PRAGMATIC ISSUES

Donald Trump’s administration didn’t gut NREL because it was ineffective.

They went after it because it was effective.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory had the audacity to do something unforgivable in MAGA America, it measured reality.

It produced data.

It showed where the future was headed.

And worse, it did so without caring whether that future aligned with Donald Trump’s ego or the fossil-fuel donors underwriting his politics.

Enter the money hungry Boomers.

That fucked us all.

Climate change is inconvenient when your entire worldview depends on pretending the 20th century never ended.

When your policy platform is nostalgia and grievance, renewable energy becomes a threat not because it’s wrong, but because it works.

NREL didn’t exist to make anyone feel bad.

It existed to make America smarter, safer, and more competitive.

And that was the problem.

Because once you accept that renewable energy is cheaper, cleaner, and inevitable, the lie collapses. The lie that coal is coming back. The lie that oil will save us. The lie that science is optional. The lie that ignorance is strength.

This administration didn’t cut NREL to save taxpayers money.

It hemorrhaged money everywhere else.

What it tried to cut was evidence.

Evidence that the climate is changing.

Evidence that clean energy outperforms dirty energy.

Evidence that the future doesn’t belong to men screaming at the past.

NREL research informs grid resilience, energy independence, national security, job creation, and disaster mitigation. Weakening it doesn’t protect America. It kneecaps it. It hands technological leadership to other countries while we argue about whether windmills cause cancer.

But MAGA politics isn’t interested in leadership.

It’s interested in comforting myths.

When your understanding of climate science stops at “it was cold once,” the issue isn’t disagreement — it’s intellectual surrender. A deliberate choice to stay uninformed because learning would require accountability, adaptation, and the humility to admit you were wrong.

Trump’s administration didn’t misunderstand climate science.

They understood exactly what it would reveal.

So they mocked it.

Starved it.

Politicized it.

Then sold the damage as “patriotism” as if sabotaging America’s energy future somehow makes the country great again.

The atmosphere, unfortunately for them, doesn’t care about slogans.

It keeps warming.

Colorado used to get snow like Michigan, now we are on tap to be more like Arizona. We have mountains and then we have all the rest. Which is where most everyone lives.

West of I-25 tonight? Power Shut Offs due to high winds and dry conditions?

Hmmm never saw that in the 70’s or 80’s here.

Technology keeps advancing.

And history keeps records.

Humanity will falter if we don’t pay attention.