On Jan. 20, Donald Trump was inaugurated into office. It took him less than a day to give the United States’s climate policy a serious setback and climate change the edge.
The withdrawal of the U.S. from the “Paris Agreement” that Trump signed in his first week in office will not only have consequences for the U.S. but will be noticeable all over the world. The president is sending a clear message of uncaring to those countries that have been working for years to protect the climate and to those suffering from the consequences of global warming.
Not even climate catastrophes in his own country could stop him. It seems that neither the devastating forest fires in California, nor the snowstorms in Florida gave him pause for thought.
Trump isn’t alone, with many other political actors and even climate activists seem to be giving global warming a lower priority than it had a few years ago. The question remains as to why people and, above all, politicians still don’t care enough. Why do they give priority to other problems, when especially now is the time to save the world from even more serious consequences with climate policy?
To get an idea of the impact global warming has on our earth and its population, we could start with the “Black Summer” of 2019 and 2020. During these years the most severe wildfires ever took place in Australia. According to Oxfam.org, thousands of people lost their homes and an area as big as the United Kingdom was burned.
It is hard to imagine that this is just a fraction of the natural disasters that appeared throughout the last year.
Natural disasters like floods in South Asia have an increasingly greater impact and worse consequences for the country and its people. To be clear, such weather outbreaks have always existed, but since the last decade, they have taken on great proportions. As Oxfam.org states, the “scale of destruction and devastation […] is new and terrifying.”
Strangely enough, the motivation to fight climate change seems to be declining despite the visible consequences. The Trump presidency is only one example of the decline of engagement in climate policy.
But especially now the U.S. should get its act together and bring a 180-degree turnaround in climate policy. For several years now, the U.S. has performed in the lower third of the countries assessed, according to the Climate Change Performance Index.
The CCPI compares the “climate protection performance” of several countries by collecting data of four categories: greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy, energy use and climate policy. Indexes such as the CCPI help to compare different countries and their performance in climate policy.
Not surprisingly, the results in the 2025 report are not in favor of the U.S.. To be more precise, the U.S. is in the very low category, together with Russia, China and various developing countries.
In consequence of Trump’s inauguration, the U.S. is expected to perform even worse. This is particularly concerning because the U.S. has a comparatively large impact on the world’s total emissions. In terms of cumulative CO2 emissions, the U.S. is still clearly at the top of the chain, despite the rise of industrialized nations like China, according to Climate.gov.
Even in other countries, which are doing relatively better, climate parties have not achieved as much support for a long time. The European Union is an example.
However, many climate movements in the private sector are no longer as present in the public eye as they were a few years ago. This could include, for example, the international climate organization Fridays for Future which was brought to life by the school strikes of Swedish Greta Thunberg in 2018. The series of global strikes initiated by this mostly student-led organization led to demonstrations with over 20,000 demonstrators in some places.
Although the demonstrations are still taking place, they have not had such a big impact for a long time. The broad masses who got carried away back in 2018 seem to have ended their time as climate activists for the time being.
Of course, Fridays for Future and other climate organizations have achieved many accomplishments over the years, but they as well as their supporters cannot rest on their laurels.
An explanation for this phenomenon could be the uprising of other problems with which democracy is currently struggling. . In Europe, many countries are facing an extreme shift to the right in politics and are confronted with difficult economic conditions.
The Global South in particular has so far been confronted with the consequences of climate change. It could therefore be easy for industrialized countries such as the U.S. to ignore the external dimensions.
However, it is important to note that the Global North will also be confronted with massive consequences in the future. Even if more climatic consequences are yet to come, many countries are already facing immense internal refugee flows.
It is essential to understand that the climate crisis is a global problem. It can’t be fought by just some countries to make an impact. Everyone has to get involved. The isolationist policy that Trump and other state leaders are currently pursuing is immensely damaging to the world’s population in the long term.
Closing your eyes and ignoring world events or facts that have existed for decades will come back to you sooner or later! Being prepared to critically question your actions and work together with others, for these are key factors in fighting the climate crisis.