Trump’s Climate Data Purge Hurts Americans’ Health and Wallets
The removal of web tools that scientists and policymakers use to study global warming is a blow to the country’s physical and economic well-being.
Climate change is already having a profound effect on the physical and economic well-being of millions of Americans.
Photographer: Apu Gomes/Getty Images
Compared with President Donald Trump’s many attacks on science so far in his second term, his affront to climate science feels like a mere flesh wound at the moment. Delaying cancer research, depriving HIV and AIDS patients of life-saving medicine and divorcing from the World Health Organization in the middle of a bird-flu outbreak all feel like more urgent emergencies.
But Trump has already started erasing web tools that scientists and policymakers use to study climate change and its impact on vulnerable people, hinting at a further-reaching purge that could have long-term impacts on the health of millions of Americans.