Sierra Club Statement on Trump Administration Decision to Remove Climate Change from Threat Assessment Report

Washington, DC – This week, the Trump administration released the intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment report that, for the first time in more than a decade, fails to mention the climate crisis, the increased threat of extreme weather, or the role rising temperatures play on health, food security, or global geopolitics. 

The intentional and dangerously shortsighted omission comes just one week after the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization released its State of the Global Climate 2024 report, which noted that 2024 was the hottest year in its 175-year observational record and should serve as “a wake-up call that we are increasing the risks to our lives, economies and the planet.”

In response, Sierra Club’s Director of Climate Policy Patrick Drupp released the following statement:

“Deleting words like ‘climate change’ from a page will not erase the very real threat that families across our country face, from more deadly hurricanes and wildfires to dangerous air quality and toxins in our water. Our intelligence community has recognized those threats and worked to address them for more than a decade, but actual intelligence is apparently hard to come by in this current administration. Rather than work to protect the people and address the crisis unfolding before our eyes, Donald Trump continues to obfuscate and put polluters and their profits first. He has removed the threat of climate change in name only, and heartbreakingly we’ll continue to see evidence of it play out each and every day as even more lives are upended by the disasters that are unfolding at a faster pace than ever before. It’s a shameful way to lead a country that is begging for its leaders to help.”

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