The Climate Collapse Presidency

“Climate change is the single greatest threat to a sustainable future but, at the same time, addressing the climate challenge presents a golden opportunity to promote prosperity, security and a brighter future for all.” 

  —Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General, Remarks at Climate Leaders’ Summit, April 11, 2024

The greatest existential threat humanity faces isn’t hiding in a military bunker or a terrorist cell. It’s in plain sight: the accelerating collapse of our only home’s life-support systems.

Trump’s first term was environmental arson. He gutted the EPA, installed fossil fuel executives in key positions, shredded over one hundred environmental protections, and abandoned the Paris Climate Agreement.¹ Scientists were silenced. Research was suppressed. The words “climate change” vanished from government websites as if deleting terms could delete reality.²

When confronted about climate’s role in the devastating 2020 wildfires, Trump smirked: “I don’t think science knows, actually.”³ Tell that to thirteen-year-old Wyatt Tofte, who died in Oregon’s inferno embracing his dog as he tried desperately to save his grandmother.⁴ As our Western skies turned blood-orange, Louise and I choked from a summer of wild forest fires, and record hurricanes pummeled our coasts, Trump mocked renewable energy and praised coal.

But his second term has proved apocalyptically worse. By April 2025, Trump had reinstated his “Schedule F” executive order, purging government agencies of climate scientists.⁵ His new EPA administrator—­formerly chief counsel for a coal conglomerate—is suspending methane regulations, gutting emissions standards, and fast-tracking permits for drilling in previously protected Arctic wilderness.⁶ The phrase “climate emergency” is now prohibited in federal communications, while years of expensive-to-compile government climate data are being systematically altered, hidden, or outright deleted.

Climate collapse reveals democracy’s most fundamental challenge: can we save our planet for our children and grandchildren when fossil fuel profits demand Republicans force inaction? The answer is becoming horrifyingly clear as tipping points approach: permafrost is thawing, ice sheets are destabilizing, and ocean currents are weakening.⁷

These aren’t distant threats: they’re happening now, accelerated by policies designed to benefit the donor class while sacrificing everyone else.

This betrayal falls hardest on poor and minority communities. Environmental justice and racial justice are inseparable.⁸ Studies consistently show that communities of color consistently face the highest levels of air pollution, toxic waste, and climate disasters while having the fewest resources to fight back. And to add further injury, Trump and Musk have now gutted FEMA.⁹

As droughts intensify, coastlines disappear, and climate refugees multiply, the social fabric unravels. Democracy requires at least a modicum of stability, but climate chaos breeds authoritarian “solutions.” The Pentagon itself identifies climate change as a “threat multiplier” that endangers national security. Scientists warn we have less than a decade to halve emissions before crossing irreversible tipping points.¹⁰

Our children will judge us not by our tweets or culture wars, but by whether we protected their right to a livable planet. The machinery of climate destruction doesn’t operate in isolation: it’s connected to the plutocracy that captured our courts, the propagandists who poison our media, and the authoritarians who threaten our democratic foundations.

This is the ultimate test of our republic: Can we break the stranglehold of fossil fuel money on our politics? Can we choose a habitable planet over quarterly profits?

Time is running out, and the climate doesn’t negotiate. Physics doesn’t care about political convenience. Either we reclaim our democracy from corporate capture and dark money in politics, or we surrender both a livable planet and our system of government to collapse.

© 2026 Thomas Hartmann, Oregon. Thom Hartmann, educator and commentator, is the author of a highly respected book: The Last American President. And this article makes the Chapter 11 of the book, and it was published in  The Hartmann Report, a reader-supported publication where all weekday articles are free and available to everyone. Reprinted with permission of the author. Opinion expressed is not necessarily that of Skipping Stones, Inc.

By William Pan, grade 7, Washington.

How will the world end?
Will it end with alien settlers
from another galaxy?

Or will it be our own
war-torn fault, the world’s
sparkling Hawaiian sunsets

and buzzing Chinese streets
melting and emptying
any number of ways? Now

that Earth has warmed
like sand condensing
into a fragile universe

of glass, we are sturdy
yet fragile. We scowl before
we embrace. We pray

between arguments while saving
the world. Will we have to
flee this green haven? Will we

have to ribbon our faith
into the carbonated air? Or
shall we fit another

planet more to our liking?
Is any of this needed
to save us? Will this stop us

from existing, or can we stop
ourselves? Whether the world dies
or not, we must

cherish what we have—
whether the world succumbs
to bots or we continue

to laugh at movies
and jokes with each day

—William Pan, grade 7, Washington. He writes: “I wrote (this poem) because I realized that we need to unite to stop climate change from ruining our world… I have written many poems and short memoirs that explore culture and family. I am drawn to poetry because I can play with language and build imaginative worlds that enable me to explore things I can’t explore in the real world.” William has recently joined us as one of our student interns.”