A solar power farm in Hainan prefecture of western China’s Qinghai province is part of the country’s drive to be a world leader in clean energy.

The United States once stood as the global beacon of scientific excellence. From the Manhattan Project and Apollo missions to mRNA vaccines, American institutions led the charge in understanding and confronting the planet’s most pressing challenges. But today, that leadership is eroding. 

Nowhere is this loss of U.S. leadership more visible than in the realm of climate science.

The partisan assault on climate research has deepened under President Donald Trump’s second term. His administration — as sadly predicted — dismantled Biden administration-era climate offices, rescinded the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and began repealing the 2009 endangerment findings — the legal foundation for climate rules. 

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Advisory boards have been gutted and replaced with petroleum industry allies, sidelining independent scientific expertise. These moves signal a deliberate effort to replace evidence-based policy with politically driven narratives.

Over 100 National Science Foundation climate grants have been terminated, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget was slashed by nearly a third and NASA contracts supporting the U.S. Global Change Research Program were canceled, halting work on the next congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment. 

Long-term monitoring programs, such as oceanic and atmospheric research, are being dismantled, creating dangerous gaps in climate data just as extreme weather events intensify. 

Seemingly with no purpose other than to demoralize the scientific community with a symbolic dagger through the heart,

© San Francisco Chronicle