The year 2024 is the hottest on record, according to European Union scientists, just as 2023 was the previous hottest year on record. Extreme weather pelted our planet this year.
At this critical juncture, who has President-elect Trump selected to lead key agencies to deal with the existential crisis of human-made climate change? Climate change deniers or sellouts, who else?
Trump recklessly continues to call climate change “all a big hoax.” He has vowed once more to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, but this time with much graver consequences for our planet’s future. Even the few of his nominees who have been on record acknowledging climate change are now happy to conform to Trump’s campaign promise to “Drill, baby, drill.” Here’s a rundown on some of his key nominees:
Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior. A climate skeptic, he calls for opening public lands to drilling and has accepted hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars from Big Oil. He has personal investments with Harold Hamm, who is helping to pick Trump’s energy nominees.
Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury. The hedge fund billionaire would be tasked with carrying out the Inflation Reduction Act but dubs it “the doomsday machine for the deficit.” He calls for “energy domination.”
Sean Duffy, Secretary of Transportation. The Fox Business co-host once said President Obama shouldn’t have talked about climate change during the winter. But wait — there’s more! He once suggested the sun is creating climate change and we need “alternative science.”
Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense. According to the New York Times, he frames climate change as “a political ploy.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has gone from being an environmental attorney who acknowledged the threat of climate change earlier this year to complaining that “this crisis is being used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls.”
Elon Musk, co-head of “Department of Government Efficiency.” Although Musk has built much of his fortune championing electric vehicles and does not deny climate change, he says there’s no rush to fix it. Meanwhile, his co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy plans to “rescind” loan guarantees to Musk’s EV competitors and says he’ll do nothing to mitigate climate change.
Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture. Rollins literally leads the America First Policy Institute, otherwise calling itself the “other Project 2025.” Rollins claims, “There’s been no warming in over 17 years.” She also presides over a group funded by oil and gas companies that fights climate policies.
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State. The New York Times reports that he admitted global warming is real in 2018, but rejects policies to reduce fossil fuel use in the United States.
Elise Stefanik, Ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik criticized Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017 and voted to halt oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic. But now says she supports fossil fuel expansion.
Chris Wright, Secretary of Energy. He is chief executive of a fracking company and has “made a fortune from gas and oil.”
Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. Although he said “climate change is real” in 2016, Zeldin, who voted against certifying the 2020 election, supports Trump’s agenda of “energy dominance.” Where have we heard that before?
Although not all of these nominees are Christian nationalists, they are all willing to sell out to the Trump administration, which is pandering to evangelicals (some of them Christian dominionists), who are most apt to be climate change deniers. Harold Hamm, the oil and gas baron who personally handpicked some of them, by the way, is a devout Catholic who gave a $12 million gift to the University of Mary in North Dakota to establish a “Monsignor James Shea Chair of Engineering.”
Meanwhile, 90 percent of atheists — the highest percentage of any group by religious identification — agree climate change exists, is human caused and that climate mitigation policy is necessary to combat it.
“Don’t any of these people have children or grandchildren they care about?” asks Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “The consequences for future generations of not only withdrawing from climate change treaties but going into fossil fuel overdrive will be dire.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
