On his first day in office, President Trump has signed a slew of executive orders that will set the United States on a radically different environmental path from the Biden administration. The executive orders and memoranda take the first steps to fulfilling many of Trump’s promises from the campaign trail: Withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement, drilling more oil and natural gas, and repealing multiple Biden-era environmental directives and departments.
While Trump’s day-one executive orders are far-reaching, it’s not yet clear how they will be implemented or how quickly they will be felt. Executive orders direct government agencies how to implement the law, but they can be challenged by courts if they appear to violate the US Constitution or other laws, as happened with Trump’s travel ban executive order in January 2017.
Trump’s executive orders do, however, send a clear signal about his administration’s environmental priorities: Extracting more fossil fuels, weakening support for green energy, and stepping away from global climate leadership.
Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement
This executive order instructs the US Ambassador to the United Nations to submit formal notification that the US is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Paris Agreement, signed in 2016, commits countries to reduce greenhouse emissions and submit five-yearly updates on their climate plans to reach agreed goals on reducing emissions.
In his first term, Trump also withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, although the terms of the agreement meant that the withdrawal did not take place until November 2020. In one of his very first acts as president, Joe Biden had the US rejoin the Paris Agreement. It will take at least a year for the US to leave 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 Jonathan Foley, executive director of the climate charity Project Drawdown.
The executive order also rescinds the US International Climate Finance Plan—a Biden administration increase in international climate finance that reached over $11 billion a year by 2024. “Essentially it’s the world’s richest country turning its back on the the poorest countries at the time when they are suffering the most,” says Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change the the Environment.
Encouraging Fossil Fuel Extraction
President Trump dedicated three executive orders to making it easier for the US to exploit its vast fossil fuel reserves. On the campaign trail Trump consistently promised to “drill, baby, drill” and in his first day as president he underscored this sloganeering with orders to remove Biden-era regulations and environmental rules that restrict fossil fuel exploration.
One executive order focuses specifically on Alaska, which has vast fossil fuel reserves and was the location for Willow—a controversial oil and gas project approved by the Biden administration in 2023. Trump’s executive order opens the doors wide open to other projects, calling for the US to “expedite the permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects” in Alaska and the revocation of any regulations passed by the Biden administration that may hinder this aim. It also specifically rescinds the cancellation of leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and withdraws an order from the Secretary of the Interior that temporarily paused oil and gas leasing in the Refuge.
