Written by former Vermont Sierra Club Executive Committee Member Nancy Braus, originally published on Substack and republished here with permission.
The destruction of the natural systems that sustained the millions of species on the planet for millenia is woven into the fabric of the Trump regime. From the ever more invasive, high electric usage tech in our lives, the rising price of oil and the ruination of our renewable infrastructure, new and unprecedented climate related events, selling off of public lands, to the constant use of carbon spewing private jets and massive motorcades with huge, heavy limousines- all these things come together. If we look at the big picture of capitalism’s destruction of our natural resources, exacerbated by the nature-hating Donald Trump and the strange, fact and evidence free obsessions that fill his vapid brain we can piece together a dangerous scenario.
In the headlines the last week of August, 2026, are two horrific, deadly floods that again put the climate crisis front and center- the loss of life in the thousands, homes, and entire villages swept away in the flood in Nepal. The magnitude is incomprehensible. The Grand Canyon flood is terrifying in its own right, as many of us have been tourists in that very spot where the water destroyed the area around the beloved Phantom Ranch campground, and has left at least two people dead. And of course, every flood is one more reminder that the hundred year flood is no longer a rarity for those who live in flood prone areas.
And while we in southern Vermont have experienced a summer with little excessive heat, much of the world has not been so lucky- Europe suffered under deadly heat dome after heat dome, heat dome being an expression of an unrelenting heat wave that began gaining popular use as recently as 2021. On August 25, the Guardian cited a figure of 35,000 excess deaths from heat in Europe this summer! And that figure is very low- it does not include every country in Europe and August totals! Many European had never come close to this record breaking heat and subsequent loss of life. Summers in northern Europe, in the not very distant past, often were cool and rainy. I remember freezing in July in the Netherlands ten years ago while visiting a friend.
We hear less about south Asia in the United States news, but the suffering in countries where high heat is the norm in some areas, has been terrible, as the temperatures have climbed to heat levels that the human body cannot tolerate. This includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Already in April and May of 2026, according to Al Jazeera, the heat wave had deadly consequences. East Asia has also been faced with lethal heat- including Hong Kong, South Korea, and eastern China.
The western United States has been fried this summer- with subsequent wild fires that have blown pollutants across the country.
While the Trump regime, and his hand picked corporate shills, downplay the impact of the destruction of the climate, more and more of our news cycle will be written by these considerations. Every effort at government protection to save the world from the worst impacts of the United States’ massive carbon and methane emissions, either have already been gutted or are in the process. While the most affluent often have multiple houses, so they can despoil the air by flying on their private jets to their high elevation retreat in the Rocky Mountains or the Tetons when things get too hot, the majority of Americans will be forced to live with the result of the EPA eliminating any restrictions on carbon emissions, as well as tail pipe emissions from the US manufactured living room sized gas powered trucks and SUV’s that are being phased out world wide, giving way to Chinese produced electric vehicles.
For people who pay attention to current events, two of the stories that grab attention every day are the war for oil that Israel and the United States have aggressively waged against Iran, and the battle in the United States of community opposition to the fast and furious growth of data centers, which also have a direct bearing on climate.
It hardly needs saying the control of the world supply of oil is the basis of Donald Trump’s impulsive, destructive war on Iran, one which he is incapable of ending. Apparently, those military strategists who actually have brains and use them warned Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump about that minor bottleneck, the Strait of Hormuz as the reason why no other president thought bombing Iran was a great idea. But Trump knew more than the experts, as he always does, and now the world’s oil supply has been front page news for 6 months. Unfortunately, Trump’s inner circle is so corrupt that they have used the fluctuating oil market as an opportunity to make a fortune from insider trading, having access to information about the bombing or fake peace talks with Iran. Hegseth’s profligate use of munitions gives the military contractors who are replacing the stockpile even more of our tax dollars than they already were gobbling up. On the bright side, with the oil shocks of the Iran war, countries with smarter leadership than the US see the writing on the wall. Renewable energy a electric appliances and transportation bypass the United States’ and the gulf states’ death grip on the world’s oil supply- long term investments that will pay off. But, war is hell- and not only for the suffering Iranian people, but for their environment and for the battered climate.
Another outrageous but predictable assault on all of us is the proposal to sell off a part of Yosemite National Park to one of Dear Leader’s developer cronies. Selling off our national heritage for parts- after dismantling Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments, and even chopping down more than 60 of the magnificent, iconic cherry blossom trees in DC for, what else, a golf course, is the harbinger of things to come. The idea that we are taking our historically preserved areas, places that cool our planet with live, growing flora, and paving them is horrifying. Trump even took the opportunity to pave the Rose Garden at the White House. If it is green and is not a golf course, it’s gotta go.
What more is there to say about the water chugging, high carbon using, noise polluting data centers? 3/4 of Americans don’t want them in their back yards, and the backlash is getting louder every day. We would far prefer to risk being, in Trump’s brilliant analysis, “backwards and poor”, than give up our farm land or natural tracts for a massive hideous structure that produces almost no jobs. And may be outdated in a decade.
It is past time for us to take climate seriously- climate may be one of the unspoken reasons that the youngest adults say they prefer socialism to the rapacious, nature killing cancer of capitalism. To effectively fight climate change, we need to dismantle capitalism. It looks like we have quite a fight on our hands.