The View From 2050: Donald Trump Changed Everything

“I, too, didn’t quite realize how quickly a country could move backward,
dragging the world with it. I watched helplessly as the Trump
administration toppled one scientific enterprise after another, like a
sullen child kicking over the sand castles of other kids. As soon as he
took office, the new president green-lighted every dirty-energy project
within reach. Over the objections of environmentalists, scientists, and
anyone with a modicum of common sense, his administration boosted a
dying coal industry, lifted regulations on carbon emissions, opened up
federal land to drilling and fracking, and okayed pipelines that pumped
out yet more oil and gas to turn into carbon emissions and further heat
the planet. It was the equivalent of a second Industrial Revolution in
Saudi America, at the very moment when the planet could ill afford
another fossil-fuel spree.“