{"id":3512200,"date":"2025-04-16T13:13:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T13:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3512200"},"modified":"2025-04-16T13:13:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T13:13:53","slug":"the-threat-that-shall-not-be-named","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-04-16\/the-threat-that-shall-not-be-named\/","title":{"rendered":"The threat that shall not be named"},"content":{"rendered":"

For anyone who has read\u00a01984<\/em>, it\u2019s 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\u2019s web pages on\u00a0the Underground Railroad and the Civil Rights movement<\/a>\u00a0to deemphasize \u201cdivisive narratives.\u201d It\u2019s outrageous but also so ridiculous, that if it were in a novel, you\u2019d probably chuckle and silently reprimand the author for not being more believable. But it\u2019s happening, especially in how climate change is being addressed, or, more correctly covered over.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, I laughed (admittedly one of those, scoffing angry laughs) when hearing about efforts to suppress climate awareness\u2014such as when Florida governors\u00a0banned government officials<\/a>\u00a0from talking about it (2017) and then actually\u00a0erased references to the term from state law<\/a>\u00a0(2024).<\/p>\n

But now, this has penetrated the U.S. government at a deeply destabilizing level\u2014everything from\u00a0removing climate references on government websites<\/a>\u00a0to directing the Department of Homeland Security to\u00a0eliminate \u201call climate change activities.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(The irony, of course, is that a stable climate is essential to America\u2019s security.) Some is laughable still, like the\u00a0Commerce Department defunding climate research at Princeton University<\/a>\u00a0because the results will cause \u201cclimate anxiety\u201d in \u201cAmerica\u2019s youth.\u201d No, the research won\u2019t cause climate anxiety, the effects of climate change will!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Trump praising \u201cbeautiful, clean coal\u201d in front of a group of miners before signing an executive order to boost coal production. If successful, this may have a far larger impact on producing climate anxiety, via accelerated climate change, than climate research does.\u00a0<\/em>(Screenshot from\u00a0Fox\u2019s Broadcast of the signing<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Other fronts are subtle enough to perhaps only worry wonks like me. Last week, the Trump Administration\u00a0issued stop-work orders on payments<\/a>\u00a0to contractors who coordinate the\u00a0National Climate Assessment<\/a>. 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 \u201cserves as a crucial guide to state and community efforts to prepare for the effects,\u201d as noted in\u00a0this Politico article<\/a>. This is a report mandated by Congress, but if there\u2019s no one to produce it, how will it get done? Perhaps a White House intern can use ChatGPT to write it? We\u2019ll find out in a few years.<\/p>\n

But it gets far worse: last week, Trump also issued\u00a0an executive order<\/a>\u00a0to stop states from enacting laws that charged polluters from producing greenhouse gases, mentioning specifically New York and Vermont\u2019s climate superfund laws. While it\u2019s unclear whether he can actually stop these, it\u2019s another attempt to stop discussion of and responses to climate change. He also\u00a0withdrew the U.S. from global negotiations<\/a>\u00a0around 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,\u00a0the negotiations still succeeded.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Finally, saving what might be the worst for last, last week (yes, it\u2019s been a busy one!), the EPA said it was going to\u00a0stop requiring almost all monitoring and reporting<\/a>\u00a0of greenhouse gas emissions at industrial facilities. These have been tracked for at least 15 years, since 2010. As noted in a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0article<\/a>, even executives at the American Petroleum Institute aren\u2019t opposed to the reporting program (in part because the law only requires monitoring not reducing emissions) but that\u2019s saying something! And yet, the EPA is vastly scaling back this program, preventing the very monitoring of the pollutants that will destabilize America\u2019s security (if climate change were recognized as a threat to security, of course).1<\/sup><\/p>\n

So now we\u2019re 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\u2019ll no longer hinder the development of oil, gas, and \u201cbeautiful, clean coal,\u201d which is how Trump wants his administration to call coal, as he explained while\u00a0issuing an executive order<\/a>\u00a0(also this past week!) to ramp up coal production, mining, use, and export.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Trump reveals his handiwork, an executive order to stimulate the production of coal, which by the way, has dropped from making up 45% of electricity in 2010 to 16% in 2023.\u00a0<\/em>(Screenshot from\u00a0Fox\u2019s Broadcast of the signing<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

None of this is surprising\u2014the fossil fuel industry bankrolled Trump\u2019s campaign after all (after Trump\u2019s request for $1 billion in support<\/a>)\u2014but still it\u2019s demoralizing.3<\/sup>\u00a0We can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

All that\u2019s bad. Even worse is it will also prevent Americans from being prepared for what\u2019s coming. 63% of Americans are worried about climate change, according to a 2024\u00a0Yale Climate survey<\/a>. 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\u2019s 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!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s shocking. I\u2019m bombarded by at least a dozen climate stories before breakfast! And yes, that\u2019s intentional (and self-selected), but I\u2019m 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\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
1984 slogans updated for 2025.<\/em>\u00a0(Image modified with new slogans from one\u00a0found here<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Naming We Draw Climate Change from the Shadows<\/h3>\n

In the world of Harry Potter, if one used Voldemort\u2019s name, it triggered the appearance of his agents, the Death Eaters. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s already the same for government officials. They\u2019re probably increasingly afraid of simply mentioning climate change, even when that\u2019s they\u2019re 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\u2019re driving and must address all of them).<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve transcended Earth\u2019s boundaries and acting accordingly: consuming dramatically less, prioritizing strategies to degrow economies, normalizing smaller families (including pet children!<\/a>), and so on.<\/p>\n

Realistically, we won\u2019t, and in a few years, Americans will be less socially, politically, economically,\u00a0and psychologically<\/em>\u00a0prepared to deal with cascading climate and environmental crises\u2014which may mean outlandish responses to these crises.4<\/sup>\u00a0But 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\u00a0navigating the polycrisis in a way that limits suffering<\/a>\u00a0of 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\u00a0atoning for decades of exploitation<\/a>\u2014just 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\u2019ve known our entire lives.<\/p>\n

Endnotes<\/h3>\n

1) Ironically, with satellite technology, other governments or NGOs will most likely still track these emissions, and reveal the data against the Trump Administration\u2019s will, making the country look even more like a rogue state (kind of like WMD monitoring).<\/p>\n

2) Here\u2019s Trump\u2019s ridiculous statement: \u201cI call it beautiful, clean coal. I told my people, never use the word coal unless you put beautiful, clean before it\u201d (From this\u00a0AP article<\/a>).<\/p>\n

3) Especially as fossil fuel executives now have\u00a0a direct line to the EPA<\/a>\u00a0to request presidential exemptions from Clean Air Act requirements. Sigh\u2026.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And it will be up to Gaians to promote a right relationship with the living Earth, based on respect, deference, and\u00a0atoning for decades of exploitation\u2014just 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\u2019ve known our entire lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3512236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79716,213529,79718],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3512200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","category-energy-featured","category-environment"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3512200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3512235,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512200\/revisions\/3512235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3512236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3512200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3512200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3512200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}