A distinct orange haze sat above the Los Angeles skyline for most of January after unusual urban winter wildfires burned more than 50,000 acres and displaced nearly 200,000 residents. 18,000 people wouldn’t have a chance to return to their homes; the fires blazed their way through Palisades and Altadena, both residential neighborhoods of Los Angeles. In the summer, smoke from Canadian wildfires choked Americans, consistently raising air quality alerts in the Upper Midwest.
What was President Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s response? Trump accosted California’s Democratic leadership for the state’s water management policy. He insisted that Governor Gavin Newsom rewrite the state’s regulations and deliver water from the Central Valley, and even threatened to withdraw federal aid. This past summer, Republicans demanded that Canada take further action to prevent wildfire burning, and that the smoke could be grounds for levying tariffs.
It’s preposterous that Republicans rebuked Canada’s wildfire management when they deny climate change as a factor. The Republicans vaunt their wildfire protection ideas, yet their legislative priorities of obscuring research into carbon dioxide’s effect on the climate and granting permits to fossil fuel corporations will only exacerbate the crisis. We must push back on Trump’s fixation with repealing key environmental regulations, not just for the planet, but our health.
Earlier this year, residents of Boston groaned after checking the forecast each week this spring, as the city received a record 14 straight weekends of rain. Boston endured a late-May nor’easter, a typical winter storm that carries blizzard warnings. Despite copious amounts of rain in the spring, a dry summer left Massachusetts with a significant drought, forcing local governments to restrict water usage.
Later in the summer, rainfall became deadly in Texas after heavy rainfall prompted flash flooding. The Guadalupe River swelled 26 feet in 45 minutes, wiping out 38,000 homes and killing 135 people. 27 of those victims were young girls and counselors at Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls summer camp on the river’s bank.
After the deluge, reports said Texas was woefully unprepared for a disastrous flooding event despite the risks. In 2019, the Texas Water Development Board determined it needed $54 billion for flood control, yet only $1.4 billion has been allocated by the state. When Republican Governor Greg Abbott was asked whether the lack of funding was to blame for the tragedy, he said placing blame is the “word choice of losers” and used football as a metaphor, saying “every team makes mistakes.”
That’s a large mistake, Abbott. No amount of football metaphors can replenish those livelihoods or a summer of memories.
We cannot allow the Texas floods to wither from our memories; the state failed to provide sufficient funds for infrastructure and then suffered an unspeakable tragedy. This must serve as a wake-up call that governments must remain accountable for climate disasters thanks to their inaction, fiscally and politically.
Heat devastated around the world this past summer. July and August of 2025 both ranked the third-hottest on record, and several nations broke their heat records. Europe suffered through several severe heatwaves, including one in July that forced French officials to restrict access to the summit of the Eiffel Tower. The United Kingdom and Spain sweltered through their warmest summers, tourists and locals desperately searching for ways to cool down. Japan and South Korea also saw record-breaking summers. Hospitals in the two countries admitted thousands of patients with heat-related illness, mostly elderly.
Yet, President Donald Trump still had the guts to tell the world that climate change is the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” on Sept. 23 at the United Nations’ General Assembly meeting in New York.
While families grieve climate disasters and states struggle to pay billions in repairs, the federal government denies the main issue itself. Trump and his administration continuously downplay and deny the severity of human-caused climate change. Their fabrications protect special interests and bury the truth — and with it, the victims of climate change.
Trump chose denial at the UN, as he unleashed a misleading tirade on renewable energy and climate action, a segment that took up a quarter of his hour-long speech. Trump disseminated falsehoods about the capacity and economic value of renewable energy. Furthermore, Trump railed on climate predictions from the United Nations, which often spell trouble for the Earth.
Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) comments and actions are clear: they don’t care about our planet’s health. In June, the EPA announced that it would reevaluate the ban on a type of asbestos, a dangerous material that can cause lung cancer, including mesothelioma. Additionally, the agency plans to halt corporate reporting of greenhouse gases.
Without proper regulation and protection, we cannot secure a just or healthy world for all. If we keep business-as-usual, we aren’t even fighting climate change; we’re aiding its destruction. If we don’t curtail fossil fuels, preventing excess greenhouse gas from seeping into our atmosphere, we’re allowing heatwaves to wash over us and dangerous wildfires to set our homes ablaze. If we can’t agree on infrastructure funding, we’re permitting rivers to surge into our homes at terrifying speeds and dry spells to bring our world to its knees.
If we don’t stand together in this common goal of combating climate change, we are forfeiting life as we know it. Unfortunately, Republicans aren’t interested in action, and their rhetoric is putting all of us at risk.
When Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords, the federal government may have signaled its resignation from reality, but that shouldn’t stop us from demanding action. We have the tools to lessen the blow of climate change, now and in the future. It’s time to unleash a sustainable revolution — to meet denial with determination, and tyranny with truth.
