Last year, the Trump administration declared war on climate science.
In the first two weeks of Trump’s second term, the administration started scrubbing critical environmental resources and datasets from federal agency websites and withdrew the United States from international organizations dedicated to combating climate change, dismissing them as a “waste of taxpayer dollars.” Trump himself has dismissed climate science as “woke,” while vowing to “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels as our planet stands at the edge of a climate disaster.
Nowhere has that regressive agenda been felt more than at NASA. The agency announced in July that thousands of employees had accepted a controversial deferred resignation program, losing roughly 20 percent of its workforce as a result.
In August, the Trump administration instructed NASA employees to come up with plans to terminate two major missions, including the premature destruction of a greenhouse gas-observing space satellite, dubbed Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), which is still collecting “exceptionally high quality” data while orbiting the Earth.
According to one former NASA staffer, it all adds up to a ringing failure by the agency as the Earth’s climate approaches a devastating point of no return.
In a “plea to NASA administrator Jared Isaacman” posted to LinkedIn, former NASA Earth public engagement lead Jon Mikel Walton argued that the agency needs to continue funding its Earth Science missions, including a fleet of space-based observatories such as OCO-2. (A NASA spokesperson told Futurism in an email that the agency “cannot speculate regarding any programmatic changes” when asked about the future of the spacecraft. The agency is seeking ideas for “partnerships to continue operations and data collection of the Earth science mission OCO-3.”
The fleet helps scientists translate “observation into public value like better storm and flood forecasting, stronger disaster readiness, safer water and food planning, and clearer visibility into climate risk,” he wrote. “This critical public infrastructure saves lives, protects the economy, and keeps the United States ahead.”
“And yet over the past year, budget uncertainty and political pressure have weakened one of the country’s most trusted sources of Earth intelligence,” Walton continued. “Teams were cut, expertise was lost, and NASA’s ability to communicate clearly about climate and environmental risk was silenced — exactly when those risks are accelerating.”
Futurism reached out to NASA for comment on Walton’s plea but has yet to receive a response.
Lawmakers are actively fighting the current administration over what role NASA should play in the coming years, especially when it comes to climate science. Earlier this month, Congress voted to keep NASA’s budget largely intact for the 2026 fiscal year, an eleventh-hour intervention following the Trump administration’s attempts to deal its science division a devastating blow.
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