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This morning’s front page is graced by a particularly disgraceful story about the Trump administration gutting America’s climate change readiness. I should say that I’ve worked in the climate change prevention movement and the best people in it are all totally crazy because they confront the realities of the story we’re about to explore on a daily basis. There are insider and outsider activists. There are 45-year-old white guys like me. Here I am amongst the redwoods a decade ago.

There are depressives and manics and manic depressives. Everybody is incredibly charismatic. The pub chat is wondrous. There are posh people. There are proles. It’s a heady atmosphere. The whole movement is compelling and traumatic and I’ve learned that for me, personally, the best thing to do is distance myself and bury my head in the sand.

One of my favorite people is a former climate activist who got depressed and went to art school with her trust fund. Now she posts ink splatter paintings on the Internet and it’s a huge “f__k you” to the haters whose judgmental opinions she used to allow to bring her down. But: Best of luck to y’all. I’ll be over here doing some yoga and playing squash with a Croydon accent and doing my best to draw sane boundaries. Not sorry. Thanks.

Andreas Malm, author of 2019’s How to Blow Up A Pipeline (which doesn’t include any instructions, actually), tends to argue that a proportionate and rational response to the deaf ears of the ruling classes is for the crazy people in the climate movement to become more radical. He argues that there should be room for tactics other than strict nonviolence and peaceful demonstrations. He says it’s dangerous to “fetishize nonviolence in past protest movements” because it “sanitizes history, removing agency from the people who fought, sometimes violently, for justice, freedom and equality.”

That’s some dangerous thinking, isn’t it? And of course the main problem with violence is that you can’t control it. In Russia in 1917, for example, the violence didn’t necessarily replace one horrific regime with a better one. But still. In an era when the Trump administration is declaring emergencies all over the place they seem to have forgotten… this one.

We’ll get to the climate story in a moment via my appreciation to reader Tom who recommended I subscribe to a newsletter by Heather Cox Richardson called “Letters from an American.” She’s a Harvard historian with about a million readers and every day (almost as many as me!) and she rounds up various horrors. I “enjoyed” this morning’s letter a lot, but it was notable for this exchange:

Good luck getting FEMA help for your tornadoes, Josh. The agency’s boss, Kristi Noem, is too busy polygraphing her staff to find out whether they might have been leaking information to the media. And yet she doesn’t know what “habeas corpus” is. (You may recall that I learned what it is a whole two days ago, so I’m not judging, although in her position, you’d think you’d want this one in your mind before you went before the Senate).

The Trump administration is not only disregarding the economic cost of climate change as it sets policies and regulations, but also weakening the country’s capacity to understand global warming and to prepare for its consequences, the story reports.

“We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud, anymore,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Fox Business on May 8.

I guess that might not be of much comfort if you happen to live in Missouri and your house looks like this, now…

By getting rid of data, the administration is trying to halt the national discussion about how to deal with global warming, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. And here’s a killer quote.

“The notion of there being any shared factual reality just seems to be completely out the window,” he said.

That’s why we read the newspaper!

Mr. Trump blames “climate lunatics” for environmental regulations that he says have been a drag on the U.S. economy. He dismisses the threats posed by climate change, suggesting that rising seas would create more “oceanfront property.” 

He’s funny. Admit it. But by cutting the National Weather Service and denying FEMA disaster relief, he’s weakened the country’s ability to prepare for and recover from hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and other extreme weather that is being made worse by climate change. The president is also moving to loosen restrictions on air pollution. Trump wants to make the world’s biggest economy less informed, less prepared and, over time, more polluted.

What a hero. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” as a way of speeding approvals for oil, gas and coal projects and expanding logging in national forests. He’s such a cartoon villain.

Incidentally, some agree that reforms to the nation’s environmental regulations were overdue. The piece quotes a Harvard professor (they’re everywhere!) saying lengthy permitting processes have also meant significant delays for wind farms, solar projects and other clean energy. But the president has not just tried to speed up permits. He’s “made the American government a global outlier in its denial of science,” the piece reports.

Fair. The Trump administration is dismantling the government’s ability to monitor a rapidly changing climate. It dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who were working on the National Climate Assessment, a congress-mandated report on climate change. More than 500 people have left the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in recent weeks, degrading operations. There are no more monthly briefing calls on climate change, and the president’s proposed budget would eliminate funding for weather and climate research. The administration has also purged the phrases “climate crisis” and “climate science” from government websites, the story reports.

I like that they let the reporter retain the phrase “so-called” there, in reference to DOGE. It must have slipped through in the edit. It’s a very angry-sounding phrase.

Mr. Trump is also reducing the federal government’s response to disasters, trying to shift responsibility to the states. In a statement, a spokesman for the National Security Council said that when disasters strike, states must have “an appetite to own the problem.”

Tell that to the people in Missouri. The Times responds to all this with a rather forceful paragraph based on facts and evidence:

I can see why they would want to stop counting, but surely they appreciate that ultimately this is all just irresponsible and bound to kill people. I suppose the only justification for behaving like this would be if you were a sociopathic maniac who’s only interested in enriching himself through holding the world’s most powerful office. But still, it’s a tad brazen, don’t you think?

The story rounds up countless recent examples of places hit by disasters and denied assistance. Here’s a masterful piece of understatement.

Although they (people in Arkansas) voted for the guy in droves. So. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Meanwhile the Environmental Protection Agency is being shredded. Trump wants to remove limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks. He has said that relaxing limits on pollution from automobiles wouldn’t “mean a damn bit of difference to the environment.” But “rolling back regulations will have a catastrophic effect on health in America,” said Harold Wimmer, the chief executive of the American Lung Association.

Mr. Trump has also made no secret of his hostility toward wind power, along with most of the clean energy technologies that would help the country pivot away from oil, gas and coal and reduce the emissions driving climate change. He’s stopped work on a wind farm off the coast of Long Island which has only now gone ahead again after intense lobbying by Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York.

The president’s proposed budget calls for eliminating funding for “the Green New Scam.” Republicans in Congress also want to repeal billions of dollars in tax incentives for production and sales of solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies. Some Republicans, to their credit, are trying to preserve those tax breaks because they help manufacturers in their states. But good luck with that.

The position also isolates the U.S. “Nearly every other government has recognized that a hotter planet poses a profound threat to humans and ecosystems,” the story reports. Even China and Saudi Arabia, who are investing heavily in alternative energy sources.

Average global temperatures last year were the hottest on record and a grim future awaits. The Trump administration’s behavior will have “implications for a while to come,” the story concludes. What a horror show. Yikes!

Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?

I’m not sure. But you could pay $7 to enter a lottery for this woman’s house in Ireland!

Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”