The “Trump administration” from the “United States of America” (USA) again acknowledges global warming with its politics towards “Greenland” and its interest in dominating the arctic region (cf. Baumann, K. 2025/04/29: “Trump administration acknowledges global warming“).
The “Trump administration” expects melting ice shields due to global warming and thus sees great opportunities – increased security, increased trade via new shipping routes, increased business via the exploitation of natural resources like oil, gas, rare materials, etc. for the USA.
The “Trump administration”(indirectly) acknowledging the man-made global warming from burning fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) and industrial meat production mainly is very good news, since the “Trump administration” withdrew from the “Paris Agreement” and lately from “United Nations Climate Change” (UNFCCC) and aims to further promote fossil fuel production (“Drill, baby, drill“).
This is no surprise, since it follows exactly what is written and taught in mainstream management and it follows the “homo economicus” concept. Within mainstream management “change” is seen as something good, because “change” gives you new business opportunities. So, out of this management perspective, “climate change” is a business opportunity and it is up to the ones, who are best in adapting to this kind of “change” to get the most market share, revenues, and profits at the end of the day.
Mainstream management theory does not include any form of “(political or social) responsibility”. It aims for profit maximisation for some entity. This entity in this perspective might be a corporation; the “Trump administration” now transferred that kind of thinking to the entity of a “country” and to “politics”.
Linear management theory is all about that kind of thinking and acting. Progressive management theory includes concepts like “stakeholder management”, “corporate responsibility”, “cooperation”, “plurality” and “creativity”. Within a linear management thinking, like the one from the “Trump administration”, this is seen as “weak management” or “soft”.
The ability to have long term foresight thinking is included within that kind of linear management theory. So the politics from the “Trump administration” shows that the “Trump administration” fully understands the correlation between (1) “greenhouse gas” (GHG) emissions from burning fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) and industrial meat production, (2) global warming, (3) climate change, and (4) the loss of biodiversity.
Since the “Trump administration” understands itself as “(tough and strong) management” of the “United States of America”, in their understanding, the management has to best understand this correlation and then develop the best possible security and business opportunities for the USA out of it. It is fully “logic” for them, to optimise the situation in that kind of sense fully focused on optimising and maximising the gains and profits for USA businesses and thus in their view USA people.
Within that kind of linear profit optimisation thinking, mitigating global warming by reducing GHG emissions would lead to short term profit loss and a loss of wealth generation (especially from fossil fuels – coal, gas, oil). Casualties are not relevant, because the concept of “love” is also linear reduced to “first; family, then friends, and then all the rest”.
From a linear wealth optimisation perspective, you also might argue, that GHG emissions and global warming is a business opportunity. Our expected scenario from a peak of roughly 8.5 billion around the year 2035 down to almost 4 billion people around 2100 (cf. “Trans- & interdisciplinary global warming scenario“) on our mother planet Earth would mean, that the 4 billion surviving are much better off. They can concentrate all the wealth on less people and the tension and competition around limited resources is significantly reduced. Less population, less resource demand, more life quality for the few, more wealth concentration possible.
For every healthy human being, this is sick! But it is fully aligned with mainstream management theory, the optimisation of individual wealth and the mainstream economic concept of “externalities”.
There is a different concept we promote and this concept is called “health“. It demands among others “responsibility”, “collaboration”, “foresight thinking” and “taking care of each other”. Healthy love means to give without expecting to get. Healthy well-being means “being happy”, not “having happy” (cf. Erich Fromm).
To the “Trump administration”, this sounds weak, because it means giving up sovereignty, wealth and current profit potentials mainly from fossil fuels. This is the paradox within the linear thinking from the “Trump administration” – the (short term) advantage they want to gain from fossil fuels is (in the long term) destroying their own livelihood.
The good news about the current development is, there is obvious common understanding about GHG emissions causing global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity, also within the USA “Trump administration”.
The “Trump administration” sees it as a business opportunity, we see it as by far, the greatest threat to humanity. So, the “Trump administration” is doing a fantastic management in terms of short-term (3-5 years) profit and wealth optimisation within the context of GHG emissions, global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity and they just do not care about the others, as long as it is in the interest of their short-term profit and wealth maximisation. For them it is great, that there is nearly 30 years delay between GHG emissions and actual temperature rise, floods, storms, cold- & heat waves, land slides, water shortage, droughts, wildfires, etc. and the actual suffering.
A decrease in the global population from approximately 8.5 billion to around 4 billion, so every second person gone within approximately 60 years, less than one generation, means unimaginable, unthinkable and inconceivable suffering for (not thousands, not millions, but) billions of people. I doubt, the USA can remain within such a development as a “holy island” with “Après moi, le déluge“. With global warming, it would be, in the truest sense of the word, like this.
picture shows distribution of daily global surface air temperature anomalies (°C) relative to 1991–2020 for each year from 1940 to 2025 (selected important climate events have been annotated).
Data source: ERA5 (2025 Global Climate Highlights Report). Credit: C3S/ECMWF. Visualisation inspired by the work of Erwan Rivault (BBC).
