Trump’s second term features manufactured crises as climate catastrophe looms

Critics slam Republican president for ignoring climate emergency while stoking fear over the border, trade, and other fabricated emergencies—meanwhile, Biden’s inadequate action haunts the nation.

Just one month into Donald Trump’s second term, the White House is already doubling down on its playbook of fearmongering and distraction, fabricating crises to divert attention from the most pressing threat facing humanity: the climate crisis.

As wildfires, hurricanes, and heatwaves ravage the planet, the Trump administration has resurrected its favorite tactics—hyping up border security scares, trade wars, and other manufactured issues—while ignoring the existential threat of a warming planet.

Meanwhile, critics are pointing to the Biden administration’s failure to deliver meaningful climate action during its tenure, leaving the U.S. ill-prepared to confront the escalating emergency.

“This is déjà vu with a vengeance,” said Lisa McCormick, the anti-establishment progressive who challenged disgraced former US Senator Bob Menendez in the 2018 Democratic primary. “Trump is back to his old tricks, inventing enemies and stoking division while the planet burns. But let’s not forget that Biden also failed to rise to the occasion.”

During his first term, Trump was infamous for dismissing climate science as a malicious deception, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, and rolling back over 100 environmental regulations.

Now, in his second term, he has already reignited fears of immigrant caravans, escalated trade tensions with China, and pushed for expanded fossil fuel drilling—all while sidelining climate scientists and gutting environmental protections, which would cause catastrophic and irreversible damage to our climate.

“It’s a masterclass in misdirection,” said McCormick, a passionate environmentalist. “Trump is creating theater while the world is on fire. Saying ‘Drill, baby, drill’ is virtually the same as saying, ‘Kill babies’ because the first person who will die—as a result of planetary failure, where the Earth’s atmosphere becomes so disrupted due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions that it can no longer support life as we know it—has already been born.”

“Children born today will face a world with more frequent and severe climate disasters, reduced biodiversity, and greater competition for resources,” said McCormick. “Climate Climate change is already claiming lives through extreme weather events, heatwaves, wildfires, floods, plus food and water insecurity. It will continue to do so with increasing severity and our children face greater risks with every ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.”

“Democratic climate efforts, while historic on paper, were nowhere near enough to address the scale of the crisis,” said McCormick. “Biden didn’t do enough to put out the fire either. We’re paying the price for both administrations’ failures.”

“In the case of the climate crisis, which is the deepest problem our civilization confronts, that consists of claiming that global warming is a hoax and that its main solution—clean energy—is expensive and ineffective,” said environmental activist Bill McKibben. “All this has been on display in Washington in recent days, as the grandees of the fossil fuel industry gather to celebrate Trump’s win, and as the president-elect’s cabinet nominees told the Senate that, even if turned out to be real, climate change was no great threat, and that they were intent on reviving even the coal industry with government aid.”

The Biden administration had touted its climate policies as “historic” and “unprecedented,” pointing to the Inflation Reduction Act, which included billions of dollars for clean energy projects. However, critics noted that these measures were inadequate to meet the urgency of the crisis.

Despite Biden’s rhetoric, the U.S. became the world’s largest producer of oil and gas during his presidency, breaking records for fossil fuel output. His refusal to declare a climate emergency—a move that would have unlocked additional federal resources and enabled more aggressive action—drew widespread criticism from activists and scientists.

“Joe Biden (couldn’t) both try and win the votes of young people who care about the climate crisis and stand beside fossil fuel companies who are trying to violate our futures,” Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement.

“The do-nothing Democrats talked a big game, but when it came to taking bold action, they fell short,” said McCormick. “Now we’re stuck with Trump, who isn’t even pretending to care about the climate. It’s a nightmare scenario.”

The numbers are staggering, with 2024 surpassing 2023 as the hottest year on record, and each year since 2015 has been among the 10 warmest years on record. Throughout that time, devastating climate-driven disasters struck every corner of the globe.

The new year began with destructive wildfires burning across parts of California, and a deep freeze that covered much of the southern and eastern U.S. January 2025 was also the sixth-driest January on record for the U.S., according to data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

Yet under Trump’s leadership, the U.S. has accelerated its fossil fuel production, approving massive drilling projects and rolling back even the modest climate gains made under Biden. At the same time, the administration has dismissed renewable energy as “unreliable” and pushed for increased coal consumption.

“We’re breaking records in all the wrong ways,” said McCormick. “We’re producing more fossil fuels than ever before, and our emissions are still far too high. This isn’t leadership—it’s a failure of moral and political will.”

Even some Republicans are beginning to voice concerns.

“Not the only reason, but a big reason why people are coming here is many of them are climate refugees,” said Stephen Perkins, chief operating officer of the American Conservation Coalition, referring to immigration “There are places where whether it’s flooding or extreme heat, they’re coming here to escape that. And so there’s actually a connection.”

“I understand the need to secure our borders and protect American jobs,” said another GOP activist. “But we can’t ignore the fact that our planet is in crisis. This administration’s refusal to act is a dereliction of duty.”

As Trump’s second term gets underway, the stakes couldn’t be higher. With the climate crisis accelerating and the administration showing no signs of changing course, activists are calling for urgent action.

“We need leaders who will confront the real crises, not invent fake ones,” said McCormick. “Our survival depends on it.”

For now, the White House remains focused on its manufactured narratives, leaving the rest of us to grapple with the consequences of their inaction.

The question is: how much longer can the world afford to wait?

In scientists’ worst-case scenarios, human-caused climate change is a threat to the continued existence of many species and human society as we know it. If humans do nothing to slow climate change, then global temperatures may increase by 4.5 degrees Celsius or more by the year 2100.

In a less dire circumstance, it could worsen worrying trends such as anti-democracy uprisings and migrant crises as people flee areas that are increasingly hit by natural disasters that will be exacerbated by climate change—rising sea levels, more frequent powerful hurricanes, and droughts that threaten freshwater supplies, for example.

“The question of what happens to the human species,” says Kieran Setiya, an MIT professor of philosophy who co-teaches a course on the ethics of climate change, “is, do we make progress toward a more just and egalitarian future? Or do we end up descending into conflict and sectarianism and nationalism? That is at stake in our reaction to climate change. At stake, in turn, is how we should feel about our own existence as a species. The answer depends very much on whether we respond to crises like this with grace and compassion and justice, or not.”