\n<\/p>\n
<\/span>A delta smelt at the University of California Davis fish conservation and culture lab in Byron, California, on 15 July 2015.<\/span> Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli\/AP<\/p>\n Upon re-entering the White House in January, Trump revealed an unusual fixation would become an immediate priority for his administration \u2013 the fate of an endangered, three-inch-long fish that lives in California.<\/p>\n The unassuming delta smelt, Trump said rather uncharitably, is \u201can essentially worthless fish\u201d which had been lavished with water flows that should instead go to nearby farmers or help fight the devastating wildfires that were raging hundreds of miles south in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n On his first day in office, Trump issued an eye-catching executive order titled \u201cPutting people over fish\u201d that demanded water be diverted from the smelt\u2019s habitat and towards needy people.<\/p>\n Experts were quick to point out that water situated so far away would not aid the firefighting effort in LA, with the small amount of water provided to keep the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta ecosystem intact overshadowed by the much larger forces at play in California, such as the climate crisis, which has spurred monumental droughts in the region.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n <\/span>Offshore wind turbines stand off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, on 29 June 2020.<\/span> Photograph: Steve Helber\/AP<\/p>\n Continuing on the aquatic theme, Trump\u2019s first month in the most powerful office on the planet also included a bizarre tirade against offshore wind energy for its supposed impact upon whales.<\/p>\n The president said that \u201cwindmills\u201d were \u201cdangerous\u201d, citing the example of whales being washed ashore in Massachusetts as proof that \u201cthe windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously\u201d.<\/p>\n While there were a spate of dead and sick whales becoming stranded ashore, Trump\u2019s own federal government scientists have rejected the idea that wind turbines placed in the ocean are to blame.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point, there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause whale deaths,\u201d the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration states. \u201cThere are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.\u201d<\/p>\n The main threats to whales continue to be entanglement in fishing nets, boat strikes and altered prey behavior due to a rapidly heating ocean from the climate crisis, which is causing whales to have to forage closer to land, experts say.<\/p>\n This hasn\u2019t deterred Trump from enacting a long-held grudge against wind energy by halting planned projects and stating that \u201cwe don\u2019t allow the windmills and we don\u2019t want the solar panels\u201d in August. The president has also claimed that wind is \u201cthe most expensive energy there is\u201d \u2013 a false claim, wind and solar are, in fact, among the cheapest sources of power that have ever existed.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n <\/span>Donald Trump departs after speaking at the UN general assembly in New York on 23 September 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In September, Trump delivered a remarkable, often fact-free speech to the United Nations, in which he said that climate change is the \u201cgreatest con job ever perpetrated on the world\u201d, blaming \u201cstupid people\u201d for predictions that have hobbled countries with a costly \u201cgreen scam\u201d.<\/p>\n But perhaps the most unusual revelation in the speech was Trump outlining how he has sought to directly rebrand coal as a clean power source. \u201cI have a little standing order in the White House,\u201d he said. \u201cNever use the word \u2018coal\u2019. Only use the words \u2018clean, beautiful coal\u2019. Sounds much better, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n Coal is, in fact, far from clean. It is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels in terms of the carbon it emits when burned, which then heats up the planet, and it also gives off air pollutants that routinely harm the heart and lung health of those who live near coal power plants.<\/p>\n Black lung disease, meanwhile, is an affliction many coalminers have suffered after directly inhaling coal dust (the Trump administration axed a program that screened coalminers for the respiratory condition).<\/p>\n The federal government across different administrations has lavished funding upon plans to install carbon capture facilities at coal plants, to stop harmful emissions from escaping, but this has yet to be implemented in any meaningful way in the US.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n <\/span>A sign on Highway 101 displays a warning about extreme heat in Corte Madera, California, on 2 July 2024.<\/span> Photograph: Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In the same speech to beleaguered-looking diplomats at the UN, Trump scoffed at the scientific reality of global heating, instead claiming that scientists had just changed their minds from the planet cooling down.<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to be global cooling,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said, global cooling will kill the world. We have to do something. Then they said global warming will kill the world. But then it started getting cooler.\u201d<\/p>\n The world is not cooling down \u2013 it is heating up at the fastest rate in the history of humanity, due to the burning of fossil fuels and, to a lesser extent, deforestation. Scientists are unequivocal about this, as can anyone who can grasp a simple temperature graph.<\/p>\n In the 1920s and 1930s, the field of climate science wasn\u2019t as developed as it is now but even by then there was an understanding of the greenhouse effect and few scientists in the decades since have expressed concerns about \u201cglobal cooling\u201d compared with those warning of planetary heating.<\/p>\n The Earth is thought to have been in a long, gentle cooling pattern for thousands of years due to natural forces but this was upended by the industrial revolution, with the vast amounts of heat-trapping gases emitted in the past 150 years setting us on a completely new and dangerous path. The world is now hotter than at any previous point in human civilization.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n <\/span>Donald Trump during the US-Saudi investment forum in Washington DC on 19 November 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Stefani Reynolds\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n Last month, Trump announced new investigations related to the climate crisis. Not to find more about the severity of global heating and its implications, as such \u2013 more to target those who have told the world about it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a little conspiracy out there,\u201d the president said at a US-Saudi investment forum in Washington. \u201cWe have to investigate them immediately. They probably are being investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear who \u201cthey\u201d are \u2013 scientists, Democratic politicians, the insurance companies pulling out of states because of the crushing cost of climate-driven disasters? \u2013 but Trump pushed on.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir policies punish success, rewarded failure and produced disaster, including the worst inflation in our country\u2019s history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n While the Trump administration has fired scientists, hauled down mentions of the climate crisis from government websites and banned federal employees from uttering verboten words such as \u201cemissions\u201d and \u201cgreen\u201d, the reality remains that the world is warming up and past projections of this have been generally accurate.<\/p>\n Some of the most accurate forecasts of global heating came from the fossil fuel industry, which knew of the dangers from the 1950s onwards and produced strikingly accurate projections of future heat in the 1970s.<\/p>\n Instead of informing the world of this peril, however, oil and gas companies instead set about a decades-long campaign to downplay and distort this science in order to maintain their lofty position in the global economy.<\/p>\n Trump has not called for an investigation of these companies, choosing instead to openly solicit campaign donations from them in return for rollbacks of clean air protections once he became president \u2013 a promise he has largely fulfilled.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. Putting people over fish A delta smelt at the University of California Davis fish conservation and culture lab in Byron, California, on 15 July 2015. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli\/AP Upon re-entering the White House in January, Trump revealed an unusual fixation would become an immediate priority for his administration \u2013 the fate of an endangered,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[794,2788,1891,186,2154,8077,1123,21418,81,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-39527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-beautiful","10":"tag-claims","11":"tag-climate","12":"tag-coal","13":"tag-cooling","14":"tag-global","15":"tag-startling","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. <\/span>Wind energy is ‘driving the whales crazy’<\/h2>\n
3. <\/span>Clean, beautiful coal<\/h2>\n
4. <\/span>Global cooling<\/h2>\n
5. <\/span>Climate change investigations<\/h2>\n