federal land for coal leasing in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. Burgum served as governor of North Dakota before being named secretary of interior.
“Coal-burning plants generated just 15% of U.S. electricity in 2024, a major decline from 50% in 2000, as fracking and other drilling methods have increased natural gas output, and clean and renewable solar and wind power have grown,” according to Reuters. “The number of people employed in the coal industry has declined to about 40,000 from 70,000 a decade ago.”
Gary Griggs is a distinguished professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. He can be reached at griggs@ucsc.edu. For past Ocean Backyard columns, visit seymourcenter.ucsc.edu/ouroceanbackyard.