In the beginning One day after taking office, President Trump signed a slew of executive orders that will put the United States on a radically different environmental path than the Biden administration. The executive orders and memos take the first steps to fulfill many of Trump’s campaign promises: withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, drilling more oil and natural gas, and rescinding many of Biden’s environmental directives and administrations.
While Trump’s executive orders on day one are far-reaching, it is not yet clear how they will be implemented or how quickly they will be felt. Executive orders direct government agencies on how to implement the law, but they can be challenged by the courts if they appear to violate the U.S. Constitution or other laws, as happened with Trump’s travel ban executive order in January 2017.
However, Trump’s executive orders send a clear signal about his administration’s environmental priorities: extract more fossil fuels, weaken support for green energy, and move away from global climate leadership.
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
This executive order requires the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to provide formal notification that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Paris Agreement, signed in 2016, requires countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide updates every five years to their climate plans to reach agreed emissions reduction targets.
In his first term, Trump also withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, although the terms of the agreement meant that withdrawal would not take place until November 2020. In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden got the United States to rejoin the agreement. Paris Agreement. It will take at least a year for the United States to withdraw from the agreement.
“This short-sighted move shows a disregard for science and the well-being of people around the world, including Americans, who are already losing their homes, livelihoods, and loved ones as a result of climate change,” says Executive Director Jonathan Foley. Director of the Climate Charity Raffle Project.
The executive order also rescinds the US International Climate Finance Plan — the Biden administration’s increase in international climate finance that has reached more than $11 billion annually by 2024. Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Environment Research, says: “They suffer more than others.”
Encouraging fossil fuel extraction
President Trump has allocated three executive orders to make it easier for the United States to exploit its vast fossil fuel reserves. On the campaign trail, Trump constantly promised to “drill, baby, drill,” and on his first day as president he doubled down on those slogans with orders to remove Biden-era regulations and environmental rules restricting fossil fuel exploration.
One executive order focuses specifically on Alaska, which has vast fossil fuel reserves and was the site of the Willow Project — a controversial oil and gas project approved by Alaska’s state board. Biden administration in 2023. Trump’s executive order opens the floodgates to other projects, calling on the United States to “accelerate the permitting and leasing of energy and natural resources projects” in Alaska and rescind any regulations passed by the Biden administration that might hinder that goal. It also specifically rescinds the cancellation of leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and withdraws an order from the Secretary of the Interior temporarily halting oil and gas leasing on the refuge.