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‘THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION NEEDS TO BE ISOLATED IN ITS ANTI-SCIENCE
ACTIONS’: COUNTERSPIN INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL CLEETUS ON CLIMATE
COMPLICITY  
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Janine Jackson
November 7, 2025
FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
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_ It’s up to us to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, to
political leaders who are obstructing progress, and understand
what’s at stake now for people around the world, and for all of
these precious ecosystems that are threatened by climate change. _

, Union of Concerned Scientists (10/28/25)

 

JANINE JACKSON: The scattered headlines we’re seeing on COP 30
[[link removed]], the annual UN climate conference, this year to
be held in Brazil, indicate a distressing lack of appropriately urgent
US media attention to the galloping harms of climate disruption, but
also, or even more so, their negligence
[[link removed]]
in calling countries and corporations to account.

Nothing in the US political world at the moment encourages or
inspires, but our guest says it’s not the time to give up or look
away. Rachel Cleetus is the senior policy director with the Climate
and Energy Program [[link removed]]
at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She joins us now by phone from
Massachusetts. Welcome to COUNTERSPIN, Rachel Cleetus.

RACHEL CLEETUS: Thank you so much for having me.

JJ: What, first of all, is the meaning of these conferences, of the
parties? Are they still as important as they once were deemed? And
then, what’s the significance of this one being hosted in Brazil?

RC: Briefly, they couldn’t be more important, because now we know
that climate change is here, it’s at our doorsteps. We can see these
devastating impacts everywhere. Just in the last week, it’s been
horrifying to watch this climate change–supercharged
[[link removed]]
storm, Hurricane Melissa, hit so many Caribbean nations. This is what
climate change looks like today, and we are running out of time to
help limit some of the worst impacts of it.

[Politico: The government’s own data rebuts Trump’s claims about
wind and solar prices]

_POLITICO (__10/7/25_
[[link removed]]_)_

And meanwhile, we have an incredible opportunity in the transition to
renewable energy, energy efficiency that can help lower electricity
bills
[[link removed].],
that can clean up our air and water, that can help us address climate
change, create jobs. This is what the future can hold _if_ political
leaders are brave enough to seize that opportunity.

And that’s why these annual talks matter. This is the moment to put
pressure on our political leaders to do the right thing, to do what
the world needs.

JJ: And having it in Brazil brings one of the crucial elements that is
sometimes overlooked to the forefront, yeah?

RC: For sure. Brazil, in a way, encapsulates some of the deep
challenges as well as the incredible promise of addressing climate
change. This COP is happening on the edge of the Amazon forest, the
“world’s lungs,” that help keep so many amazing, biodiverse
ecosystems thriving, and which is now under such severe threat
[[link removed]]
from climate change itself because of droughts and wildfires. So this
is an opportunity in Brazil to recommit to the goals of the Paris
Agreement
[[link removed]],
and raise ambition from countries across the world.

It’s no doubt a very fraught moment as well—geopolitics, climate
realities, the destructive actions of the Trump administration—but,
nevertheless, the science is clear, and what people need is equally
clear.

JJ: I’m going to bring you back to that, but I wanted to ask you a
question about cost, and you mentioned renewables. We know how often
news reporting allows cost, however that is decided, to sort of be the
end of the sentence. There’s a sentiment of, “Oh, well, we would
love to do this obviously beneficial, humane thing, but ooh, look at
the price tag.” You’re an economist, and I wonder what crosses
your mind when you see, not just Trump saying renewables are somehow
more expensive
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but then journalists honoring that in the conversation, the kind of
“some say, others differ” conversation we’re having now about
the cost of renewable energy vis-a-vis fossil fuels.

[Rachel Cleetus: ]

_Rachel Cleetus: “The fossil fuel industry is trying to preserve its
own profits at the expense of people on the planet, and they are
spreading a lot of disinformation.”_

RC: The facts of renewable energy are very clear. In most parts of the
world, renewable electricity is the cheapest form of electricity
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to install, bar none. That’s why we’re seeing such extraordinary
growth
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in solar and battery storage and wind. It’s happening all around the
world, in the US, in Europe, in China, in India.

It’s just that we have to accelerate that momentum, and instead, the
Trump administration is taking deeply harmful actions
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to claw back clean energy progress in the United States. This is
progress that’s been delivering jobs around the country and economic
benefits, keeping us on the cutting edge of innovation, and the
administration wants to take that all back.

So those are the facts on renewable energy. The problem here is, of
course, that the fossil fuel industry is trying to preserve its own
profits at the expense of people on the planet, and they are spreading
a lot of disinformation
[[link removed].]
about fossil fuels, and want to fight back against this transition
away from fossil fuels. Of course, it will take finance, it will take
money, to make this transition happen quickly, on the scale that
climate requires.

Unchecked climate change is costly. It’s costly on our health, on
our economy. And the science and economics shows that those costs will
only escalate if we fail to curtail climate change and keep track of
emissions.

JJ: We hear, as much as we hear about these annual conferences, that
they set goals, and one goal in particular, based on the Paris
Agreement, that’s not happening, that’s not being met. And if some
things I read are true, well, that just means feedback loops, game
over, that’s all she wrote.

Among other things, that doesn’t tell us how to act, that doesn’t
tell us how to behave going forward, does it? I mean, I’m not trying
to say “look on the bright side,” but people do want to know that
there is still something they can do.

[Climate Reality Project: How Feedback Loops Are Making the Climate
Crisis Worse ]

_Climate Reality Project (__1/7/20_
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RC: Absolutely. This is a problem that we have caused as humans. We
still have agency about what happens next, and it’s really, really
important to remember that, because it’s crucial for the kind of
planet we leave to our children and grandchildren. We cannot give up.

Yes, it’s true that the goal of limiting global average temperature
to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, that goal is very likely
going to be overshot within the next decade. But how long that
happens, and how much further temperatures increase, that’s up to
us. That’s up to the emissions choices we make today. It’s up to
us how much we invest in resilience and adaptation to help protect
communities from impacts that are already locked in, even now, at
1.3°.

And we have to remember, as you said, that if temperatures continue to
increase, we are going to set off some feedback loops
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in the Earth’s systems that we cannot put back in the box. I’m
talking about things like further loss of land-based ice that can
trigger even more multi-century sea-level rise increase. Those kinds
of impacts, even if we bring temperatures back down, once they get
unlocked, the inertia and the physical systems will cause them to
continue.

So it’s up to us now, as it has always been, to stand up to the
fossil fuel industry, to stand up to the political leaders who are
trying to obstruct progress, and really understand what’s at stake
now for people around the world, and for all of these precious
ecosystems, all around the world, that are being threatened by climate
change.

[Guardian: Ex-EPA head urges US to resist Trump attacks on climate
action: ‘We won’t become numb’]

_GUARDIAN (__10/30/25_
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JJ: Let me just ask you, finally and briefly, I see today, former EPA
Chief Gina McCarthy saying
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we could look to cities and states for climate action while we have
this rocketing backwards into the past at the federal level. Is that
something? Is it looking at different locations? Is that something you
find meaningful?

RC: Yes, it’s absolutely an all-hands-on-deck moment to resist the
harmful actions of this administration. And there are many states and
subnational entities around the country. There are forward-looking
businesses around the country that understand the reality of climate
change, and are moving ahead regardless. Around the world, too, many
countries remain very, very committed to climate action, because
it’s in their own self-interest. They, too, are feeling the brunt of
impacts right now, and want cheap, affordable, clean energy.

So this is a moment where the Trump administration needs to be
isolated in its anti-science and destructive actions. This is the
moment for the world to forge ahead regardless, because the stakes are
too high. This is not a political partisan issue. This is about our
planet, our children, future generations that are looking to us to
make the right choices, right now.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Rachel Cleetus from the Union of
Concerned Scientists. Their work is online at UCS.org
[[link removed]]. Thank you so much, Rachel Cleetus, for joining us
this week on COUNTERSPIN.

RC: Thank you very much for having me.

 

_Janine Jackson is FAIR’s program director and producer/host of
FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin. She contributes
frequently to FAIR’s newsletter Extra!, and co-edited The FAIR
Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s (Westview
Press)._

_Rachel Cleetus is the senior policy director with the __Climate and
Energy Program_ [[link removed]]_
at the Union of Concerned Scientists._

 

_FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering
well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We
work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater
diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that
marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an
anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and
defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive
group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to
break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent
public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of
information._

* Climate Change
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* Fossil Fuel Corportations
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* anti-science
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* Trump Administration
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