The Orange Climate Con

The Orange Climate Con

Trump’s inauguration was a horrifying spectacle.

“We will end the Green New Deal and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to my great American auto workers…In other words, you’ll be able to buy the car of your choice.”—President Trump 2025 Inauguration

For over a decade, Trump has made contradictory statements and taken conflicting positions regarding the climate crisis. In 2009, he signed a letter with other business leaders urging President Obama and Congress to enact aggressive climate crisis legislation. However, his policies as president clearly demonstrated his stance. On his first day in office, he took the following actions:

He signed an order to remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted globally in 2015. The Paris Agreement seeks to reduce emissions and limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with a target of 1.5°C. The U.S., historically the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, played a pivotal role in the agreement.

He revoked Biden’s 50 percent EV target, which aimed to ensure that half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030 would be electric. This action also froze unspent funds allocated for the initiative.

According to the Associated Press, Trump signed an executive order with help from Reps. Jeff Van Drew and Christopher Smith, of New Jersey to “temporarily halt offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and pause the issuance of approvals, permits, and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects.”

Reuters quoted Trump as saying:
“We’re not going to do the wind thing. Big, ugly windmills. They ruin your neighborhood.”

Finally, he initiated the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO), an organization the U.S. helped found in 1948. WHO serves as one of the first lines of defense in preventing and addressing pandemics.

These actions complicate efforts to address the climate crisis and make urbanism—a sustainable way of living—more challenging. Urban areas in the U.S. are often more sustainable than rural areas. For example from information for Yale e360 , the average New York City resident uses only about a quarter as much gasoline as the average Vermonter. Manhattan residents consume even less—just 90 gallons a year, a rate unmatched by the rest of the country since the mid-1920s. New Yorkers also use significantly less electricity, averaging 4,700 kilowatt-hours per household annually, compared to roughly 7,100 kilowatt-hours in Vermont and over 11,000 kilowatt-hours nationwide. If New York City became a state, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use.

The climate crisis, urban planning, and health are deeply interconnected. Poor urban planning worsens emissions and resource inefficiency, leading to negative health outcomes. Climate impacts magnify health disparities, disproportionately affecting under-resourced urban areas. Yet, addressing these issues—such as by creating green, walkable cities—produces cascading benefits for climate mitigation and public health.

The United States actions also disproportionately impact women in the US and abroad:

When extreme weather disasters strike, women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men, mostly due to limited access to information, limited mobility, decision-making, and resources. An estimated 4 out of 5 people displaced by the impacts of climate change are women and girls. Acute disasters can also disrupt essential services, including sexual and reproductive health care, compounding the negative impacts for women and girls.—UN

These bulwarks placed in front of us out the gate from President Trump may make progress in the climate crisis more difficult, but not impossible. Prioritizing the lens of feminist urbanism, sustainability, and equitable urban design remains a powerful tool to mitigate climate impacts, improve public health, and build resilience for marginalized and historically excluded populations. We must continue to build the climate movement.