We live in a world turned upside down. On the climate front, the United States, once ambitious to lead, is now a rogue nation – the only one that has not signed the 2015 climate accord. To make matters worse, we joined this week's UN climate conference in Bonn, Germany, so that we could promote consumption of more coal.

But it's not just climate change where we have discarded the mantle of leadership. Over 15,000 scientists this week signed onto a letter to humanity, warning that we are on "a failing trajectory" and "time is running out." This is not the first time we have been warned. This week's letter marks the 25th anniversary of a similar declaration made by a slew of Nobel laureates, the Union of Concerned Scientists and 1700 other scientists in 1992. That letter warned that "a great change of stewardship of the Earth" was required "if vast human misery" was to be avoided.

Now we have that "great change of stewardship." Unfortunately for our planetary future, the new steward is Donald Trump, whose concern about natural assets starts and ends with coal. Coal, it appears, never had a better friend. The president loves coal. Every other product of nature, including the Earth's climate, must fend for itself.

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As noted in this week's declaration by scientists, there are some signs of hope. World leaders, with a strong nudge from the scientific community, did take decisive action against ozone depleting substances. The global fertility rate continues to decline, reflecting in part "investments in girls' and women's education." We are even making some progress in slowing the rate of global deforestation.

The declaration warns, however, that the changes are "still far from sufficient." In other words, we are continuing to lose ground. Since 1992, we have added more than 2 billion people to the planet and done far too little to prevent climate change.

The problems are broader than our failure to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, critical as that is to humanity's future. The authors of this week's scientific declaration warn, for example, that "we have unleashed a mass extinction" of plant and animal species. They also criticize our failure to "adequately limit population growth" and "reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth."

They advocate several constructive steps that could be taken to change our trajectory, including "halting the conversion of forests, grasslands, and other native habitats" to cropland, "rewilding regions with native species," reducing food waste, curbing our appetites for meat products and "ensuring that men and women have access to education and voluntary family planning."

But the president of the United States, with all disrespect, disagrees with those 15,000 scientists. In fact, no other president in the history of the American republic, certainly none in memory, has done more to trash science. It's not just President Trump's rejection of climate science and the Paris climate accord. His administration has been busy this month cleaning house at EPA, throwing out independent scientific advisers and replacing them with industry advocates.

While the scientific declaration urges the set-aside of more marine habitats, the administration appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Leaked reports indicate that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is preparing to reauthorize commercial fishing in several marine monuments previously ravaged by fishing trawlers.

As for scientists' concerns about population growth and its impact upon the natural environment, the Trump administration wants to eliminate all funding for U.S. international family planning programs. It has already acted, by an administrative ruling, to cut off all funding for the United Nations Population Fund.

The scientific declaration urges that our system of taxation be reformed by taking into consideration "the real costs which consumption patterns impose on our environment." But the administration and its allies in Congress have a somewhat different idea of tax reform: retaining tax breaks for fossil fuels, cutting the tax credit for wind power by a third and eliminating the tax credit for electric cars altogether.