Polluted air. Extreme heat. Erratic and damaging floods. Wisconsinites are seeing these harmful results of Trump’s anti-science agenda firsthand — which may be why 72% of them say they believe in climate change, and 60% believe the President and Congress should do more about it.

Instead, thanks to Trump and his allies, we’re going backward — denying the reality of the climate crisis, ignoring experts, and putting Wisconsin on the front lines of catastrophe.

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THE CRISIS

The facts are clear: Donald Trump has failed to act on climate change and his inaction is putting the health, safety, and livelihoods of Wisconsinites at risk.

Today, flooding is overwhelming an infrastructure that simply wasn’t built to handle more frequent, more severe downpours.

Dirty air and toxic chemicals are making us sick — a burden borne disproportionately by Wisconsin’s communities of color.

And across the state, families working in industries like agriculture and outdoor recreation face the potential loss of their livelihoods.

Without bold action, the problem will grow worse: more floods, more job loss, more injustice. 2020 is the moment. It’s time to get moving.

THE COSTS

Devastating floods. Dirty air. Extreme heat. Lost jobs. In Wisconsin, the dangers of Donald Trump’s war on science grow every single day:

• The science is straightforward: Warmer air holds more moisture, which in turn leads to more severe, more frequent downpours. And when that happens, it looks a lot like the historic, devastating flooding across Wisconsin in 2019 — when, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “high water [closed] roads and schools and [sent] residents in some of the hardest-hit areas scurrying for higher ground.” 

• By 2050, the number of extreme heat days in Wisconsin is expected to grow six times. Already, in 2018, Wisconsin recorded 659 emergency department visits for heat-related illnesses — what will those numbers look like when the number of extreme heat days grows?

• Agriculture employed 11.8% of Wisconsin’s workforce in 2017. Outdoor recreation supported another 168,000 jobs. And both of these industries are at risk — with climate change projected to cause a 10% loss in crop yields in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes being threatened by floods in the spring and summer and dwindling ice coverage in the winter.

• While every single Wisconsinite is at risk, people of color bear a disproportionate burden. Across the state, children of color under age 12 are twice likely to live in the shadow of a hazardous chemical facility compared to white children. In some Milwaukee neighborhoods, as many as 33% of children who were tested had high levels of lead in their systems — six times the rate as in Flint, Michigan.

FROM OUR RESEARCH TEAM

• Climate Disasters in Wisconsin
• What Do Trump’s Attacks On Science Mean For Wisconsin?