Our climate progress is not doomed

Donald Trump made his energy plans pretty clear during the campaign: more fossil fuels, fewer environmental protections, and a full-on retreat from global climate cooperation.

Nearly 100 days into his second administration, he has moved with dizzying speed to fulfill those promises.

On Day 1, he pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement, making it the only country to walk away from the global pact to limit warming (again). His administration slashed or froze funding for clean energy development — particularly wind — that Congress had already approved. At the same time, Trump has aggressively pushed fossil fuel expansion, declaring a national “energy emergency” to ram through oil and gas projects, and has even proposed reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s foundational finding that greenhouse gas emissions are dangerous — a move that would rip the legal underpinnings out from decades of climate law.

And, of course, with the help of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, the machinery of climate action is being actively dismantled: Thousands of public servants have already been fired, programs axed, climate references scrubbed from websites.

But here’s the thing: As damaging as Trump’s actions have been, the climate fight isn’t over — far from it. Trump’s actions might delay our efforts to confront climate change, but the reality is that progress might actually be unstoppable.

We’ve reached a hopeful inflection point where the economics and technology of clean energy have gathered enough momentum that not even the politics of 2025 can halt it. Hence the name of Vox’s new package: Escape Velocity.

Simply put, clean energy is no longer just the right thing to develop — it’s good business. Wind and solar? Among the cheapest sources of electricity in the world. Batteries and electric cars? Getting better and more accessible by the year.

That doesn’t mean the fossil fuel industry isn’t still powerful — it is. And fossil fuel subsidies are alive and well. But the progress we’ve made isn’t the kind you can reverse with a single election.

The energy economy is transitioning. Technology is advancing. The market is shifting. Our politics might feel stuck, but in many important ways, we continue to move forward.

And that matters, because every fraction of a degree of warming that we can avoid means lives saved, futures preserved, and more natural disasters averted.

This year is the halfway point of this century to 2050, the year stamped on so many of the world’s most critical climate targets. It’s a good time to ask whether the energy transition is moving fast enough to help us get there — and what hard-won progress is likely to outlast even the most determined opposition?

With Escape Velocity, the Vox climate team set out to answer those questions. We looked at the unexpected places where progress is still happening, the tech that’s quietly changing everything, and the tectonic shifts that have changed the economic calculus of a warming world.

The climate fight was never going to be easy. Trump in many ways will make it harder. But contrary to the headlines, it has not been lost. And in many ways that matter, it’s being won.