Excerpt:
In a year shaped by Trump’s return to the White House, the new administration touted “energy dominance” and protesters threw eggs at “swasticars.”
The years leading up to 2025 were marked by a rare optimism that the United States would finally do something about climate change. Former president Joe Biden called the crisis an “enormous opportunity,” and during his term, Congress passed the biggest climate law in the country’s history. It felt like the U.S. was on the cusp of a greener future — until that momentum came to a sudden halt.
As soon as President Donald Trump took office in January, he brought a swift end to that era with an all-out assault on his predecessor’s policies, unraveling environmental protections and canceling climate research. Trump abandoned global climate commitments while aggressively promoting fossil fuels at home, even as the rest of the world installed more solar panels and wind turbines than ever before.
There’s a word for this kind of reactionary response: greenlash, a social and political backlash against efforts to rein in emissions. In Trump’s second term, climate change became a politically radioactive word: Phrases including “clean energy,” “climate science,” and “pollution” began disappearing from government websites.
And people around the country took the cue. Corporations got quiet about their climate plans. Democratic politicians steered clear of phrases like “planetary emergency.” Media coverage of the climate crisis thinned. That all trickled down to everyday Americans, who say they’re hearing less than they used to about climate change on social media and from the people they know…
