The Environment, For Sale
So-called conservatives are averse to conserving that which needs to be conserved the most.
🚨 Submissions are open for the India Philanthropy Alliance’s Youth Essay Competition!
👌🏾 Every word in this newsletter was written by a human being. All of the photos in this edition are originals from Zach Peterson and his family. We used Gemini for research, but not text generation. See tips from my 24-day, 5-country AI training tour of Asia.
🙏 Paid subscriptions and sponsorships help us do more! Here’s how you can support Sree’s Sunday Note. Paid subscribers make it possible to launch new verticals, like our new entertainment newsletter Ok, TV (have you watched Something Very Bad is Going Happen? We did!)
TRUMP’S FLOOD-THE-ZONE IDEA OF EVERYTHING is setting in motion untold environmental destruction. Last year, the administration cut the National Park Service; earlier this month, it completely reshaped the U.S. Forest Service; earlier this week, the Senate voted to lift the federal mining ban protecting the Boundary Waters Wilderness in northern Minnesota.
These are but the latest salvos in Trump’s unprecedented war against public lands. “Public lands” does not mean “the government” owns them; it means we do. They are ours. We are the public. These lands provide more than just beautiful vistas; they protect fresh water, and the vast tracts of forest clean our air and cool the Earth.
Last July, Ally J. Levine, Soumya Karwa, and Travis Hartman published an incredible piece for Reuters on how Trump II was gunning for a public land sell-off, and how voters of every persuasion are largely against it.
First, the scale. The U.S. is absolutely enormous, and the cumulative size of our public lands is unthinkably large. There are about 640 million acres of federally managed land in the United States, or nearly 30% of the country. That is almost the combined area of Alaska, California and Texas.
Trump’s complete abdication of responsibility for these lands is an abomination—an abomination that will make your life measurably worse, even if you’ve never visited a single American national park or forest or wilderness. This is something that pretty much everyone agrees on.
Going full tree-hugger with regard to America’s still-vast wilderness is like asking a fish to swim—just look at it all. Millions upon millions of acres of prairies, mountains, forests of all shapes and sizes, untold amounts of wildlife, fresh water… It’s all there. The motivation behind the concept of public land is that these things are worth protecting.
Here is a not-even-remotely exhaustive list of things Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress and the Supreme Court have done, or tried to do:
On day 1 of Trump II, he withdrew the U.S. from several international agreements and governing bodies on climate and the environment, including the Paris Agreement, for the second time.
A full accounting (from September 2025) of all the public land Trump is trying to weaken protections for
The headline says it all: “Supreme Court Sides With Oil Companies in Luoisiana Coastal Lawsuits”
The U.S. Forest Service will cut 57 of its 77 research stations. We will know less about fires, drought, fresh water, endangered plants and animals, and more.
GOP Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) tried to legislatively force the sale of 3.2 million acres of public land. Trump’s team publicly said they didn’t like the idea, but they actually helped craft the talking points for it in private
Beyond majestic landscapes, there is real utility in having and caring for vast tracts of resource-rich land. There is also real utility in abiding by—and even leading—international environmental standards for industries as well. Global climate change mitigation agreements are good things. We simply have to stop laying waste to the Earth. Trump is only exacerbating humanity’s worst tendencies—a common refrain, of course—but the environment is the one place where the vast tentacles of his unique awfulness come together to form a truly global problem.
Partner Message
The India Philanthropy Alliance is now accepting submissions for the 7th Annual Youth Essay Competition. The contest invites middle and high school students to identify the biggest developmental issue in India and use their critical thinking skills to submit a well-researched personal essay that identifies solutions. This year’s theme is #YouthWithPurpose. Submit your essay and learn more here.
I went to a talk hosted by Columbia’s Climate School at Scandinavia House last week on the issue of sea-level change. Note that it’s no longer sea level rise, because that’s only part of the story. It was an absolutely fascinating presentation from Lamont Professor Jacky Austermann and Columbia Climate School Dean Alexis Abramson. Please watch the whole thing:
As has been the case for far too long, the thing we seem to be talking about the least is the environment. Maybe it’s because we all agree on the basics.
Public opinion on climate change and environmental issues has been consistent for decades—people of all political persuasions agree that the environment is deteriorating. Like so many other issues, we all generally agree that there is a problem, there are solutions, and governments state and local have a role to play. But, Big Industry has never had a more favorable U.S. government to its interests.
Gallup just released new polling on Americans’ views of the environment, and it is not good—and we’re right, by the way.
Trump’s second term may really push us past the point of no return. This comes in many forms—loosening or outright cancellation of emissions standards, the opening of vast swathes of public lands for extraction by mining and logging companies, and the general sense that the meaning of the word “public” as a descriptor has little weight with anyone in this administration.
Americans of any and all political persuasions roundly agree that the government absolutely has a role in protecting the environment. The actual officials in charge of the stewardship of our most sacred of resources are, unsurprisingly, not even remotely interested in anything of the sort. As a people, we are not optimistic about the whole thing:
These views are steeped in experience, all anyone needs to do is look around. Bad drinking water, increasingly severe natural events, extreme heat waves, corporate takeovers in agriculture… This list is almost endless.
Globally, the American example still means something. We are setting the worst example imaginable at the moment and there is no reason to think that current trends will do anything but accelerate. Naysayers always go big on the “unenforceable” aspects of broad international agreements like the Paris Accords, but that’s not the point. The point is setting benchmarks for progress and having something to measure against. At this point, I applaud really any effort at all on environmental protections and action on climate change.
As I wrote about back in 2025, there are already millions of climate refugees globally, including in the U.S. It turns out that more intense hurricanes, more severe flooding, extended and severe wild fires, and extreme heat are not really liveable for a broad cross-section of society. If we don’t reverse course, it’s only going to get worse.
— Sree / Twitter | IG | LinkedIn | FB | YouTube | Spread | TikTok
ICYMI, last Sunday’s essay:
30% of 2026 is already over. What will you do with the remaining 70%? LMK and I’ll see you made it all the way down here.
Have an idea for anything we’re up to? Let’s collaborate! sree.sreenivasan1@gmail.com
