Before President Trump returned to office, it was widely expected that his administration would again reduce support for clean energy, promote fossil fuels and disengage from global efforts to combat climate change.
But during his first 100 days, Trump’s efforts to roll back regulations and stop climate action have shocked even those who were raising the alarm in the months before the election. “Full-on fight club” is how one environmental lawyer described it to us last month.
Some of the moves coming out of the White House were well telegraphed. Yet, in several other cases, they have gone far beyond what was expected. For example, we reported on Monday that the Trump administration has dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s flagship report on how global warming is affecting the country.
There are two big reasons for this: First, Congress has not passed a comprehensive environmental law in more than three decades, ceding climate policy to the executive branch. And, in his second term, Trump has stretched the limits of presidential power, withholding spending, firing workers and upending years of climate action.
“This is worse than any previous administration,” said Gina McCarthy, the E.P.A. administrator under President Obama. “He can do a lot of damage to the agency, and when he leaves, he will have left devastation in his wake.”
Boosting fossil fuels
Trump, who has called climate change “a hoax,” took more than $75 million in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests, and campaigned on a pledge to “drill, baby, drill.” And, in the first months of his second term, he has made good on his promise to promote the oil and gas industry.
On his first day in office, Trump declared an “energy emergency.” That gave the president the power to fast-track approvals for natural gas pipelines and mining projects. Another order last week is intended to speed up approvals for fossil fuel projects on public lands. He also signed an executive order designed to revive the coal industry.
At the same time, Trump has been working to bolster the country’s natural gas export business. In addition to lifting a pause on the construction of new natural gas export terminals, the Trump administration is pressuring other countries to buy more American gas, using the issue for leverage in tariff negotiations.
All the while, the new administration has been undermining one of the country’s fastest growing industries: renewable energy.
A new mission for the E.P.A.
For more than 50 years, the Environmental Protection Agency, which was established by President Richard Nixon in 1970, had twin missions of promoting clean air and water, and reducing pollution from things like waste disposal, radiation and pesticides. Then came Trump’s re-election.
Last month, the E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin, reframed the purpose of the agency, declaring that it was now there to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
This is more than just talk. During Trump’s first 100 days, the E.P.A. has moved to abandon many of its regulatory functions. It is working to repeal regulations on pollutants from smokestacks and tailpipes, abandoning efforts to protect wetlands and forfeiting the legal basis that allows it to regulate planet-warming emissions.
Zeldin is also repositioning the E.P.A. to be a defender of the president’s economic agenda. The agency will no longer consider whether new policies it creates would lead to costly wildfires, droughts or storms.
In a statement, Taylor Rogers, assistant press secretary for the White House, said the Trump Administration and Zeldin had “taken monumental steps to quickly remove toxins from our water and environment, provide clean land for Americans, and use common-sense policies to Power the Great American Comeback.”
Clawing back $20 billion in climate grants
Many thought the Biden administration’s $27 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants, clean energy funds that were included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, would be beyond the reach of any new administration intent on cutting government spending. The grant awards were announced last April and finalized ahead of a September deadline.
But soon after taking office, Zeldin began suggesting that $20 billion of the already-disbursed funds were vulnerable to fraud. He called for all of the money to be returned to the federal government.
So far, the Trump administration has succeeded in cutting off nonprofit groups’ access to billions of dollars in grants. Recipients have been unable to access the money since mid-February. Several of the nonprofits have sued and the case is playing out in court.
Ahead of the inauguration, nonprofits and environmental lawyers had prepared for aggressive Republican oversight of climate programs, potentially in the form of congressional inquiries or grant delays, said Jillian Blanchard, vice president at Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit group. Now, a congressional inquiry “sounds like a luxury,” she said.
A withdrawal from world climate relations
Shortly after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order directing the United States to withdraw, once again, from the landmark Paris Agreement, a 2015 pact among almost all nations to fight climate change.
Yet early indications suggest the second Trump administration will do more than stand by as the rest of the world tries to come to consensus on climate issues. That was evident when the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, met to hammer out the details of its long-anticipated fee on the shipping industry’s carbon emissions.
When negotiators met in April to make a deal, the Trump administration sent a letter to participants threatening “reciprocal measures” that would offset any new costs imposed on U.S. companies or consumers. The letter even encouraged other governments to “reconsider” support for emissions reductions measures.
Trump has also cracked open the door to allow deep-sea mining in international waters, a move that tries to bypass an international agreement governing activities on the ocean floor. Dozens of countries have called for a moratorium on seabed mining, and China’s foreign minister said Trump’s executive order “violates international law and harms the overall interests of the international community.”
E.P.A. says it will tackle ‘forever chemicals.’ Details are sparse.
On Monday, the Trump administration announced a flurry of measures to target PFAS contamination, but it stayed silent on whether it intended to uphold a Biden-era rule requiring utilities to remove the so-called forever chemicals from the tap water of hundreds of millions of Americans.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of chemicals linked to cancer and other diseases, and are used widely in everyday products such as waterproof clothing and paper straws. The chemicals, which don’t break down easily in the environment, are turning up in drinking water across the country.
According to the latest data from the E.P.A., as many as 158 million Americans have PFAS in their water. — Hiroko Tabuchi
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