On Day 1 of his presidency, Trump begins to move the United States away from climate action and fossil fuels.

President Donald Trump made clear on Monday that he wants to reverse nearly a decade of climate action and smooth the way for the fossil fuel industry in the United States, amid a flurry of climate and energy executive orders.

On his first day in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, an international agreement aimed at reducing planet-warming carbon emissions. It was adopted by 196 countries at the COP21 climate conference in 2015 and entered into force in November 2016.

Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is the first step toward freeing the United States from any restrictions to achieve Trump’s “Drill, baby drill” promise.

Then he comes to office the two hottest years in recorded historyThere is Trump declared a national energy emergency lifted a moratorium on gas exports to boost oil and gas production, and reversed several of former President Joe Biden’s environmental and clean-tech executive orders.

Here’s a closer look at some of Trump’s first steps, which could redefine global climate action and put more pressure on a planet already seeing climate disasters unfold on an unprecedented scale.

What is a national energy emergency?

Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency – a first for the US – was celebrated in his inaugural address at the US Capitol on Monday. According to the executive order he signed, the purpose of the emergency is to speed up the approval and construction of energy and natural resources projects.

The US is currently the world’s largest producer of crude oil and has produced more oil than any other country at any time over the past six years. government statistics.

“I think it’s a big show and (the U.S.) is producing … probably as fast as they can because of the demand,” said Frances Colon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. – A partisan policy institute in Washington, he was an adviser on science and the environment at the US State Department when Barack Obama was president.

Colon said the U.S. doesn’t really have an energy emergency because of massive fossil fuel production and huge investments in the clean energy transition. According to him, despite Trump’s directive, there will be pressure to move away from oil and gas.

“People want cheaper energy. People want cleaner air. People really want to make a difference in how they deal with the challenges that climate brings to their lives,” Colon said.

Glenn Schwartz, director of energy policy at Washington-based Rapidan Energy Group, said the emergency orders could give the new administration tools to keep aging coal and nuclear power plants running and temporarily suspend regulations on some fuels.

“Emergency authority does not allow Trump to significantly increase energy production or expedite approvals for infrastructure or oil refining permits,” Schwartz said in a memo about Trump’s orders.

“Market conditions will drive oil and gas production decisions, not regulatory or permitting environments.”

Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement

Trump is pulling the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change, throwing into uncertainty the future of nearly a decade of negotiated climate diplomacy.

Climate groups are poised to make the move after Trump became hostile to the deal after winning the November presidential election and deciding to withdraw from his first term in the White House after the 2016 election.

Trump signed an executive order to withdraw from the climate accord in 2017, but the rules prevented countries from leaving the agreement for the first three years of signing, and then had to wait a year to fully withdraw.

The US only officially withdrew from the agreement near the end of 2020, leaving just four months until Biden is elected president in 2020. He brought the country back to the agreement on his first day in office in January 2021. But this time, Trump will only have to wait the required one year after giving his withdrawal notice, meaning the US could leave the deal in January 2026.

“The United States is playing an isolationist role, and it’s at a time when we’re dealing with a lot of other transboundary issues in terms of environmental issues and others,” said Max Boykoff of the Institute for Cooperative Studies. in Environmental Sciences, a research body at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is also a professor.

The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit global warming to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels and ideally to 1.5 C. Average global temperature in 2024 probably exceeded that limitindicating that the world is on the verge of surpassing the borders of Paris.

At the same time, since the agreement was reached, it has helped the world take significant steps toward reducing future temperatures—increasing climate investment, focusing on climate science, and paving the way for many other related conservation initiatives over the past decade, such as monitoring emissions and offsetting climate losses. countries that do.

As part of the agreement, countries were required to publish increasingly ambitious climate plans every five years. led the United States under Biden, set an ambitious goal Reduce carbon emissions by 61-66 percent below 2005 levels in 2035, and put the country on a net-zero emissions trajectory by 2050.

While the future of that climate goal is in question, Boykoff said the U.S. can continue to move forward with Trump in office.

“Under the previous Trump administration, decarbonization actually continued and there was actually some reduction in carbon-based contributions to the atmosphere,” he said.

Lifting the lid of liquefied natural gas

Biden called for a pause on new export permits for liquefied natural gas — the form in which the gas is exported on tanker ships — so the government can study the industry’s environmental and economic impacts.

The US is the world’s largest exporter of LNG, most of which goes to Europe. Trump immediately signed an executive order directing the government to do so resume processing new export permits.

In December, US Department of Energy left A study on the effects of LNG exports. The main conclusion of the analysis was that the volume of gas exports already confirmed is sufficient to meet the global demand for LNG from the United States in the future. According to the analysis, unrestricted LNG exports would also increase domestic gas prices by more than 30 percent, adding more to household utility bills.

“We welcome President Trump’s decisive action to maximize the benefits of our nation’s abundant and essential energy,” the American Gas Association said in a statement. The industry group supports lifting the freeze on LNG exports as a way to support U.S. allies — U.S. LNG helped European countries move away from Russian gas during the war in Ukraine.