cuts in US climate research - USA are fired

The radical actions of the Trump administration have caused great unrest in recent weeks, and not only in Washington. Even beyond the borders of the US capital, many are worried about the attempt to downsize the government apparatus and fill it with Trump loyalists. This group also includes climate and environmental researchers, as important climate data is gradually disappearing from the websites of the US authorities.

"Whether it's hurricane damage in Tennessee and North Carolina or wildfires in Los Angeles, now is not the time for us to cut funding and resources for data collection. Because without data, we are flying blind," said Gabriel Watson, data scientist for the environmental policy organization Environmental Policy Innovation Center.

Watson is one of the thousands in the US who rely on government climate data every day to make important decisions. Without this data, the basis for objective analysis is missing, he explained to taz.

"I work with systems that 99 percent of the population will never have anything to do with. Yet these are the very systems that are responsible for setting the course that either improves or worsens people's quality of life. People will only understand how important this data is when it no longer exists," Watson said.

160 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency had to leave

The cleanup of the websites is part of Trump's plan to make the government more efficient. With the help of billionaire and government advisor Elon Musk, government agencies are to cut back on personnel and finances in particular. The main goal is to minimize the alleged misuse and waste of taxpayers' money.

By winding up the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Trump and Musk have already shown that they mean business. And since Trump is a known climate change denier, it was only a matter of time before environmental agencies were affected as well.

More than 160 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), mainly in the area of ​​climate justice, have been laid off, and more layoffs are expected. The EJScreen data program, which helped politicians better assess the potential impacts of a decision on the environment and people, has also been shut down.

But that could be just the beginning. Russell Vought, head of the budget authority OMB and co-designer of the conservative government plan "Project 2025", is planning further cuts. He wants to portray public servants as "villains".

"We want the bureaucrats to have traumatic experiences. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly seen as the bad guys. We want them to be defunded so that the EPA cannot enforce all the regulations against our energy industry because it does not have the financial means to do so," Vought said in a speech before Trump's election victory, published by the investigative portal ProPublica .

Dark Future

Concerns about undermining agencies like the EPA have prompted nonprofits and volunteers to archive as much data as possible. But even that's just a drop in the bucket. Data scientist Gabriel Watson explains that archiving only captures the current state, which is often already out of date. "We're talking about hundreds, thousands of people collecting the data and updating it," he said.

Given the current situation, it is questionable whether the federal government will continue to provide funding to collect, update and link data to get a full picture. Watson says: "This uncertainty about whether there will be funding for air quality monitoring, climate resilience and tree planting in the future is difficult for many people to bear. I think there is really a lot of suffering in many organizations in the climate field right now. I and others who have secure jobs are in a position to actively fight back against that, but frankly I think the future is bleak."