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The only thing more American than baseball and apple pie might be the Statue of Liberty. Its a universally identifiable bit of iconography, appearing on stamps, currency, and Planet of the Apes movies since time immemorial. The blue-green, toga-clad Lady Liberty is a sturdy symbol of democracy, independence, and the land of opportunity. And in 2025, an official from the country who gifted America the statue has asked for it backthe latest sign that America, the brand, is becoming toxic. A French Member of European Parliament may have been joking at a recent party meeting when he said, Were going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: Give us back the Statue of Liberty. He might have also been dead serious. Either way, hes certainly not alone in reconsidering his views about what America has to offer the world these days, and vice versa. Global backlash hits U.S. brands Boycotts of U.S.-made products have broken out in Canadawhere some cafes have taken to calling Americanos “Canadianos“along with France and Sweden, where a Facebook group geared around boycotting the U.S. has swelled to nearly 80,000 members. In addition to a grassroots boycott push in Denmark, where Trump annexation-target Greenland technically resides, the countrys largest grocery store operator has added a black star on price tags for European products, to make it easier for customers to avoid purchasing American goods. And even without explicitly boycotting American products, fewer people around the world stand poised to buy them in the near-term. Between supply chain disruptions and an unmistakable aura of economic uncertainty, Tesla is unlikely to be the only American company that sees its global sales plunge this year. (Canada has already removed Jack Daniels products from store shelves, as a retaliatory measure for Trumps tariffs, while Beyond Meat recently shared fears of its revenue suffering from anti-American sentiment.) Since Donald Trump resumed office on January 20, hes alienated America from much of the rest of the world. His run of omnidirectional trade wars has antagonized U.S. allies with hefty tariffs, and confused many with their incoherence and inconsistency. He has acted with imperialist hostility, threatening to annex the U.S.s Northern neighbor and largest trading partner, along with the Panama Canal and Greenland. He has paradoxically portrayed Ukraine as the aggressor in Russias invasion of the country, and withheld military support for the region on the condition of receiving rare minerals for Americas efforts. His administration has cut off 90% of funding from USAID, which a New York Times report claims may lead to 1.65 million deaths from AIDS this year, and his domestic crackdown on dissent has made it unclear whether America is still meant to be a beacon of democracy. When hockey fans at Montreals Bell Centre last month booed the Star Spangled Banner in multiple games against the American team, it was clearly about more than just hockey. And it might have also been just the beginning of a worldwide backlash. Opposing the U.S. wins elections Leaders in several countries have lately learned that opposing the U.S. is now likely to bolster domestic support. The next election in Canada once seemed like a surefire victory for the Conservative Party, with late-2024 polling showing the Liberal Party down by 26 points. But as the Liberals newly elected PM Mark Carney has taken a strong stance against Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, the two parties are now locked in a dead heat. (In his recent victory speech, Carney referred to the U.S. as a country we can no longer trust.”) Similarly, Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s Demokraatit party won a March 11 election in Greenland, partly due to the popularity of Nielsens resistance to Trumps ongoing threats to absorb the country. And in France, Senator Claude Malhuret’s recent speech savagely dunking on the U.S. turned him into a viral sensation. (Washington has become the court of Nero, he said, kicking off the fiery diatribe. An incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service.) As those leaders have had difficulty working with the U.S., some of them now seem to be searching for a workaround. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened a meeting with the heads of 18 countries earlier this month, with the goal of building a coalition of the willing in Ukraines defense. The U.S. was apparently not invited. Nor was it invited to a top security summit in France last Tuesday with military leaders from more than 30 NATO member nations. And just this week, Canada PM Carney put forth the idea of his country trading more with the UK, France, and Europe if America continues to look inward. Americas fading appeal Canadian tourism to the U.S. is down, with reports indicating a 20% year-over-year decline in new bookings to U.S. destinations since February 1. Travel-hesitance is spreading beyond Canada, too. According to the Washington Post, International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5% this year, contributing to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry. Considering the horror stories coming out now about international visitors being detained for specious reasons, and subjected to awful conditions, the U.S. is bound to strike vanishingly fewer global citizens as a beckoning travel destinationeven just for conferences. All that hostility toward the U.S. has started boiling over into the streets as well. Anti-American protests have lately broken out in Panama, in response to Trumps threats to reclaim its namesake canal, while at least 120 Stand Up for Science events have taken place outside of the U.S., drawing attention to recent DOGE cuts in research funding. Other international critics have instead focused their distaste with the U.S. entirely around DOGE-master Elon Musk, vandalizing signage around the UK and destroying 12 cars in a Tesla showroom in France. Last August, about half of Western Europeans polled by YouGov had a favorable view of the U.S. Since Trump resumed office, only 37% of British, 34% of French, 32% of Germans,and just 20% of Danes now hold a positive opinion of the United States. Its not the first time Americas brand has been in tatters, of course. Its not even the first time recently. A cycle of rise and fall The U.S.s global reputation has been on a roller coaster throughout the entire 21st century. After 9/11, America held much of the worlds sympathiesand then promptly squandered them with the Iraq War, which proved so unpopular, it inspired mass protests in over 600 global cities. During those years, crafty entrepreneurs even started selling Canadian kits to Americans, so they might pass as mere North Americans while traveling overseas, and avoid getting yelled at. Years later, the stars and stripes made a comeback. The Obama years seemed to restore global faith in U.S. leadership, especially after America joined the Paris Climate Accords in 2015. Then under Trump, confidence in U.S. leadership fell to a historic low of 30%. Maybe this is just how it will always gothe U.S. brand losing some of its luster and then re-polishing it to a shiny gleam again every four to eight years. (In 2023, 59% of respondents around the world gave the U.S. a favorable rating in a Pew Research survey.) When the U.S. brand is strong, the words Made in America ring out around the world as shorthand for quality, durability, and freedomeven when its just a cheeseburger or a pair of jeans. As long as this administration drags that brand through the mud, though, Made in America will likely translate in any language to caveat emptor: buyer beware.
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In 1957, Hollywood released The Deadly Mantis, a B-grade monster movie starring a praying mantis of nightmare proportions. Its premise: Melting Arctic ice has released a very hungry, million-year-old megabug, and scientists and the U.S. military will have to stop it. The rampaging insect menaces Americas Arctic military outposts, part of a critical line of national defense, before heading south and meeting its end in New York City. Yes, its over-the-top fiction, but the movie holds some truth about the U.S. militarys concerns then and now about the Arctics stability and its role in national security. A poster advertises The Deadly Mantis, a movie released in 1957, a time when Americans worried about a Russian invasion. The film used military footage to promote the nations radar defenses along the Distant Early Warning line in the Arctic. [Image: IMDB] In the late 1940s, Arctic temperatures were warming and the Cold War was heating up. The U.S. military had grown increasingly nervous about a Soviet invasion across the Arctic. It built bases and a line of radar stations. The movie used actual military footage of these polar outposts. But officials wondered: What if sodden snow and vanishing ice stalled American men and machines and weakened these northern defenses? In response to those concerns, the military created the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment, a research center dedicated to the science and engineering of all things frozen: glacier runways, the behavior of ice, the physics of snow and the climates of the past. It was the beginning of the militarys understanding that climate change couldnt be ignored. Army engineers test the properties of snow on Greenlands ice sheet in 1955, a critical determinant of mobility on the ice and one that changes rapidly with temperature and climate. [Photo: U.S. Army] As I was writing When the Ice is Gone, my recent book about Greenland, climate science and the U.S. military, I read government documents from the 1950s and 1960s showing how the Pentagon poured support into climate and cold-region research to boost the national defense. Initially, military planners recognized threats to their own ability to protect the nation. Over time, the U.S. military would come to see climate change as both a threat in itself and a threat multiplier for national security. Ice roads, ice cores and bases inside the ice sheet The militarys snow and ice engineering in the 1950s made it possible for convoys of tracked vehicles to routinely cross Greenlands ice sheet, while planes landed and took off from ice and snow runways. In 1953, the Army even built a pair of secret surveillance sites inside the ice sheet, both equipped with Air Force radar units looking 24/7 for Soviet missiles and aircraft, but also with weather stations to understand the Arctic climate system. The public reveal of U.S. military bases somewherethat remained classifiedinside Greenlands ice sheet, in the February 1955 edition of REAL. [Image: Paul Bierman collection] The Army drilled the worlds first deep ice core from a base it built within the Greenland ice sheet, Camp Century. Its goal: to understand how climate had changed in the past so they would know how it might change in the future. The military wasnt shy about its climate change research successes. The Armys chief ice scientist, Dr. Henri Bader, spoke on the Voice of America. He promoted ice coring as a way to investigate climates of the past, provide a new understanding of weather, and understand past climatic patterns to gauge and predict the one we are living in today all strategically important. In the 1970s, painstaking laboratory work on the Camp Century ice core extracted minuscule amounts of ancient air trapped in tiny bubbles in the ice. Analyses of that gas revealed that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were lower for tens of thousands of years before the industrial revolution. After 1850, carbon dioxide levels crept up slowly at first and then rapidly accelerated. It was direct evidence that peoples actions, including burning coal and oil, were changing the composition of the atmosphere. Since 1850, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have spiked and global temperatures have warmed by more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 Celsius). The past 10 years have been the hottest since recordkeeping began, with 2024 now holding the record. Climate change is now affecting the entire Earth but most especially the Arctic, which is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet. Since 1850, global average temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have risen together, reflecting human emissions of greenhouse gases. Red bars indicate warmer years; blue bars indicate colder years. [Image: NOAA] Seeing climate change as a threat multiplier For decades, military leaders have been discussing climate change as a threat and a threat multiplier that could worsen instability and mass migration in already fragile regions of the world. Climate change can fuel storms, wildfires and rising seas that threaten important military bases. It puts personnel at risk in rising heat and melts sea ice, creating new national security concerns in the Arctic. Climate change can also contribute to instability and conflict when water and food shortages trigger increasing competition for resources, internal and cross-border tensions, or mass migrations. The military understands that these threats cant be ignored. As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told a conference in September 2024: Climate resilience is force resilience. A view of ships docked at the sprawling Naval Station Norfolk show how much of the region is within a few feet of sea level. [Photo: Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher Stoltz/US Navy] Consider Naval Station Norfolk. Its the largest military port facility in the world and sits just above sea level on Virginias Atlantic coast. Sea level there rose more than 1.5 feet in the last century, and its on track to rise that much again by 2050 as glaciers around the world melt and warming ocean water expands. High tides already cause delays in repair work, and major storms and their storm surges have damaged expensive equipment. The Navy has built sea walls and worked to restore coastal dunes and marshlands to protect its Virginia properties, but the risks continue to increase. Planning for the future, the Navy incorporates scientists projections of sea level rise and increasing hurricane strength to design more resilient facilities. By adapting to climate change, the .S. Navy will avoid the fate of another famous marine power: the Norse, forced to abandon their flooded Greenland settlements when sea level there rose about 600 years ago. Norse ruins in Igaliku in southern Greenland, illustrated in the late 1800s while flooded at spring tide by sea level, which had risen since the settlement was abandoned around 1400. [Image: Steenstrup, K.J.V., and A. Kornerup. 1881. Expeditionen til Julianehaabs distrikt i 1876. MeddelelseromGrnland] Climate change is costly to ignore As the impacts of climate change grow in both frequency and magnitude, the costs of inaction are increasing. Most economists agree that its cheaper to act now than deal with the consequences. Yet, in the past 20 years, the political discourse around addressing the cause and effects of climate change has become increasingly politicized and partisan, stymieing effective action. In my view, the militarys approach to problem-solving and threat reduction provides a model for civil society to address climate change in two ways: reducing carbon emissions and adapting to inevitable climate change impacts. The U.S. military emits more planet warming carbon than Sweden and spent more than US$2 billion on energy in 2021. It accounts for more than 70% of energy used by the federal government. In that context, its embrace of alternative energy, including solar generation, microgrids and wind power, makes economic and environmental sense. The U.S. military is moving away from fossil fuels, not because of any political agenda, but because of the cost-savings, increased reliability and energy independence the alternatives provide. As sea ice melts and Arctic temperatures rise, the polar region has again become a strategic priority. Russia and China are expanding Arctic shipping routes and eyeing critical mineral deposits as they become accessible. The military knows climate change affects national security, which is why it continues to take steps to address the threats a changing climate presents. Paul Bierman is a fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment and professor of natural resources and environmental Science at the University of Vermont. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Catherine Coleman Flowers new book, Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope, was published a week into President Donald Trumps second term. Grounded in faith, the book weaves together stories about Flowers family, climate change and her work on sanitation rights and infrastructure in rural America. In the first essay, Thirty Pieces of Silver, she compares the infiltration of money into U.S. politics with Judas Iscariots biblical betrayal of Jesus Christ for 30 pieces of silver. Its not just a parable, however: Environmental injustice in the United States is deeply rooted in the ascension of profits over people in America. Flowers founded and leads the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice and was vice chair of the Biden administrations White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, as well as a member of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force on Climate Change. Shes also a 2020 MacArthur Fellow for environmental health advocacy and, in 2011, worked with the United Nations special rapporteur to expose environmental injustices in Lowndes County, Alabama, where she grew up, and across the southern U.S. Now, she says, is a good time to read her book and work toward transformation. Last week, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin publicly announced 31 changes as part of the agencys greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history. In more than 20 different press releases issued on March 12 alone, the agency touted efficiency, blasted burdensome regulations, and slashed programs as part of the EPAs Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative. Zeldin proclaimed that the agency is driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion and cutting or changing long-standing regulations on air and water quality and industry oversight. He also terminated all environmental justice divisions with the EPAs 10 regional offices and its headquarters in Washington, D.C. For decades, environmental justice arms have funded and focused on improving public health, protecting drinking water and clean air, and remediating pollution within communities where poor people and people of color are targeted by industries and routinely and systematically exposed to unhealthy and unsafe living and working conditions. Flowers spoke to Capital & Main from the road on the day after Zeldins pronouncements. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Capital & Main: What are your top concerns about Zeldins announcement and the EPAs trajectory? Catherine Coleman Flowers: The people that are going to be impacted the most by this are people in rural communities, because its hidden. Most people dont see that people in rural communities sometimes are dealing with dirty air, dirty water, and no sanitation infrastructure. Theyre dealing with contamination from human waste because the sanitation systems dont work or sometimes [people are] simply straight piping because they dont have the funds to do any better. [Straight pipe septic systems funnel untreated waste directly from a home into the ground or surface waters.] When youre thinking about impacted rural communities, what jumps to your mind first and foremost? Appalachia. I think about Appalachia. I think about the Midwest. I think about the colonias in south Texas. I think about Alabama. I think about all these areas in need of sustainable economic development and the infrastructure thats needed to sustain a workforce. A lot of these rural communities are unincorporated, and theyre unincorporated because its hard for them to get the federal funding they need for infrastructure, and for the infrastructure to support sustainable lifestyles, the American norm. In colonias, from California to Texas along the Mexican border, people are living in unincorporated communities, rural areas, but theyre not rural in the traditional sense. In one little community, you could have 1,000 homes there. Theyre all mobile homes, for the most part, and they dont have adequate sanitation, they dont have drainage for when it rains, they dont have, in some places, quality drinking water or access to electricity. Then, what Ive seen in Appalachia: I still saw a mobile home sitting on the side of hills with raw sewage running down the side because they were straight piping. In our study, [Flushed and Forgotten: Sanitation and Wastewater in Rural Communities in the United States in 2019], we found people had tropical parasites in their system because of the exposure to raw sewage. Im from Lowndes County, Alabama, where people existing in poverty are living in mobile homes that cannot withstand a storm. Alabama is one of those states that has a high incident of people dying during tornadoes. Thats because they live in mobile homes, and theyre not resilient, theyre not sustainable, and they dont help people develop wealth because they depreciate in value. Even in some of the more affluent and progressive states, in rural communities, where the poorer people tend to live, they dont have the type of infrastructure that they need in order to exist. Then in the poorer urban areas, they also will have failing systems, and we are starting to find that this is the case across the United States, that sanitation systems are failing. Zeldin, Trump, and others publicly say they dont believe in climate change, that climate change isnt real, but people in positions of power clearly know that climate change is happening and understand its effects. Why do you think that its so important for them to message that climate change isnt real? I think that most people on the ground do know that climate change is real, so I dont understand their position. Im still trying to wrap my mind around that. What does Zeldins phrase Powering the Great American Comeback mean to you, or signal to you? To me, what would be a Great American Comeback would be when everybody is guaranteed a living wage. When there is no more raw sewage on the ground, and we have sanitation systems that work. When we dont have people living on the street, when people have decent housing, and all children can have an opportunity for quality education. To me, that will be when we have the Great American Comeback. How can Americans, especially those in rural communities, have clean air and clean water without the EPA, the federal laws, the leadership and the funding? Is there hope for state or local action? I think there is hope for state and local action on these issues because the people on the ground can see the damage before the federal government even gets involved. We also still have to push for federal involvement and engagement. But maybe some states can become exemplary of what it really looks like to have the type of environmental regulations that protect everybody. Thereis so much fear in the country right now. Do you feel or see that in the communities where you work? I dont really see a lot of fear because a lot of the communities that I work in have been through hard times before. I grew up poor, in a rural community without access to a lot of things that we take advantage of today, and that are being threatened. I was around before we had all these things. We survived. And I believe that were going to survive again. We know that this is only short term. Ultimately, all of us believed in what America is and what the American ideal is. We still support that, and we think were going to get back to that. To be fearful and do nothing is just to succumb. Is there anything that people need to think about right now in terms of action, protecting communities that have systematically been deprived of access to resources? People still need to stay engaged. They need to lift up stories of folks who are suffering and also examples of what success looks like. I think thats very important. We also need to look to the midterms. We need to vote. And some of these people who are fearful need to run for office so they can change things. Laura Paskus, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
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