The Secret Way Donald Trump Is Fighting The Climate Crisis - CleanTechnica (2025)

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It’s no secret — Donald Trump is opposed to basically all forms of climate action and doesn’t seem to understand that the world is running face first into a tremendously catastrophic climate crisis. But you don’t have to believe something exists in order to challenge it.

Trump has cut funding and programs for offshore wind power, solar power, electric vehicle charging, and EV battery development, among other things. He has pulled the US out of international climate agreements and negotiations on things like shipping emissions. He’s against money-saving energy efficiency programs, he’s pro-pollution, and he’s banning the use of the terms “climate change” and “global warming” across federal agencies.

So, you may ask, how the heck is he secretly fighting the climate crisis?

Well, take a look at this graph of global CO2 emissions:

In the past two decades, there have been two notable dips in CO2 emissions. One was during the financial crisis and Great Recession of 2008–2009. The second was the global COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic shutdowns. The simple fact is: when the economy crashes, CO2 emissions go down.

It seems clear so far that Donald Trump is intent on crashing the economy. Of course, he’s not thinking that consciously, it’s not a deliberate plan. However, he’s truly going gangbusters on trying to take down the US economy, and probably much of the world economy with it. This multifaceted project includes:

• His insane and shocking imposition of tariffs on countries around the world, including massive ones on China.
• Taking basic funding and services away from tens of millions of Americans, which will lead to much less economic activity.
• Scaring away tourists, crushing a big portion of the US economy.
• Making enemies out of friends and allies, tearing down trade alliances and raising costs for consumers.

On the back of these things, the US stock market crashed — temporarily, but let’s see what’s around the corner. Even more notable and concerning, the US bond market crashed. Trump then made a sudden reversal on most of the tariffs, but the damage isn’t fully reversing. Trust in the US has been severely harmed, including trust in our debt and reliability paying it back, in our bonds, and even simply in the future of our economy.

Yeah…

We are getting set up for complete economic disaster. And we haven’t even talked about Social Security and Medicare yet.

Trump is setting us up for an economic shitstorm like we’ve never seen before. The only positive is: when the economy crashes, so will CO2 emissions and broader pollution. However, it would have been preferable to just stay on course with positive cleantech-supportive policies that reshore industrial and professional jobs to the United States. Heck, he could have even taken credit for it all — Republicans do it all the time with Democrat-passed policies. Unfortunately, the slight pullbacks in the economic bombs Trump is throwing will not be enough to stop the crash he’s intent on creating, and — even more so — the long-term degradation of USA’s reputation abroad and economic benefits at home.

I’ll end with some comments from readers. Here’s one from Troy Frank:

“This is really an under-reported catastrophe in the making. Debt payment levels were already getting close to levels equal with total defense spending. How’s paying the debt going to work once Commander Drumpf adds 390+ BILLION to the deficit, and has to start paying higher interest on govt debt (bonds).

“Looks to me like Don is going to his old standby, and trying to drive the US to bankruptcy. Yes, I get that countries with their own currency can’t go bankrupt per se (at least not like a business/househould), but what happens to the US when Donnie announces 80% of govt debt won’t be repaid, and the remaining 20% will get $0.20 on the dollar? Made up numbers obviously, but you get the idea”

Username Taycan adds:

“Paying interest would be keeping to a contract, and living by the terms of a deal. That so isn’t the Trump way…

“Normally the idea of the US defaulting on its debt would be close to unthinkable, but Trump withholding payment from for example the Chinese as ‘leverage’ really doesn’t seem that outlandish anymore.

“It would certainly stop people talking about tariffs!

“If the so called Chinese curse ‘May you live in interesting times’ was apocryphal, it may not be for long!”

Scott adds:

“Yah. If I were China I would be dumping treasuries as quick as possible without crashing the market. That might be what we are seeing right now.”

Scott also notes:

“No matter how much it’s indebted the US doesn’t have to go bankrupt or reneg on its obligations. As a last resort it will just conjur up more money by having the fed buy trillions in treasuries. (Eg print money)

“The problem of course is inflation. If the US prints trillions more every year , at some point inflation will go crazy. So no default just super high inflation, and in a worst case hyper inflation.”

And elsewhere he writes:

“Meanwhile the bond markets are busy repricing the US. Treasury Yields are surging, US$ is falling. The increased interest payments will wipe out any savings many times over.

“Trust in the US has been lost. Safe haven status of US is being questioned. This is basic market psychology.

“I’ve said this many times before, but Americans are very ignorant of the ‘extraordinary privilege’, as the French call it, of owning the world’s reserve currency. Lose that status and America will be much poorer and less influential. (But ironically it will help a lot with the trade deficit )”

Mark Turner expands on that:

“Idiots is for sure.

“Regarding DOGE cuts, the DOGE idiots do not care for the large half of population who need care and protection by government.

“Regarding tariffs, these idiots don’t understand half the reasons why the USA has a large trade deficit. For example :

“1 US Dollar is very strong against other currencies. This makes US goods expensive in other countries (so they don’t import those goods) and makes foreign goods cheap in the US (so the US does import lots.)

“2 The built-in fault-virtue of Capitalism is efficiency. That means the constant search for cheaper inputs enticed US manufacturers to move overseas where labour and other costs are less than in the USA. Then they export the goods back to the US.

“3 The US is the most powerful economy on Earth. The US consumer is a voracious greedy animal. There is a huge market for imported foreign goods.

“But Trump & Moron Corp. blame the trade partners. D-oh !”

In a similar vein, pohjois writes:

“The USA used to have to be in possesion of one very highly valued good – trust. It was trusted that strength of the institutions and adherence to the rule of law makes it an ultimate safe haven for money earned elswhere. Countires worldwide were buying american dollars, which cost USA nothing to produce, for goods that did have a real cost in human labor and resources. And yet somehow Americans (some of them) believe that this is somehow to the disadvantage of USA.
Unfortunately that trust was ill funded. The US institutions turned out to be hollow. The criminal, who staged a failed coup, instead of being promptly procecuted and put in jail was elected president. Not only is he criminal but comically ignorant clown. How this is possible? This is because US political system is built on institutionalised corruption, enshrined by the Supreme Court that said that paying politicians is equivalent to exercising free speech. So USA ended up in a state where almost all right-wing politicians are now are spineless dummies, who will do whatever their paying masters will want them to do. This was never more evident than in the Musk threats that if any of Republican congressman dares to say anything against Trump then he will fund the primary rivals. Democrats are not much better in this game – they also depend on big donors, but they are not so blatantly corrupt as Republicans. It is quite likely, that many/most of them would prefer different system, but they must play by the rules. Dollar is sanctosacred. Paying is exercising free speech.

“The only hope is that the orange agent and his totally incompetent and spineless team will crash USA so hard, that no amount of lies will cover it and people will kick them out. It would be much worse, if your wanna be dictator would not be a half-demented clown.”

All great points. And there are many others from our readers. But such insights are sacrilegious in the White House of a serially failed businessman who inherited a true fortune and went on to fail in countless ways before stumbling into the White House via his gift of gap and gripe.

Good luck, us. Let’s hope the lunatic driving our Stupid Duty truck doesn’t drive us off of too high a cliff.