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Earth Day 2025 arrives amid a widening political divide over environmental protection, climate policy and the responsibility to preserve natural resources for future generations.
Consider a driver who deliberately throws a bag of fast-food garbage into the woods and leaves unseen. Asking whether that person probably supported President Donald Trump or former Vice President Kamala Harris is an unscientific exercise. Still, the scenario reflects a serious question: Why has disregard for environmental protection become associated with some corners of conservative politics and the online “manosphere”?
During the 2024 campaign, Harris and other Democrats generally supported stronger safeguards for wildlife and the environment, along with regulations intended to limit climate change. Trump’s record has moved sharply in the other direction.
His first administration reversed more than 100 environmental rules, including 30 involving air pollution and emissions, 19 covering drilling and extraction, nine addressing water pollution, and 10 concerning toxic substances and safety.
Many of those changes came through the Environmental Protection Agency. The administration weakened limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and vehicles, removed federal protections from more than half of the nation’s wetlands, and withdrew the legal basis for restricting mercury emissions from power plants. Analysts estimated that the deregulatory campaign would substantially increase greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to thousands of additional deaths from poor air quality.
Trump accelerated that approach after returning to office in 2025. Following action against 31 environmental rules, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin declared March 12 “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.”
“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion,” Zeldin said, arguing that the changes would reduce living costs, expand American energy production and bring automobile jobs back to the United States.
That agenda raises questions about the EPA’s core mission to protect human health and the environment, ensure clean air, land and water, reduce scientifically identified risks, enforce environmental laws and support research and public education.
The Wilderness Society has described Trump’s environmental record as an unmatched path of damage across public lands, air, water and communities. Its president, Jamie Williams, called Trump “the worst President for the environment in our history,” pointing to reductions in the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah as the largest single rollback of land protections in U.S. history.
The organization has also criticized actions affecting Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and wetlands covered by the Clean Water Act. It warned that mining and energy proposals, including possible sulfide-ore copper mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, could endanger important watersheds.
The dispute is unfolding after 2024 became the hottest year on record, while carbon emissions also reached record levels. On his first day back in office, Trump again withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement. He also sought to freeze billions of dollars for clean-energy projects, promote coal production and use a declared national energy emergency to increase domestic fossil-fuel output.
Bill McKibben, a climate author and founder of 350.org, has argued that worsening disasters and turmoil in insurance markets offer concrete answers to those who dismiss climate warnings as exaggerated. He cited destructive fires following exceptionally hot, dry conditions in Los Angeles and insurers withdrawing policies as climate change makes future risks harder to predict.
McKibben also said younger people are anxious because they see an enormous threat to their future while national leaders fail to respond. They understand the scientific warnings, he argued, and want officials to demonstrate that they take those findings seriously.
Earth Day should reinforce that responsibility. Young people concerned about the planet must continue embracing science and pressing leaders to protect ecosystems, public health and a stable climate for generations to come.