Social media platforms, energy companies, investment firms, airlines, big banks, and philanthropic organizations have backtracked on their environmental pledges to fall in line with the Trump administration’s anti-climate agenda.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
Since Donald Trump took office in January 2025 with the promise to “drill, baby drill” and “unleash America’s energy potential,” the fight against climate change in the US has effectively taken a back seat.
The new administration has ordered a wipeout of any reference to climate change across the board — and its cabinet has complied. Pages mentioning anything related to the climate crisis have been wiped from the White House’s website. The Forest Service, an agency within the US Department of Agriculture, has taken down key climate resources, research, and adaptation tools from its website. A section on “climate and sustainability” has also vanished from the Department of Transportation’s website.
Grants supporting climate and environmental justice, climate-smart agriculture, clean energy and transportation were scrapped as part of a radical “money-saving effort” led by tech billionaire Elon Musk. Grantees have hit back, with one saying the cuts are based on “inaccurate and politicized” claims.
Photo credit: Earth.org screenshot
But government agencies are not the only ones cracking down on climate action. Dozens of tech, energy, and food companies — in and outside the US — have followed suit, either by revisiting their position on climate change, rescinding internal policies meant to promote climate action and justice, or backtracking on their climate pledges altogether.
Earth.Org looks at who these companies are, and what they’ve done in response to the conservative-led backlash.
Social Media
In January, American tech conglomerate Meta announced sweeping changes to content moderation on popular social media sites Facebook and Instagram. In a video message, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was replacing third-party fact-checking on the two platforms with so-called “community notes,” which allow users to add context to posts.
Meta introduced its fast-checking program in 2016 following widespread criticism over disinformation during the US presidential election. In 2020, the company also rolled out its Climate Science Information Center on Facebook in response to rampant climate misinformation, allowing third-party fact-checkers working with Meta to flag false and misleading posts on climate change. Testifying before Congress a year later, Zuckerberg even admitted that climate disinformation is “a big issue” on the platform.
The company’s contracts with third-party fact-checking organizations ended this month, following Zuckerberg’s announcement in January. This paves the way for the unchecked proliferation of climate misinformation and disinformation on its platforms, analysts and industry experts have warned. Facebook and Instagram are the first and third most widely used social networks worldwide, respectively, counting more than 5 billion monthly active users combined.
Photo credit: Anthony Quintano / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Using language popular among conservatives, Zuckerberg justified the move by saying it was time to prioritize “free expression” and let go of fact-checkers, who he said had become “politically biased.” A former fast-checker who helped set up Meta’s program in 2016 described the language choice as “shocking.” Alexios Mantzarlis, then-founding director of the International Fact-Checking Network, also said Zuckerberg was “expecting” and “craving” a positive reaction from Trump, which “he ultimately got.”
According to Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg, the move shows “just how far Zuckerberg is willing to go to win Trump’s approval” and “will elate conservatives, who’ve often criticized Meta for censoring speech.”
Meta also recently removed a section about “leading the way on climate change” and “taking bold climate action” from its sustainability webpage, the Financial Times reported. The company did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment.
Philanthropy
Last month, the Bezos Earth Fund stopped its $18 million grant in support of leading climate certification organization Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which is charged with assessing if companies are decarbonizing in line with the Paris Agreement.
The Fund was set up by billionaire Jeff Bezos five years ago to help scientists, activists, NGOs “fight climate change and support nature.” While spokespeople for Earth Fund and SBTi said the three-year commitment expired as previously agreed, and the Fund had not made a final decision on future support, many view the move as a way to “bowing down to Trump.”
“Once upon a time a tech billionaire started a foundation on a regular basis and many were interested in climate,” one person told the Financial Times last month. “I can’t imagine that anyone with anything to lose is going to think three times about doing anything on climate change in the US right now.”
Both Bezos and Zuckerberg donated $1 million each to Trump’s inauguration fund. And in another bow to the new administration, Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, last month declared that only opinions that support “personal liberties” and “free markets” will be welcome in the newspaper. “[V]iewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” the billionaire wrote on social media site X.
Marty Baron, a highly regarded former editor of the Washington Post, told The Guardian that Bezos’s move was a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression.” He also said that Bezos is “fearful of reprisals” from Trump and his administration, arguing that this influenced the billionaire’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate during the last presidential election campaign. Exception made for 1988, The Washington Post has always endorsed Democratic candidates in presidential elections.
Banks
In recent months, the six biggest US banks — Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan — withdrew from a key industry climate alliance. While not directly citing it as an influencing factor, the banks have been under the spotlight for nearly two years due to a Republican-led campaign against environment, social and governance (ESG) investing. Canada’s six largest banks and British HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, followed suit.
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a UN-sponsored initiative, was set up in 2021 by former Bank of Canada governor and current Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to encourage financial institutions to limit the environmental footprint of their operations and push toward achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
The Canadian banks insisted their decision would not impact their decarbonization pledges, with Royal Bank of Canada Chief Executive Officer Dave McKay reassuring that pulling out of the alliance “doesn’t lead to a non-commitment to net zero or climate change.” However, analysts say the moves send a clear signal to the market that climate change has become even less of a priority for Wall Street.
Investment Companies
Banks are not the only ones shying away from sustainability commitments.
BlackRock, the world’s largest investment management corporation, in January withdrew from the Net-Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, an international group of asset managers committed to reaching net-zero emissions. The New York-based firm, which manages assets worth some $11.5 trillion, said the decision to leave was prompted by pressure from public officials and Republican-led legal inquiries.
The New York-based firm has long been at the center of attacks from conservative lawmakers for embracing what they call “woke” policies. In a report published last month, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee said it had found “evidence of collusion” between “left-wing activists and major financial institutions [to] impose radical environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals on American companies.”
In November, Texas sued BlackRock and investment firms Vanguard and State Street for allegedly breaching antitrust laws by adopting green strategies that suppress coal production, leading to higher electricity prices.
Following Blackrock’s departure — which also spurred American Vanguard, Northern Trust, and various other asset managers to leave — the alliance said it was “disappointed” but respected “any individual decisions signatories take.” It later announced it was suspending activities to “track signatory implementation and reporting” to undergo an internal review, citing “recent developments in the US and different regulatory and client expectations in investors’ respective jurisdictions.”
“As a voluntary initiative, NZAM has successfully supported investors globally as they have sought to navigate their own individual paths in the energy transition in line with their fiduciary duties and clients’ long-term financial objectives. NZAM looks forward to continuing to play this constructive role with investors around the world,” it said in a statement.
The alliance launched in December 2020 to support the asset management industry to commit to a goal of net zero emissions in order to mitigate financial risk and to maximize long-term value of assets. The group counted over 325 signatories managing more than $57.5 trillion of assets, its website stated prior to BlackRock’s departure.
US grassroots environmental organization Sierra Club described the departure of major financial institutions from global net-zero initiatives as “disappointing,” adding it was “a sign that these banks and asset managers are capitulating to ongoing attacks from climate denier politicians that want to stop sustainable finance efforts.”
Energy
A host of energy companies, including French TotalEnergies and Norwegian Equinor, recently scaled back their low-carbon energy investment plans. Others, like British Shell and American ExxonMobil and Chevron, committed to increasing fossil fuel production, the leading cause of climate change.
In February, British oil and gas company BP said it will cut its renewable energy investments and instead focus on increasing oil and gas production. The multinational, one of the world’s largest companies measured by revenues and profits, described the decision as a “strategic reset” as it looks to boost performance and reduce net debt.
As part of the new strategy, the company will grow oil and gas investment by about 20 percent to $10 billion per year and production by between 2.3 million and 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2030. Funding for the energy transition — including renewables, hydrogen, biogas, biofuels, electric vehicle charging, and carbon capture and storage — will be instead cut by more than $5 billion to $1.5-2 billion yearly.
Former US climate envoy John Kerry, a key figure in global negotiations that led to the Paris climate agreement, said energy companies have been “intimidated” into backtracking on their climate efforts.
Commenting on remarks made by Saudi Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser at an energy summit in Texas last week, where he said there was “more chance of Elvis speaking” than renewables meeting the growth in energy demand, Kerry said this “could not be more wrong.”
“If the head of a major fossil fuel company wants to pretend it isn’t going to happen, have at it. But they’re on the wrong side of history. And history is not just waiting to prove it. [It’s] proving it right now. This transition is happening,” Kerry said, according to The Financial Times.
Airlines
Texas-headquartered American Airlines — the largest airline by fleet size globally — appeared to have removed a reference to how the “low-carbon transition is both urgent and under way” ahead of the November US presidential election, The Financial Times reported.
Responding to a newspaper’s enquiry, the airline said it has updated the website “to include language from our latest sustainability report,” ensuring its sustainability targets “have not changed.”
Retail, F&B
The same Financial Times investigation also revealed that leading corporations including Walmart and Kraft Heinz have revised statements on climate change over the past year, coinciding with a Republican backlash against climate action and sustainability efforts.
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, in December said it is likely to miss its emissions reduction targets — 35 percent by 2025 and 65 percent by 2030 compared with 2015 levels — adding that it would consider revising the goals this year. In 2023, the company produced 15.06 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, the equivalent of nearly 3.5 million fossil fuel-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year.
The retail giant wrote on its website last year that “[c]limate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time.” It continued: “If we don’t take more aggressive action now, the damage will only worsen, and the consequences will be disastrous for this and future generations.” The statement was removed in December, according to The Financial Times, although the company reiterated its commitment to reducing emissions across its operations.
Meanwhile, arguing that “internal and external challenges” had hindered its plans to reach net zero, American multinational food company Kraft Heinz in January revised its Net Zero and Science Based Targets webpage, removing mentions of its goal to slash emissions in half by the decade’s end. Similarly, Coca Cola quietly removed a sustainability goal concerning waste from its website, sparking backlash and accusations of greenwashing.
This story by Martina Igini was originally published by Earth.Org and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. WhoWhatWhy has been a partner in Covering Climate Now since its inception in 2019.
