Photograph by Evelyn Freja / Connected Archives
words by miranda green
Earth Day was first celebrated on April 22, 1970, catalyzed by a disastrous oil spill the year prior in my hometown of Santa Barbara, California.
Since then, the day has typically marked a call to action, where cities and companies hold events dedicated to cleaning up the planet and giving back to Mother Earth.
But in a year that faced some of the strongest attacks on science and environmentalism, it’s also important to focus attention on federal-level efforts to both prevent future work on these issues and erase existing bodies of research and evidence.
Ian Morgan is a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where he’s been focused on studying antibacterial resistance. But the past year has turned his plans, and those of his colleagues, upside down.
“The simplest way to describe it is chaos. It’s just been absolute chaos for everybody,” Morgan told me.
The NIH is a top-tier research institution long considered the crown jewel of scientific and medical innovation in the United States. But that started to change when the Trump administration initiated a series of funding cuts, layoffs, and the dismantling of entire labs. At least 1,300 scientists at the NIH last spring lost their jobs, and the agency was tasked with eliminating $2.6 billion in contracts.
“Everyone agrees that with new administrations, there are always going to be changes,” Morgan said. “This is at a completely different level. Many of the changes that have been happening seem almost designed to break things.”
The NIH is just one of dozens of research institutions where work has been dramatically encumbered. More than 10,000 post-doctoral experts in scientific and related fields lost their jobs in the federal workforce in 2025, according to a January analysis by Science. Across 14 research agencies, the number of departing employees outstripped new hires by 11 to 1.
As I have written previously, some job and funding cuts stopped the collection of important climate data. The reductions appeared strategic; designed to redirect attention away from the inconvenient reality of climate change.
The cuts also resulted in an ongoing bleeding of talent in the U.S., to dramatic effect across government agencies.
“The long-term damage to weather and climate research already done is severe and will take years to recover from,” Jeff Masters, who previously worked as a hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters, told me. “We lost too many key scientists and talent in the weather and climate space and lost a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge.”
And the government’s cuts to science, research, and data collection fields are not all in the past.
The government in December indicated plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which has studied the science behind Earth’s weather systems since 1960. The center is responsible for researching the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans; its data is widely used for weather forecasting. NCAR’s Boulder, Colorado, research lab is also home to a supercomputer and two aircraft. In his remarks late last year about axing the institution, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought called NCAR “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” Plans include breaking up the labs, passing some responsibilities to the private sector, and selling buildings.
“There’s a big concern right now as to how any third-party operator that receives the supercomputer, what are their research priorities going to be? How much are they going to allocate computing services for atmospheric research, whether that’s climate or weather versus oceanic land, the Arctic?” asked Carlos Martinez, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
There are more than 800 staffers at NCAR whose jobs could be impacted. They are managed under the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit consortium of more than 129 universities.
Not long after DOGE’s purge of scientists and funding began last spring, the European Union in May 2025 pledged 500 million euros (around $565 million at the time) to bring in foreign researchers where science is under siege in a campaign called “Choose Europe for Science.” At the same time, France announced it would spend 100 million euros to attract new talent; and in July, Aix-Marseille University in southern France introduced eight American science refugees hired as part of the school’s “Safe Place for Science” program. Meanwhile, Vienna created APART-USA, a new Austrian fellowship offering four years of research funding to people leaving American institutions. China’s K visa, launched in October 2025, aims to attract young science and technology talent.
In British Columbia, Canada, a program targeting health care workers from Washington, Oregon, and select California cities received 1,400 applications over the course of four months, doubling the number of applications received in the first two months of the program. And the interest was not just in that province: A Nature analysis from April 2025 calculated a 41% increase in U.S. applications to job postings in Canada that month.
“Health care workers want to be in a system where their skills are valued, science is respected, and their focus is on providing care—not fighting with for-profit insurance companies,” British Columbia Minister of Health Josie Osborne said in a press release. “That’s why we’re seeing incredible momentum with hundreds of American health care workers on their way to B.C. and some already here.”
The fact that scientists are finding homes abroad is a net positive, but it comes with a downside. Some worry this American “brain drain” will have lasting implications for the country’s knowledge base and research institutions.
“The damage done to university education has been severe, and will hamper the ability to train and hire good talent,” Masters warned. “For the next three years, it will be tough to hire good people into government service. If you’re talented, why take a job where you can be fired for no cause at the whim of a politician?”
Martinez of the Union of Concerned Scientists was working at the National Science Foundation when DOGE cuts began, limiting future job opportunities for him and his colleagues.
“I’m a climate scientist, and I feel like every part of my employment history has been attacked by this administration,” he told me. “It was devastating seeing colleagues of mine being laid off, probationary folks being laid off because of merit, when that was not true.”
Martinez says he knows many scientists who have taken jobs in Europe. Others have found jobs in the private sector, including working for insurance companies trying to make heads or tails of the climate future’s impact on homes. But those pivots have massive impacts on legislative decision-making, environmental protections, the nation’s disaster preparedness, public health, and overall access to scientific fact.
“You have folks who are in the Environmental Protection Agency with a robust understanding of regulations that are required for the Clean Air Act and other policy decision-making,” Martinez said. “Once you take that human infrastructure out, you leave a huge gap that this administration does not want to replace … I don’t think we can really quantify these impacts. I think it’ll take a very long time.”
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Earth Day in an American Era of Scientific Retreat
