It's pretty clear U.S. President Donald Trump is a skeptic when it comes to a human role in global climate change.
He's pulled the United States out of the global Paris Agreement on cutting carbon emissions and declined to sign a G20 declaration on climate change.
The effects of a warming planet, meanwhile, are felt every day on Deal Island in the U.S. state of Maryland -- as rising sea levels consume its shoreline.
And while most residents there are concerned for the future, they overwhelmingly back Trump and question what's causing the changes in their environment.
Kate Fisher reports.
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VO #1: On the U.S. East Coast – tucked inside Maryland's Chesapeake Bay -- sits Deal Island – and it is sinking. In the 19th century there were two more houses and an orchard between Bill Sailer's house and the shoreline.
SOT:
BILL SAILER: Deal Island Resident
"That's why the shoals out here are called the orchard - because there used to be an orchard but all of that's been gone since about the 1850s.
It doesn't matter if it's global warming or anything you want to name it. We know we're going to get hit again and it's going to be just as dangerous."
VO #2: Bill, like many of his neighbors, voted for Donald Trump - a president who questions whether humans have a role in climate change - but that doesn't bother him.
SOT:
BILL SAILER: Deal Island Resident
"What the hell is the difference what does it when you have a mess like this, no I don't believe in climate change.
I think that Trump will realize in the very very new job that he doesn't have much experience in that there are a lot of things to do and I think he'll start doing them. I certainly hope so!"
VO #3: Deal is located in Maryland's poorest county where federal funding could help pay for protection from rising sea levels. But those funds are unlikely under President Trump – who wants to slash environmental spending by a third.
SOT:
MICHAEL Paolisso, Professor, University of Maryland
"We don't get huge grants by any means but it will be much, much harder to get all of that if cuts to research, federal funded research, you know NOA, EPA, National Science Foundation happen."
That's Michael Paolisso, a professor at the univeristy of maryland and one of the members of the deal island pensinula project. In stark contrast to the partisanship of Washington, residents, scientists and officials here have put their differences aside over the causes of the island's plight and are working together
SOT:
MICHAEL Paolisso, Professor, University of Maryland
"Our success was building a network of people that were willing to engage and work together, even though they had different views. They tell you it's always been happening what they disagree on is what's causing it."
STAND-UP: KATE FISHER, Deal Island, Maryland
Just 15 years ago locals say that children used to come and play on the huge sand dunes on this beach but now Deal Island is on the frontline of climate change and the sea is slowly starting to eat away at the shoreline."
VO#5: Andrew Webster has lived here all his life.
SOT:
ANDREW WEBSTER: Deal Island Resident
"You can see the changes from the erosion and land kind of disappearing even in my lifetime. The land used to be much farther out into the water.
There was an island that used to be out in the middle of the Chesapeake bay, Holland island, where people lived and it gradually eroded down to one house and then now that's fallen into the bay and the last remaining bit of land out there has disappeared now."
VO#6: But the ghostly sight of Deal Island's dead trees have not. Ravaged by the salt water, they are a lasting reminder to the islanders of the power of nature, oblivious to the political arguments among humans. Kate Fisher, Deal Island, Maryland