In the first months of the second Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced a series of deregulatory efforts, saying, “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” A little less than a year later, the E.P.A. revoked its 2009 endangerment finding, which had provided the legal basis for federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by recognizing that they “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” 

While Mr. Zeldin’s description of concern about climate change as a “religion” was sarcastic, there is in fact a religious necessity to care about climate change, both out of a duty of care for creation and also because of its manifest impacts on human welfare. Pope Francis recognized the societal dimension of this responsibility in his encyclical “Laudato Si’,” writing that “If everything is related, then the health of a society’s institutions has consequences for the environment and the quality of human life” (No. 142).

The current administration has rejected not only the overwhelming scientific consensus about the severity of climate change, but also the idea that the government has a role to play in addressing it. Mr. Trump has dismantled billions of dollars of investment in clean energy and decades of international cooperation on emissions standards. This all points to the same conclusion: The administration has chosen corporate profit and short-term savings over the long-term health and well-being of the American people. 

Its approach cannot be justified even on economic grounds, however, as the growing costs of climate change will only be exacerbated by unmitigated carbon emissions, despite the E.P.A.’s current claims to the contrary.

There is a lasting economic and scientific consensus that climate change already has an enormous global cost that even conservative estimates place at over $1 trillion annually by 2050. While some negative impact is now unavoidable, scaling back regulation and investment will aggravate the rise in average global temperatures in the decades to come. The economic boon sought through deregulation is almost certain to be dwarfed by these long-term consequences that society is cruelly passing on to future generations.

The administration’s posture on energy is not just shortsighted but also anachronistic. Obsessions with oil reserves (see Mr. Trump’s insistence that access to Venezuelan oil is a massive strategic victory) rely on an understanding of energy and geopolitics that is stuck in the 20th century. The nation needs oil and natural gas for specific applications as part of a broader constellation of renewable energy sources, but the United States risks being left in the shadow of nations like China that have been developing and scaling sustainable energy technology. Even petrostates like Saudi Arabia are aware of the waning opportunity for economic growth derived from fossil fuels and are working to diversify their economies.

The moral catastrophe of reversal on climate policy is even more significant than its strategic and economic shortsightedness. In “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis addressed “every person living on the planet,” urging us to “care for our common home” and embrace integral ecology—a concept that asserts that human well-being and material nature are inseparable. He wrote, “We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental” (No. 139).

Francis was acutely aware that those who will suffer the most from ecological collapse are the poorest and most vulnerable. An exodus of climate refugees from sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and elsewhere is aggravating a global migration crisis.

Pope Leo XIV has consistently emphasized the importance of care for creation in the first year of his papacy, in continuity with Francis. In October, he said: “We cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care for all that is fragile and wounded.”

So what is to be done? On a personal level, we are called to resist overconsumption and an individualistic culture that seeks to convince us to pass the problem on to the next person, to throw up our hands and say: “Well, my participation is meaningless compared to a polluting corporation, much less a nation, so I might as well give up. Not my problem.” The Gospel calls us to be witnesses against this selfish and defeatist line of thinking, both in our individual actions and in our advocacy with political leaders.

With respect to public policy, many of the Trump administration’s actions are still being litigated in the courts, but climate advocates should be cautious of sole reliance on the judicial system: The rollback on climate action is part of a broader transformation in the structure of government that is, among other things, benefiting climate skeptics. Prior to recent court decisions (such as Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Ohio v. E.P.A. and West Virginia v. E.P.A.), civil servants had more leeway to make regulatory determinations on the basis of expert scientific and economic consensus. This is no longer the case under the new formulations of executive branch authority (more tethered to the will of the president) and legislative intent (requiring more explicit delegations of authority) ushered in by the Supreme Court. 

The administration’s revocation of the endangerment finding is based on a self-interested interpretation of the law, a dishonest reading of the science and an imprudent assessment of the risks. But those very weaknesses also highlight the need for updates to the Clean Air Act, under which the endangerment finding was issued. Last amended in 1990, it can no longer meet the moment. Congress should debate and pass new legislation that more explicitly addresses the need for the government to respond to the climate crisis.

As Earth Day arrives on April 22, the fact that legislative action to protect the earth seems almost impossible to imagine should only reinforce the need for renewed advocacy for care for our common home. The science, the church’s magisterium and the divine call to care for creation are aligned and clear.

This article appears in April 2026.