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The last three years saw the world’s hottest temperatures on record. Storms intensified. Financial losses mounted. Sea levels rose. But President Donald Trump is waging a holy war against “climate ideologies” while making it easier to “Drill, baby, drill.”
Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and blamed it for causing “climate alarmism,” is canceling important research, replacing facts with falsehoods and casting environmentalists as heretics.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency says it “no longer takes marching orders from the climate cult.” EPA has replaced website pages about the health risks of human-influenced climate change with claims that rising temperatures are due to volcanoes and solar activity.
“The greenhouse effect ‘is natural and necessary to support life’” says the EPA’s revised website.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s fall speech to U.S military leaders said there would be “no more climate change worship” in his “Department of War.” The DoD has long championed research of climate change’s impact on its mission.
Trump has decided one way to fight alarmism is to halt funding of research that produces alarming results.
Trump has decided one way to fight alarmism is to halt funding of research that produces alarming results. That means major cuts to agencies you’ve probably never heard of but that perform research that could help save your life or property.
The University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, known as UNOLS, “oversees more than a dozen federal and university research vessels across the country that embark on months-long voyages to answer some of the planet’s most essential climate questions,” reported the Washington Post.
A UNOLS leader described the consequences: “America’s leadership in science and technology is a consequence of our scientists’ ability to make fundamental observations about the planet. Oceanographic research vessels are vital to this effort.”
Also under the spending axe is the National Center for Atmospheric Research, known as NCAR, in Boulder, Colo.
Russel Vought, an evangelical Christian who leads Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, called NCAR “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said the government would start “breaking up” its work, reported The New York Times.
Scientists say that’s a mistake.
“Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian and leading environmental scientist.
The Times described NCAR as a leading global researcher of weather and climate, including hurricane predictions: “Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters around the country, and its scientists study a broad range of topics, including air pollution, ocean currents and global warming.”
One example shows how NCAR’s research has changed the world for the better. Its research on downdrafts led to the development of systems that can detect wind shear and are now employed at airports worldwide to prevent crashes.
Days before Christmas, the Trump administration said it would pause leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects already under construction along the East Coast. NPR reported the administration cited national security risks identified by the Pentagon.
In the years after 1970’s first Earth Day, evangelical Christians largely supported “creation care.” Today they’re leading the charge against environmentalism.
Richard Land
As late as 1991, Richard Land and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission acknowledged that “humans are changing the earth” and causing temperatures to rise. Land urged fellow Baptists to get on board going beyond environmental concern to environmental action.
But within a few years, Land and the SBC reversed course, dismissed claims of global warming, condemned environmentalism as a pagan cult, and used their influence to oppose climate-friendly legislation.
Conservatives are still calling environmentalists cultists today because the rhetoric works to “frame environmentalists as fanatical and dogmatic while positioning their critics as reasonable and realistic,” wrote RNS contributor Colin Weaver.
Today, evangelicals share Trump’s lack of urgency about climate change, according to PRRI: “Among religiously unaffiliated Americans, the belief that climate change is best described as a crisis increased by 10 percentage points, from 33% in 2014 to 43% in 2023. By contrast, among white evangelical Protestants, agreement with this belief went down from 13% to 8% during same period.”
Focus on the Family has long railed against the claim that humans are “on the brink of physical annihilation due to global warming” and says environmental policies have done more harm than good.
“One of the most sad and unfortunate ironies of the environmental extremist movement is that, in many cases, scientists have pushed for policies which have hurt more people than they’ve helped,” Focus said in an article.
“The radical environmental movement caused countries to spend money they don’t have to make changes that won’t change anything in our climate,” Focus said. “The Earth’s end isn’t in mankind’s hands, but rather a matter of God’s sovereignty and a piece of his perfect plan.”
Related articles:
Evangelical clergy largely deny human causes of climate change
There’s a link between climate crisis and Christian nationalism, McLaren says
