Portrait of Emile Zola, 1898, by Nadar
Most of us contribute to climate change to some degree even if we’re convinced of its human-based causes and try our best to minimize its effects through lifestyle and ballot box choices. Those folk who dismiss climate change and whose choices only make matters worse, and media influencers who exhibit and encourage this Nero-like behavior, share more of the blame. But far and away the guiltiest party is the US government under Donald Trump, which—despite America being “the world’s largest contributor to human-caused climate change”—has become the sole major outlier in the international community (save for Russia since the Ukraine War) in combatting climate change.[1] And it’s therefore to Trump Inc. that my accusation of crimes against humanity is directed.
THE CHARGES
1. The accused deny that climate change’s primary cause is the burning of fossil fuels, that climate change has already begun, that its catastrophic effects will increase exponentially unless concerted worldwide action is taken, and all this despite:
A. Overwhelming evidence of climate change’s human causes, devastating effects, and the urgent need for counter-measures.
B. Full awareness of the overwhelming evidence.
2. Despite this awareness the accused:
A. Do nothing to combat climate change.
B. Oppose efforts to combat climate change.
C. Engage in actions that hasten climate change and worsen its effects.
THE EVIDENCE
1. Scientific evidence tying climate change to the burning of fossil fuels has been known since the1950s. It became the scientific consensus by the 1980s and by the 2020s reached a consensus of 97%.[2]
2. Studies by the oil industry itself supported this dire conclusion as early as the 1950s and “at the latest by 1968 . . . knew beyond a reasonable doubt about the relationship between burning fossil fuels and climate change.”[3]
3. The increasingly devastating effects of climate change have been obvious to any sentient being in the past several years, as seen in:
A. Consistently rising surface temperatures and ocean warming, accelerated melting of ice in the polar regions and of glaciers elsewhere, and sea level rise.
B. Extreme weather conditions and natural disasters including in areas and seasons rarely if ever given to them.
C. Water crises in various parts of the world including one in Pakistan “that threatens not only the entire country’s food security and public health, but the very survival of future generations.”[4]
4. Finally, while it may lack legal weight, it might still influence the jury to learn that contrary to claims of a mis- dis- or un-informed American public: “The vast majority of Americans across the nation believe climate change is happening (72%), are worried about it (63%), believe it’s affecting the weather (65%), and want to transition the U.S. economy to clean energy (66%), including funding research into renewable energy (76%).”[5]
THE PERPETRAITORS (and a short list at that):
1. Donald Trump: Already in 2016, presidential candidate Trump set the tone for his fellow oil industry shills by calling climate change a “hoax,” then pulled back from global climate change initiatives and rolled back Obama-era policies in his first term, upgraded the “hoax” epithet to a “scam” during the 2024 campaign, and has promised post-election to “Drill, baby, drill.”[6]
2. Elon Musk: The uber-billionaire who made his fortune on electric cars and solar panels and who in 2018 called climate change “the biggest threat humanity faces this century except for AI,” after hitching his Tesla to Trump in 2024 blamed the epochally destructive Los Angeles wildfires not on climate change but on DEI.[7]
3. JD Vance: Another mega-hypocrite, the Veep went from green-tech investor with high marks from environmentalists to praising fracking and railing against clean energy after his oil company-backed election to the Senate in 2023, and as Trump’s running mate he went whole hog, calling climate change “weird science” and “one of the greatest scams of all time.”[8]
4. Lee Zeldin: The new EPA head and former oil industry exec is clearly the most cognizant of his industry’s complicity in producing, hastening, and exacerbating the effects of climate change, which makes all the more despicable his echoing Trump and Vance in calling the Green New Deal a “scam” and promising a huge rollback of environmental regulations that will “drive a dagger through the heart of climate change religion.”[9]
5. Mike Johnson: The Speaker of the House and a devout Christian who one assumes believes in the 9th Commandment against “bearing false witness,” played a “key role” in the Big Lie effort to overturn Joe Biden’s election, and having also sold his soul to the fossil fuel folks, with “more campaign contributions from oil and gas companies than from any other industry,” also disingenuously questions climate science and opposes clean energy.[10]
6. John Thune: The Senate majority leader’s climate change denial has thus far avoided the cruder denunciations of his colleagues and instead has resorted to the GOP’s favorite weapon when all else fails: neo-McCarthyism, in calling the Green New Deal “a radical, comprehensive socialist revamping of our society, with the federal government inserting itself into nearly every aspect of American life.”[11]
7. Pete Hegseth: The longtime Fox News co-host and possibly short-lived Secretary of Defense combined media punditry and political policy-making in his climate change denial: first, on his TV show, a la Thune, he called climate change “a vast left-wing conspiracy to impose government controls on American society,” and as defense secretary he’s made Trump proud by planning to purge the department of all climate change efforts because, “The Dept. of Defense does not do climate change crap.”[12]
8. Marco Rubio: As a Florida senator the current Secretary of State dutifully did the oil industry’s bidding, steadfastly refusing “to admit that climate change was driven by human activity,” but as the country’s chief diplomat he’s gone further: highlighting how starkly the US position on climate change is at odds not only with that of the American people and the nation’s democratic values, but with that of the world at large.[13] As grounds for his backing out of a G20 meeting in South Africa of the “leading rich and developing” nations, Rubio accused the meeting’s theme of “diversity, equality, and sustainability”—as code for DEI and climate change—of being anti-American.[14]
A stunningly moronic insult, to be sure, both to the international community and the America of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. But Rubio also inadvertently did us a favor by underscoring what pro-American has meant all along to MAGA, Trump, and the other plutocratic vandals: white supremacy, inequality, and planetary collapse.
Well, only half a favor. For unless something can be done, pronto, to restore a semblance of human decency and environmental sanity to a US government gone berserk, we may be left solely with the question of which crime against humanity—Trump Inc.’s climate change denial or RFK Jr.’s anti-vax mania—will do us in first.
* * * * * * * * * *
NOTES
[1] March 5, 2025, https://www.statista.com/topics/3185/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions; Evgeny Pudovkin, December 10, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe. The US is the 2nd largest emitter of greenhouse gasses to China, which unlike the US continues to actively combat climate change (March 27, 2025, https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-envoy-sees-global-climate-fight-advancing-even-without-us).
[2] Jeff Turentine, September 23, 2022, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-are-causes-climate-change; Roger Revelle and Hans E. Suess, “Carbon Dioxide Exchange between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 During the Past Decades,” Tellus 9 (1957): 18–27; Emma Pattee, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/14/1977-us-presidential-memo-predicted-climate-change; https://web.archive.org/web/20120629204735/http://www.cmos.ca/changingatmosphere1988e.pdf; Krista F. Myers, et al., https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088.
[3] Charlotte Taylor, October 25, 2023, https://commonhome.georgetown.edu/topics/climateenergy/defense-denial-and-disinformation-uncovering-the-oil-industrys-early-knowledge-of-climate-change.
[4] “Running on Empty,” https://epaper.dawn.com/DetailImage.php?StoryImage=22_03_2025_006_001.
[5] Joan Michelson, https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanmichelson2/2025/03/27/most-americans-want-climate-action-how-to-bridge-the-political-divide.
[6] David Emery, September 27, 2016, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-global-warming-hoax; Nadja Popovich, January 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html; James Liddell, September 30, 2024, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-climate-change-scam-hurricane-helene-georgia; A. Martinez, H.J. Mai, https://www.npr.org/2024/11/13/nx-s1-5181963/trump-promises-more-drilling-in-the-u-s-to-boost-fossil-fuel-production.
[7] Eric Holthaus, February 9, 2018, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/why-elon-musks-ambition-is-an-antidote-to-climate-pessimism; Ryan Droste, January 11 , 2023, https://www.entrepreneur.com/green-entrepreneur/heres-what-elon-musk-really-thinks-about-climate-change.
[8] Andrew Stanton, April 19, 2022, https:/www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-worried-trump-was-americas-hitler-text-shared-roommate; Nicole Norman, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/07/16/vance-changed-his-tune-on-climate-change-oil-cash-flowed; Marcus Baram, July 20, 2024, www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/jd-vance-green-tech-investor-climate-change; Rhian Lubin, October 2, 2024, https://independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jd-vance-tim-walz-vp-debate-climate-change.
[9] Jack Davis, March 13, 2025, https://www.msn.com/en/us/politics/government/zeldin-to-drive-a-dagger-straight-into-the-heart-of-the-climate-change-religion-by-axing-landmark-obama-era-ruling.
[10] Summer Concepcion, October 15, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/mike-johnson-january-6-house-speaker-nominee; Jack McCormick, January 7, 2024, ttps://www.vanityfair.com/news/speaker-mike-johnson-still-wont-say-biden-won-2020-election; Lisa Friedman, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/climate/mike-johnson-climate-policies.html.
[11] https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/10/thune-democrats-prioritize-radical-climate-agenda-over-addressing-ongoing-energy-crisis.
[12] Arianna Skibell, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/11/14/where-gaetz-and-hegseth-stand-on-climate-change; Scott Waldman, https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/03/14/pentagon-starts-purging-climate-change-crap.
[13] https://www.floridadems.org/2022/04/22/earth-day-reminder-marco-rubio-has-spent-years-denying-climate-change
[14] Michelle Gumede, February 19, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/rubio-trump-g20-south-africa-eu.
Dr. Brook, this is a hard but necessary post to read. I'd offer one small comment, to edit the text to read, "The longtime Fox News co-host and HOPEFULLY short-lived Secretary of Defense ..."
Thank, David.