During his first Today, President Trump signed a series of executive orders that will put the United States on a radically different environmental path than the Biden administration. The executive orders and memorandums are the first steps toward fulfilling many of Trump’s campaign promises: withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, drilling for more oil and natural gas, and repealing several directives and departments environmental issues of the Biden era.
Although Trump’s first executive orders are far-reaching, it is not yet clear how they will be implemented or how quickly they will be felt. Executive orders tell government agencies how to implement the law, but they can be challenged in court if they appear to violate the U.S. Constitution or other laws, as happened with the U.S. travel ban order. Trump in January 2017.
Trump’s executive orders, however, send a clear signal about his administration’s environmental priorities: extracting more fossil fuels, weakening support for green energy and moving away from global climate leadership.
Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement
This Executive Order directs the United States Ambassador to the United Nations to submit 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, commits countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and submitting five-year updates to their climate plans to meet agreed emissions reduction targets.
During his first term, Trump also withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, even though the terms of the agreement meant that the withdrawal would not take place until November 2020. In one of his Joe Biden’s very first acts as president brought the United States back into the fold. Paris Agreement. It will take at least a year for the United States to leave the agreement.
“This short-sighted decision demonstrates 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 to climate change,” said Jonathan Foley, executive director of the association. director of the climate charity Project Drawdown.
The executive order also rescinds the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan – an increase in international climate finance by the Biden administration that has reached more than $11 billion annually by 2024. “Essentially, it is the country the richest in the world turning its back on the poorest countries at a time when they are suffering the most,” says Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.
Encourage fossil fuel extraction
President Trump has signed three executive orders aimed at making it easier for the United States to exploit its vast fossil fuel reserves. On the campaign trail, Trump consistently promised to “drill, baby, drill” and on his first day as president, he emphasized those slogans by ordering the removal of Biden-era regulations and environmental rules that restrict the exploration of fossil fuels.
One executive order focuses specifically on Alaska, which has vast fossil fuel reserves and was the site of Willow, a controversial state-approved oil and gas project. Biden administration in 2023. Trump’s executive order opens the doors wide to other projects, calling on the United States to “expedite the permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects” in Alaska and to repeal any regulations passed by the Biden administration that could hinder this objective. It also specifically reverses the cancellation of leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and withdraws an order from the Secretary of the Interior that temporarily suspended oil and gas leases within the Refuge.
