The simple fact that Earth’s climate is irreversibly broken and we face a miserable future of baking to death as much of the world becomes uninhabitable is just one of those things you try not to think about too much. Environmentalists had their shot and were steamrollered by the inexorable march of capitalism, which demands short-term growth at any cost. Every country and corporation has spent decades kicking the can down the road on climate change, figuring that the next generation will figure things out. Well, we’re now out of room to kick the can, and even if the most drastic carbon emissions regulations were strictly and immediately imposed, there’s no stopping the misery that’s coming. But, while the future for humanity is life in an oven, we could, at least theoretically, still turn down the heat a little. Oh, wait, Donald Trump is president, so he’s twisting the broiler dial up as far as it can go. Yup, it’s time for more coal and less renewable energy: Trump: "We're doing coal. I don't want windmills destroying our place. I don't want these solar things where they go for miles and they cover up half a mountain and they're ugly as hell." pic.twitter.com/tw720XzIIE— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 29, 2025 I’d like to think future generations will watch videos like these as lessons in how civilizations rise and fall, and the ways that the might of economic wealth and military dominance can’t defeat the simple reality of steadily rising temperatures, destruction of agricultural land, increased natural disasters, and chaotic social upheaval. But then, that’s being optimistic that there will be future generations. And, if you’re somehow still skeptical, be assured there’s no way of “nuh-uh-ing” your way out of this. Perhaps the one silver lining in the whole situation will be watching former climate deniers boil inside their own saggy skins. The future is already written In an ironic twist, Trump’s coal fervor will jumpstart the one thing he absolutely despises: uncontrolled immigration. In the coming years, equatorial countries will regularly exceed the “wet bulb temperature”, the lowest temperature to which air can be cooled by evaporating water into it, measured by a thermometer with a wet cloth over its bulb. This results in deadly heat stress for humans and will likely kill millions. The survivors will be faced with a choice of dying or moving out of the equatorial death zone to a more temperate region, which, you guessed it, means millions of climate refugees heading for the US border. Donald Trump is 79 and will likely be dead by the time the rest of us have to deal with this, but we suspect future generations are going to see building coal-burning power plants in the 2020s as outright suicidal, the behavior of a society that wants to kill itself as quickly and painfully as possible.