The White House Spent Earth Day Lying About Climate Science

Posted May 1, 2025

On April 22, Earth Day, the White House issued a press release that reads like parody. It would be comical if the consequences weren’t so dire.

The release proclaims that President Trump “follows science.” This is a laughable lie.

In a few short months, this administration has censored scientific information on government websites, tried to eviscerate funding for scientific research, turned its back on global scientific cooperation, and fired government scientists.

Leading administration officials have publicly repeated fossil fuel industry-backed disinformation. And in a very disturbing recent move, a federal prosecutor has sent threatening letters to medical journals, revealing the administration’s authoritarian impulse to censor scientific findings that challenge their agenda.

The scientific consensus is clear: Humanity needs to radically reverse course and transition away from fossil fuels and other pollutants that are heating up the earth.

The release goes on to claim that the administration is promoting “energy innovation.” But the technologies it boasts about — carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy — are polluting, expensive, infeasible scams. Meanwhile the government is making every effort to set back the development of wind and solar.

The release also makes a weak attempt to greenwash the administration’s support for the expansion of liquefied natural gas exports, labeling these exports as “cleaner energy” that will help with “reducing global emissions.” That’s exactly the opposite of what actual scientific research says about natural gas.

Even when they’re trying to greenwash their environmental record, the administration can’t seem to hold back from bragging about their ideologically motivated attempts to help polluters.

For instance, the administration has exempted more than a third of U.S. coal-fired power plants from requirements to cut mercury and other toxic emissions, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence of their serious public health impacts.

The administration is also questioning the very idea of environmental justice — the objectively true observation that polluting industries target communities of color and poorer white communities, among others, as “sacrifice zones.” There’s overwhelming evidence of these environmental disparities from peer-reviewed scientific studies.

Finally, the press release uses the classic disinformation tactic of shifting blame elsewhere, labeling China “the most prolific polluter in the world.”

China is a major polluter and needs to take responsibility for its own pollution. But on a per person basis, China’s greenhouse gas emissions are about 37 percent less than ours. And our historical, cumulative emissions — the ones heating the planet today — are almost twice as big as China’s.

A commitment to follow science only if and when it gives you answers that are convenient for your political agenda is not a commitment to follow science — period. Trump’s Earth Day lies have profound consequences.

The scientific consensus is clear: Humanity needs to radically reverse course and transition away from fossil fuels and other pollutants that are heating up the earth. The Trump administration’s policies are pointing us firmly in the opposite direction, all to make more money for the fossil fuel industry.

Reversing this administration’s assault on our shared Earth, and the people who live on it, starts with seeing through the fog of deception emanating from the White House — and recognizing the underlying agenda of serving powerful, polluting corporations at our expense.

Basav Sen directs the Climate Policy Program of the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.