Newly sworn-in President Donald Trump pledged Monday to overturn climate-focused policy, promising once again to “drill, baby, drill” for the “liquid gold” largely responsible for the world’s life-threatening warming.
“Today I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” he told inauguration attendees.
Included in his calls for a return to common sense, Trump declared a national energy emergency, tying energy costs to inflation. He said that America would be a manufacturing nation, stating that the country has the “largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth.”
“And, we are going to use it,” he said, adding that the U.S. would fill strategic reserves up “right to the top.”
“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump stated. The U.S. is currently the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.
The incoming Trump administration has vowed to end former President Joe Biden’s policies of “climate extremism,” reviewing and potentially repealing all regulations that “impose undue burdens on energy production and use,” ending leasing to massive wind farms that they say degrade natural landscapes and fail to serve American consumers, and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.
These decisions will have major consequences for the global climate, as the U.S. is already one of the world’s top offenders when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuels – such as coal, oil and gas – are the largest contributors to global climate change, and burning them for energy and transportation is the greatest source of emissions from human activites in the U.S.
Greenhouse gases are the most significant driver of observed climate change since the mid-20th century, and carbon dioxides accounts for most of U.S. emissions. Earth saw record increases in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2022 and 2023. A transition toward clean energy like wind, solar, and the use of electric vehicles works to combat previous emissions and limit warming. The Biden administration had offered to slash emissions by more than 60 percent by 2035.
The greenhouse gas methane leaks into the atmosphere from drilling operations. Emissions of Methane, which is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide, are rising rapidly, with researchers finding concentrations now growing faster than at any other time since record-keeping began around 40 years ago.
Increased heat in Earth’s atmosphere results in more water vapor that acts as fuel for storms, and higher global surface temperatures mean more devastating droughts. Hurricanes like the recent Helene and Milton have been made faster and stronger due to climate change, and wildfires and the atmospheric river storms that pound California with rain are more frequent. As the world continues to warm, these natural disasters are expected to become even worse, with horrific impacts to Earth and its inhabitants.
In an attempt to address future peril and suffering imposed disproportionately on island nations, the Paris climate agreement was struck in December 2015. The international commitment was signed by nearly 200 countries, including the U.S. under former President Barack Obama, before Trump first withdrew.
He cited an an “unfair economic burden” imposed on the U.S. — although the decision took effect years later due to United Nations regulations. Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the agreement on his first day in office four years ago.
The agreement sets a target for nations to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to reduce the risk and impacts of climate change. The goal set at the accords was exceeded last year: the world’s hottest year on record.
The world is warmer than when Trump first took office. A United Nations report released in October cautioned that the planet is on pace for a “catastrophic” 3.1 degrees Celsius of global warming over preindustrial levels.
“Not every year is going to break records, but the long-term trend is clear,” Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a statement earlier this month. “We’re already seeing the impact in extreme rainfall, heat waves, and increased flood risk, which are going to keep getting worse as long as emissions continue.”
The withdrawal is expected to take less time during Trump’s second term. Trump’s critics saying pulling out of the agreement would hand China a competitive edge for the clean energy economy as well as leave the rest of the world “holding the bag.”
“For the next few years the best we can hope is that Washington won’t manage to wreck the efforts of others,” climate activist and writer Bill McKibben told The Associated Press.
In an effort to get ahead of these actions and their reverberations, Biden made moves of his own that contradict Trump’s plans. He announced a permanent stop to new oil and gas drilling across hundreds of millions of acres of U.S. coastal waters and protections for more than a million acres of Alaska. He created new national monuments in California, announcing $109 million to clean up pollution on federal lands and waters. Trump will authorize drilling in Alaska, an incoming White house official told reporters on Monday, which could upend the reserve: the largest expanse of undisturbed land in the U.S. that is an important ecosystem for many species.
Environmental groups, scientists, and others in the sphere have braced for such climate policy reversals that could compound related problems and endanger their work. One organization had threatened to see the administration in court over electric vehicles.
“Pulling out of Paris shows how threatened Trump is by the recent global compact to transition away from fossil fuels,” Ben Goloff, senior climate campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement shared with The Independent on Monday. “Global leaders are on the right track to get us off the coal, oil and gas that are disrupting the climate and wreaking havoc from L.A. to North Carolina and all around the world. While Trump buries his head in the sand, it’s going to be up to state leaders to lock eyes on the climate crisis and lead us toward a livable future.”
The Center for Biological Diversity also announced on Monday that it had sued the Trump administration to obtain public records showing how people representing the Department of Government Efficiency — Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — have interacted with the White House since the transition began, saying that the records concern the Office of Management and Budget’s key functions and duties that affect climate change and environmental issues.
“No one in American history has shown more disdain for the environment than Donald Trump. His reckless contempt for our nation’s natural heritage and people’s health will only get worse, but we’ll fight him at every step,” Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a release following Trump’s inaugural address.
“The United States has some of the strongest environmental laws in the world, and no matter how petulantly Trump behaves, these laws don’t bend before the whims of a wannabe dictator,” he added.
With reporting from Alex Woodward, Andrew Feinberg, and The Associated Press
