Donald Trump in a coal powered horse and buggy, belching smoke and careening through a street busy with electric cars, and lined with solar panels and wind turbines.
The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that climate change is a danger to public health, an idea that President Donald Trump called “a scam.” But repeated scientific studies say it’s a documented and quantifiable harm.
Again and again, research has found increasing disease and deaths — thousands every year — in a warming world.
The Environmental Protection Agency finding in 2009, under the Obama administration, has been the legal underpinning of nearly all regulations fighting global warming.
“It boggles the mind that the administration is rescinding the endangerment finding; it’s akin to insisting that the world is flat or denying that gravity is a thing,” said Dr. Howard Frumkin, a physician and professor emeritus of public health at the University of Washington.
Thousands of scientific studies have looked at climate change and its effects on human health in the past five years and they predominantly show climate change is increasingly dangerous to people.
Clean energy technologies, including solar and electric vehicles, were responsible for more than a third of China’s economic growth last year, generating some $2.1 trillion in economic activity, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief.
To get a sense of how fast things are moving, I called my colleague Keith Bradsher, who is based in Beijing.
“China is way ahead of the rest of the world,” he told me. “Not just in installing a lot of renewable energy and new transportation technologies, but also in scoring research breakthroughs.”
The U.S. turns back the clock
The contrast between Beijing and Washington is stark.
The Chinese government has been a patient supporter of the country’s clean technologies for decades now — its policies governing rare earths, which are essential components in everything from electric cars to supersonic jets, date back some six decades. U.S. policy, by contrast, has been all over the place.
After four years during which the Biden administration worked to nurture the wind, solar, battery and electric vehicle industries, the Trump administration is now doing precisely the opposite.
And just as China is accelerating its shift to clean energy, the Trump administration continues to find new ways to penalize renewables and promote fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
Just yesterday, the White House ordered the Pentagon to buy more electricity generated from coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. (China remains the world’s largest user of coal, but is working to decrease its usage. Overall, Chinese carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or falling for 21 months now.)
I’m on an AI kick, ha ha, but I’ll make one more comment.
Notice in your created image that Trump is wearing a top hat. You didn’t ask for it. But it knew to put it there.
Also notice that artistically the image is consistent in style. That’s harder to put into words, but a creative person will see all the elements of that image share stylistic similarities, as if it was made by one person.
There was a lot of stuff a year ago about how AI wouldn’t replace artists because it didn’t have ‘taste’. Those opinions are already obsolete. Newer models are currently displaying human levels of judgement and aesthetic sensibility.
True creativity is next:
Researchers tested AI against 100,000 humans on creativity
AI can beat average human creativity — but the most imaginative minds are still unmistakably human.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/01/260125083356.htm
U.S. policy, by contrast, has been all over the place.
Welcome to the mad swings of American democracy.
After seeing so much video of Chinese factories, the car assembly B-roll in that CNBC video seems like throw-back technology, with humans using handheld tools to drive in bolts and screws.