How federal cuts are upending Michigan families
Three years ago, Peter Haderlein and his wife packed up their lives in Los Angeles and moved to Ann Arbor for a new chapter. For Peter, that meant a job with a sustainable technology startup working on technologies to safely store carbon pollution from power plants.
“[We were] building a device to take carbon dioxide out of the air. The recent IPCC has acknowledged that the Earth is not going to meet its emissions reduction targets by.. the mid-century mark and that the temperature of the Earth is going to keep going up,” Peter explained. “It’s incumbent on governments and industry and people to do everything they can to reduce the amount of global warming emissions that we’re putting out into the air.”
Peter’s role as a patent engineer combined his background in mechanical engineering with his interest in climate solutions. After working as a patent examiner for the federal government, he went back to school for a master’s degree in green technologies, eventually working on solar, wind, electric vehicles, and finally, carbon capture and storage.
His company’s project was funded in part by a federal grant through the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which supports critical advances in new clean energy and sustainability technologies. But within a week of taking office, President Trump signed executive orders freezing EPA disbursements, halting funding streams for projects across the country.
“The Monday after Trump was inaugurated, we had a virtual meeting,” Peter recalled. “I found out I was being let go with a number of other people. It had nothing to do with performance or what I was able to offer the company. We were all the victims of circumstance.”
The blow was personal and immediate. Peter and his wife had a mortgage and two small kids. Then, within weeks, his wife – an education researcher working for a federal contractor – lost her job as well, when Department of Education contracts were abruptly terminated.
“It’s been a very devastating season emotionally and financially. We’ve skated by off of some savings, some freelance work that I was able to take on, and some unemployment when I didn’t have the freelance work,” Peter explained. “But it has been extremely stressful and dispiriting, and it’s not over. I’m still looking for a job, five months later.”
Like the vast majority of federal workers and contractors who have lost their jobs this year, Peter’s work was not partisan. But as he points out, carbon capture also doesn’t fit neatly into partisan boxes, either. There is healthy skepticism of policies that invite carbon capture as a sole solution for reducing emissions without equally ambitious policies supporting renewable energy generation, while fossil fuel advocates support it as a way of extending the lifespan of fossil fuel infrastructure. To Peter, that nuance makes the funding cuts all the more revealing.
“There isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to what they decide to keep and throw away. If it has the smell of environmental impacts or climate change, they just want to get rid of it. If it’s something that Biden funded, they want to get rid of it.”
Peter worries about the broader impact these decisions will have on Michigan’s energy future. Over the past decade, the cost of solar and batteries has plummeted, making clean energy not just environmentally sound but economically smart. Renewable energy projects have grown steadily in Michigan – thanks to the Clean Energy and Jobs Act and federal investments from the Inflation Reduction Act – lowering costs, creating jobs, and reducing pollution.
But those gains are fragile.
“Americans are cost-conscious, and they don’t like it when their energy bills keep going up. A solar field can lower the cost of electricity, so [they will] continue to be built because it makes sense. But the pace will slow it. The efforts of the Biden administration were to try to make [clean energy] more accessible to everybody. That will get a lot harder, really fast.”
The Trump administration’s cuts haven’t just eliminated Peter’s job – they’ve made it harder to find a new one. The uncertainty created by federal policy changes, tariffs, and shifting funding priorities has made companies more risk-averse.
“It’s a double whammy. I’ve been interviewing since January at jobs and got to the finish line of getting hired, only for the position to not be filled at all because of the economic uncertainty, he said. “[Companies are] having difficulty planning and forecasting, [they] are more risk-averse right now. Trump has created an environment that makes it harder for you to find a new job, because organizations and companies are less willing to take on new hires.”
Still, Peter is choosing to speak out, knowing that many people in similar situations can’t. Federal employees and contractors risk retaliation for criticizing policy decisions. Unemployed, Peter feels like he has nothing to lose by telling the truth.
“Losing your job feels personal, so I hope people can try to find empathy. I’ve received some pushback that it’s somehow my fault that I lost my job,” Peter explained. “I’m a person, I’m a dad, who worked really hard on something that I thought was important.”
For Peter, telling his story is about more than his own family’s struggle. It’s about cutting through the noise, finding common ground, and reminding people that policy decisions have human consequences.