The Butchers of the Earth: How Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks Lead Us to Ruin
There is an old proverb attributed to the Cree that warns:
“Only when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realise that we cannot eat money.”
It is a simple truth, one that should not need repeating. And yet, with every passing day, it is ignored by those in power: those who see the natural world not as a shared home, but as a resource to be plundered, a carcass to be stripped clean for profit.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the policies of Donald Trump and his administration. The environmental rollbacks announced this week, gutting climate regulations and erasing decades of hard-won protections, are the latest in a long line of attacks on the Earth itself. Trump and his allies, beholden to oil magnates, industrial polluters, and extractive billionaires, are not just neglecting the environment. They are butchering it.
Selling the Future for Profit
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the leadership of fossil fuel loyalists, is working to reverse limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, vehicle pollution standards, and restrictions on toxic waste disposal (The Guardian, 2025). These are are seismic shifts that will accelerate climate change, poison communities, and hasten the destruction of vital ecosystems.
The administration is even considering overturning the 2009 scientific finding that greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health, a move that would strip the legal foundation for climate action entirely (The Atlantic, 2025). In a world already reeling from record-breaking temperatures, wildfires, floods, and ecological collapse, this is nothing short of criminal negligence.
The justifications for these policies are as hollow as they are dangerous. We are told that regulations stifle economic growth, that industries must be ‘free’ to operate without oversight. But free to do what? Free to dump waste into rivers? Free to choke the air with soot? Free to extract, drill, burn, and poison, so long as the profits keep rolling in?
The United States, one of the largest polluters in the world, has now abandoned even the illusion of responsibility. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement sent a clear message: America’s economic interests - meaning the interests of the ultra-wealthy - will always come before the survival of the planet (TIME, 2025).
California Wildfires: A Case Study in Deregulation
In recent years, California has experienced some of the most devastating wildfires in its history. Entire communities have been wiped off the map, with thousands of homes reduced to ash, and yet the response from policymakers has been to weaken environmental safeguards rather than strengthen them.
Governor Gavin Newsom, under pressure from both industry and Trump’s attacks on state climate policies, recently suspended key environmental regulations such as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to expedite wildfire prevention projects (San Francisco Chronicle, 2025). While framed as necessary to protect vulnerable communities, these rollbacks weaken long-term environmental protections and further entrench destructive practices, making the fires of the future even worse.
But this is the pattern of deregulation: instead of addressing the root causes of wildfires: climate change, deforestation, and unsustainable land management, leaders are dismantling the very laws designed to mitigate them.
A One-Way Path to Catastrophe
The environmental crisis is not some distant threat. It is here. The oceans are acidifying. Wildfires rage across the world, swallowing towns and forests whole. Ice sheets are melting at terrifying speeds. Entire ecosystems - coral reefs, rainforests, wetlands - are dying. Species are vanishing faster than at any point since the last mass extinction.
And yet, the response from those in power is to accelerate the destruction. To drill more, deregulate more, pollute more. To pretend that the laws of physics and biology can be bargained with.
They believe they can build walls high enough to keep the consequences out. That the floods will not reach their mansions, that the heat waves will not suffocate them in their glass towers. They believe, perhaps, that money will save them when everything else is gone.
But when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught, what will they eat?
What will any of us?
The Time to Act Is Now
This is not inevitable. It is a choice. Trump’s policies, disastrous as they are, can be reversed. Regulations can be reinstated. Environmental protections can be strengthened. But only if people refuse to accept this as the future.
We are not powerless. History has shown that environmental movements, from Standing Rock to Extinction Rebellion, can force change. Public pressure has overturned policies before. People have stopped pipelines, shut down coal plants, won battles against the corporations and politicians who see the Earth as nothing more than a profit source.
But time is running out. If we wait until the last tree falls and the last fish is pulled gasping from a dead ocean, it will certainly be too late. The question is no longer whether climate catastrophe will happen. It is happening. The question is how bad we allow it to get.
The butchers of the Earth are sharpening their knives. We have two choices: stand by and let them carve up what remains or rise and stop them. This is more than a political battle as it is a fight for survival. A fight for the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land that feeds us.
There is no second chance. No plan B. The time to act is now.
References:
Duggan, T. (4 March 2025) ‘California’s efforts to streamline wildfire prevention could have long-term consequences.’ San Francisco Chronicle. Available at: https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/environmental-rules-wildfire-20199608.php (Accessed 13 March 2025)
Mailman, O. (13 March 2025) ‘Trump officials decimate climate protections and consider axeing key greenhouse gas finding.’ The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/12/epa-trump-climate-rules (Accessed 13 March 2025)
Popli, N. (21 January 2025) ‘What Happened the Last Time Trump Withdrew from the Paris Agreement.’ TIME. Available at: https://time.com/7208955/trump-paris-climate-agreement-withdraw-impact/ (Accessed 13 March 2025)
Shlanger, Z. (7 March 2025) ‘The Trump Administration’s Environmental Pile-On.’ The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/03/trump-environmental-justice/681958/ (Accessed 13 March 2025)