Senate Democrats Spotlight the Trump Administration’s War on Climate Science

The Trump Administration and its billionaire fossil fuel donors bash climate science and threaten scientists all to protect the industry's pollute-for-free business model

Washington, D.C. - Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), and U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this week hosted a spotlight forum with Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and experts on the fossil fuel industry's war on climate science. The industry's desperate attempt to discredit the links between fossil fuel-driven climate change and increasingly extreme weather events serves a clear and corrupt purpose: protect the free-to-pollute business model. Meanwhile, Americans are picking up the tab from emissions and extreme weather.

Wednesday's spotlight forum followed a recently released National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report on advances in climate attribution science. The report shows direct causal links between climate pollution and specific extreme weather events that destroyed homes and communities and cost lives. For example, climate pollution made last year's Los Angeles wildfires 35 percent more likely, and last summer's deadly heatwave would have been impossible without climate pollution.

Even before the National Academies report was published, fossil fuel interests and climate denial groups funded by dark money have desperately tried to discredit it, arguing that the scientists can't be trusted, and filing records requests for private emails and documents.

"Dirty tricks and dark money from a desperate fossil fuel industry can't hide what Americans see in their own lives: climate change is real, and dangerous, and already carries heavy costs for regular families," said Ranking Member Whitehouse. "We see climate costs in skyrocketing home insurance rates, in distressed property values, in rising energy prices, in more expensive groceries, and in health costs from effects like extreme heat and wildfire smoke …. The fossil fuel industry wants to hide the truth, but we can't let them. Democrats will continue to shine a spotlight on the industry's climate denial and dark money schemes, until our colleagues across the aisle see that their big polluter donors' lies aren't worth the money."

"For decades, the fossil fuel industry has peddled the lie that their actions do not contribute to climate change, and they've paid off Republicans to parrot the same," said Leader Schumer. "So, while Democrats secured hundreds of billions of dollars in the Inflation Reduction Act to get American-made, affordable, clean energy on the grid quickly, Republicans have chosen to gut those investments and bankroll $200 billion in handouts for the fossil fuel industry. While Republicans are driving up costs, making our communities sicker, and putting polluting corporations over families, Senate Democrats are fighting to cut energy costs, hold corporations accountable, and protect Americans from extreme weather."

Last month, Ranking Member Whitehouse and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer released a new report tracing massive fossil fuel and polluting industry donations to President Trump and Republican campaigns during the 2024 election cycle. The report illustrates how the industries unlocked unprecedented power over executive branch decisions.

Spotlight forum witnesses included Dr. Jenn Marlon, Senior Research Scientist at Yale University; Dr. Gretchen Goldman, President of the Union of Concerned Scientists; Dr. Geoffrey Supran, Associate Professor at the University of Miami; and Madison Maxwell, a resident of Western North Carolina whose home was destroyed during Hurricane Helene.

Highlights from EPW's spotlight forum:

DR. JENN MARLON: "Science has shown that climate change is increasing and exacerbating extreme weather events as a general trend. But every year, the science gets more precise. And today, in many cases, we can identify and explain when, why, and how climate change caused and exacerbated a specific event … This increasingly allows us to make statements not only about the events themselves, but critically about how climate change is affecting economies, human health (for example through heat-related mortality, or increasing premature deaths from wildfire smoke), or ecosystems and natural resources."

DR. GRETCHEN GOLDMAN: "Independent science, access to scientific expertise, and strong support of scientific inquiry are critical pillars of a strong democracy. Its attacks on inconvenient scientific findings highlight the corporate capture and corruption that have come to define the second Trump Administration, and it is people across the US and the world who will suffer the consequences."

DR. GEOFFREY SUPRAN: "For decades, fossil-fuel interests have known that their products cause dangerous climate change. Yet rather than warn the public, they deployed a strategy familiar from Big Tobacco: cultivate experts who defend business as usual and discredit those who threaten it …. Fossil-fuel interests have been at it since the 1920s. By the 1970s, they had become intertwined with a conservative and libertarian movement seeking to foster a so-called 'counter-intelligentsia' financed by foundations including Olin, Scaife, Koch, and Bradley …. Two interests thus converged: a commercial motive to defend profits from inconvenient science, and an ideological project to challenge expert institutions informing regulation and governance. Climate science sits at their intersection."

MADISON MAXWELL: "When Hurricane Helene came through our community, a massive tree crashed through my home and destroyed my master bathroom, bedroom, and the back half of my kitchen. I was trapped inside my home with my two elderly cats as the winds howled around us. The road out of my neighborhood was blocked with downed power lines and fallen trees. The power was out, and I called 911 for help multiple times, but I got no response. In those moments, you recognize your own vulnerability, as well as the fragility of the systems that keep us safe .… We need a system that understands how extreme weather shapes rebuilding decisions, and what it means to build back stronger."