There’s no backup. No second Earth. No divine redo.

This is it.

And that means what we do here — how we treat this planet, how we protect it, how we care for each other — matters.

So reads the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s full-page ad in the April 22 (Earth Day) edition of the Cap Times, published in FFRF’s hometown of Madison, Wis.

Every day ought to be Earth Day. President Trump instead views each new day as an opportunity to pillage the country and planet, endangering public health — and the future along the way. The Trump administration, fueled by greed and hubris and blessed by its Christian evangelical base, has not just sabotaged climate change mitigation but is actively contributing to climate change by pushing coal and the denial of science. Who can forget the debacle of Trump’s embarrassing rant to the United Nations last September, when he called climate change a “con job,” denounced renewable energy as a “scam,” and urged other nations to purchase more U.S. oil and gas.

Barely a year into Trump’s second term, it’s chilling to recognize that more than two-thirds of Project 2025’s plans to attack climate change mitigation and the environment have been realized or are in progress. This includes the planned withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

This year, the Environmental Protection Agency repealed the 2009 scientific determination, known as the endangerment finding, that empowered the federal government to combat climate change. The EPA announced that it will no longer include the monetary benefits of saving lives and improving public health in its calculations when curbing deadly air pollutants. (In other words, this so-called “pro-life” administration rates the value of human life at “zero.”)

A laundry list of reckless actions on the part of Trump’s EPA includes: terminating $20 billion in Biden grant agreements to pay for clean energy and other climate-friendly projects; seeking to ride roughshod over the right of states and travel authorities to protect water; repealing all federal greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles; weakening federal methane standards … and on and on — in sickening relentlessness.

Earth Day provides a day to take stock of the state of climate change. The contiguous United States just experienced the warmest March on record, more than 9 degrees warmer than average, and the sixth driest. It was the second-warmest March worldwide. Last year was one of the three warmest years on record, and the past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, with oceans warming ominously. The population of birds — those “canaries in the coal mine” — which had fallen by 29 percent since 1970, is tragically declining at a faster pace than ever.

Yet there’s bright news. Trump’s self-inflicted wound of sending gas prices soaring due to his reckless war against Iran has renewed interest in renewable energy. Despite Trump’s vindictive fight against wind turbines and solar panels, which has impeded growth, “renewables are now the most cost-competitive form of energy generation in the US,” points out Earth.org. Trump’s machinations notwithstanding, renewable energy provided more than a quarter of our nation’s energy last year. Also heartening is the number of lawsuits filed against the EPA and Trump’s anti-environmentalism.

It’s also good news that we religiously unaffiliated Americans are the most likely to heed the science of climate change.

“That’s why our voices must be heard,” comments FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Freethinkers recognize that the only afterlife that should concern any of us is leaving our planet a secure and pleasant future.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With more than 41,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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