The trade war and armed conflicts have partially overshadowed the numerous and damaging climate decisions made by Donald Trump in the first year of his new presidential term.

Halting the green transition, relaunching fossil fuel supply chains, withdrawing (for the second time) from the Paris Agreement, firing thousands of scientists, slashing budgets, scrapping web pages covering climate change topics. US President Donald Trump's dedication to dismantling most of the global warming policies painstakingly put in place during the Biden administration has been relentless throughout the first year of his second term in the White House. At times, however, these decisions have faded into the background, so numerous and disruptive have been the other choices made by the American billionaire.

The launch of an unprecedented trade war involving the entire world, combined with the imposition of a diplomatic role in the conflicts in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, has in some cases captured the bulk of public attention. Yet as the thirtieth United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30, to be held in November in Belém, Brazil) draws near, the weight of the American climate-sceptic crusade represents a warning bell for the entire world.

The list of measures adopted by the Washington administration against the climate and the environment is endless. Some have counted nearly 150 decisions in the period between 20 January alone — the day of Trump's inauguration — and the end of July.

Scientific research has been the first to pay the price. As early as last March, within just two months of the presidency, Trump had managed to push out 1,300 employees at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, some dismissed with a simple email.

The agency, which is fundamental not only for climate research but also for meteorological forecasting models, has so far seen its workforce shrink by 20 per cent, equivalent to the loss of more than two thousand people. In many cases, dismissals came virtually overnight. And according to an internal document obtained by the journal Science, NOAA's leadership will be forced to shut down its research centre entirely, retaining only monitoring activities.

The anti-scientific axe wielded by the far-right American president has also spared neither the National Weather Service nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The latter has lost around a thousand employees, despite its importance having been made plain once again by the very recent cases of flooding in Florida following Hurricane Milton and the mega-fires that broke out in California.

Then, on 28 April, the authors of the next National Climate Assessment (due in 2027) were dismissed. The report, which every five years since 1990 has been compiled by hundreds of scientists, represented a fundamental document for guiding United States policy not only on climate but also in sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and transport. And previous reports have been removed from government websites.

This is science according to the Washington administration: keep what is convenient, delete what is inconvenient. It is for this reason, for example, that the decision was made to cut $4 million in funding to a research institute affiliated with Princeton University, justifying the move on the grounds that climate studies "produce anxiety" and "exaggerate risks". Cuts have also been imposed on the National Science Foundation, a body responsible for awarding research grants to universities; as a result, hundreds of projects have been blocked.

In his anti-scientific zeal, Trump has also turned his sights on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has similarly lost more than a thousand employees, including two hundred people who worked in the environmental justice division. Republican politician Lee Zeldin was placed at the head of the agency, and in June came the shock proposal to eliminate almost all environmental regulations currently in force in the United States — including, for example, those imposing limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

NASA has not been spared either. On 10 March, even the chief scientist of the celebrated US space agency, climatologist Katherine Calvin, was dismissed along with around twenty of her colleagues. Her office, along with two other agency departments, has been completely dismantled, as confirmed by NASA itself. The role of chief scientist had existed since 1982, but had already been eliminated in 2005 by George W. Bush, then reinstated in 2011 by Barack Obama.

The NASA RIF has begun: Acting NASA Admin Janet Petro just sent this out: As I alluded to last week, we are all navigating a complex and ever-changing landscape together, and I want to share what that means for our team in the near term. As directed by President Trump's… pic.twitter.com/PCJ1JkG9TA

For NASA, this represents a serious loss, since Calvin has also been, since 2023, co-chair of Working Group 3 at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In February, moreover, she had already been prevented by the government from attending a working meeting in Hangzhou, China — something that had never happened before.

As for energy policy, it comes as no surprise that Trump has remained faithful to his doctrine: reinvigorating fossil fuel sources by facilitating the production and exploitation of gas and oil (nearly 4,500 drilling permits have been approved), while also obstructing the spread of renewables. Seven large solar projects and eleven wind projects have been cancelled since the start of the year, according to information provided to the French daily Le Monde by Shannon Baker-Branstetter, a director at the think tank Center for American Progress.

Trump announces second withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement https://t.co/A4iqOsuQQ7

In practice, the already insufficient pledges by the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will thus be impossible to honour. Trump will not even need to justify his choices before the international community, having opted to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement (for the second time — the first was in 2017). In any case, his choices are ultimately consistent: both with his own agenda and with our unsustainable model of economic development.