13 hours Ago By Earth.org
Trump’s current approval rating is the lowest for any newly elected president at 100 days since at least Dwight Eisenhower — including Trump’s own first term. While none of the polls Earth.Org analyzed questioned people’s opinion on the administration’s climate policies to date, the repercussions these measures will have on the health and well-being of Americans are patently evident.
Trump has shocked America and the world with the speed at which he has overturned much of the country’s progress on climate, building on his campaign promise to “drill, baby drill” and “unleash American energy”. Alarmingly, his administration has erased all references to climate change, global warming and environmental justice from federal websites and official records, and halted work on the National National Climate Assessment, the most comprehensive source of information about how climate change affects the U.S.
With these decisions, the government is denying millions of Americans their right to access information that could, in some cases, quite literally save lives . What follows are some of the most consequential actions the second Trump administration has taken since January 20, aimed at rolling back climate progress and promoting its anti-climate objectives . On Inauguration Day, Trump declared a “national energy emergency.
” This came despite the U.S. hitting record oil production levels under the Biden administration and currently producing more oil than any other country at any other time.
He also pledged to make the U.S. a “manufacturing nation” by using the country’s vast fossil fuel reserves.
“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” he said. The burning of fossil fuels — coal, natural gas, and oil — for electricity and heat is the single-largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, the primary drivers of global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere and raising Earth’s surface temperature. Declaring a national emergency effectively allowed the administration to reverse many of the Biden-era environmental regulations and open up more areas to oil and gas exploration.
A January 20 executive order repealed Biden’s 2023 memorandum barring oil drilling on 16 million acres in the Arctic as well as a more recent attempt by the outgoing Biden administration to block new offshore oil and gas development across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters.
Trump also ended a moratorium on new liquified natural gas (LNG) export permits, which Biden introduced in January 2024 pending a study into the environmental and economic effects of the booming export industry. Released in December, the study concluded that any further expansion would drive up energy costs for domestic consumers as well as hamper the nation’s efforts to curtail climate change. “The study makes it clear that expanding fossil-fuel exports would greatly harm the economy, climate and environment,” said Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Earlier this month, Trump also signed a series of executive orders aimed at reviving coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Besides “rapidly expedite leases for coal mining on federal lands” and “streamline permitting,” Trump instructed federal agencies to identify and eliminate policies that discourage investment in coal production and coal-fired electricity generation. It comes despite a global shift away from coal, which most experts say has become simply uneconomical.
Nearly 60 countries have drastically scaled back their plans for building coal-fired power plants since the Paris Agreement was passed in 2015, including some of the world’s biggest coal users like Turkey, Vietnam, and Japan. Nations including Germany, South Korea, and the U.K.
phased out coal altogether. Even in the U.S.
, almost 100 coal plants retired or announced retirements during Trump’s first term alone. And yet, one of the recent executive orders allows some older coal-fired power plants scheduled for retirement to keep producing electricity, bypassing a Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency’s rule regulating emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal and gas power plants. The Trump administration is also going after State laws addressing polluting forms of energy, such as California’s cap-and-trade system and so-called climate superfund laws, like the ones in place in New York and Vermont.
Unsurprisingly, the new administration has also moved to limit the expansion of renewable energy, for example by halting offshore wind lease sales and pausing the issuance of approvals, permits, and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects. In 2022, Biden’s historic Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced U.S.
$369 billion in climate and clean energy investments, driving unprecedented growth in the sector. On his first day in office, Trump also ordered a freeze of all unspent funds under the Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The historic law introduced U.
S. $369 billion in climate and clean energy investments, driving unprecedented growth in the sector. Judge Mary McElroy of the U.
S. District Court for Rhode Island earlier this month ordered the administration to take “immediate steps” to reinstate already awarded funding, writing in her decision : “Agencies do not have unlimited authority to further a President’s agenda, nor do they have unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity two statutes passed by Congress during the previous administration.” In March, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would “formally reconsider” a landmark 2009 finding by the agency that greenhouse gases and motor vehicle emissions are a danger to public health.
The move kicks off a years-long effort by the new administration to roll back dozens of environmental rules, including those regulating pollution from vehicles and power plants, national air quality standards for particulate matter, emission standards for industrial air pollutants, and wastewater discharges for oil and gas extraction facilities. Rules on soot, mercury and coal ash pollution, as well as the so-called “good neighbor rule” that regulates downwind air pollution, are also set to be eliminated. Scientists say these rollbacks will leave the nation “sicker” and its air, water and soil “dangerously contaminated.
” “The Trump administration is attempting to subvert the [Environmental Protection Agency] EPA’s mission from one of protecting public health and the environment to that of boosting the interests of polluters and billionaires,” Rachel Cleetus, Senior Policy Director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement . The American Lung Association last week revealed that 46% of Americans — some 156.1 million people — are living in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution, worsened by extreme heat and wildfires.
An analysis by the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA employees, found that air pollution would increase as a result of the deregulation, leading to nearly 200,000 premature deaths and cause more than 10,000 asthma attacks every day in America. Trump also intends to eliminate EPA offices responsible for addressing the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities. Research has shown that people of color and Hispanic communities tend to live in areas with high levels of pollution, increasing their likelihood of exposure.
In a highly contested move, the Trump administration earlier this month proposed to significantly limit the Endangered Species Act’s power to preserve crucial habitats by removing a definition that protects them from modification and destruction . The definition of “harm” has been a crucial part of how the Endangered Species Act has protected over 1,700 species since its passage in 1973. Changing it will mean that “any conservation gains species were making will be reversed,” said Brett Hartl, Government Affairs Director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“We’re going to see losses again.” A day later, another executive order ordering the removal of key protections to allow commercial fishing in parts of the nearly 500,000-square-mile Pacific Island Heritage National Marine Monument , located about 750 miles west of Hawaii. Home to protected and endangered species, including turtles, whales and Hawaiian monk seals, the area has long been off-limits due to its ecological significance.
The Trump administration argued that marine protected areas pose a disadvantage to American commercial fishermen, despite studies showing that marine protected areas benefit both marine life and fishermen by allowing overfished species to recover. As U.S.
-Canada relations sour due to tariffs imposed on the neighbouring country, the Trump administration has also moved to decrease American reliance on Canadian lumber, fast-tracking logging projects by loosening regulations across federally protected lands. If implemented, the directive will result in swathes of trees being felled throughout the nation’s protected forests. This will likely translate into increased natural disaster risks and significant biodiversity loss as well as soil erosion and increased air pollution.
Tens of thousands of federal workers at agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Science Foundation, the Forest Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been fired during Trump’s first 100 days in office.
Many of them were carrying out pivotal climate-related research and conservation work and providing key services such as weather forecast and wildlife monitoring. As the main vehicle for U.S.
foreign development assistance, USAID was a major provider of climate-related funding. In 2024 alone, the agency allocated close to half a billion dollars to climate programs directed towards clean energy, sustainable landscapes and climate adaptation. Key programs that played a vital role in mitigation and adaptation have gone dark, and threaten to be completely shut down as investigations into the agency’s “efficiency” are conducted.
Among the programs affected are SERVIR, which helps countries predict weather-related threats like droughts or flooding via satellite data, and Power Africa , a flagship foreign aid program to support renewable energy projects across Africa, where 43% of the population still lacks reliable electricity access. Recent cuts on staff and research programs have seriously disrupted operations at NOAA. More than 1,000 NOAA employees were fired or resigned since U.
S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, with an additional 1,000 staffers set to be laid off as of last month. Should this second round of cuts go through, NOAA could potentially see a combined loss of 20% of its staff.
The administration has also hinted that it is considering not renewing leases for two key NOAA centers. The scientific and regulatory agency is responsible for predicting weather patterns, hurricanes, and earthquakes; observing oceanic and atmospheric conditions; mapping the seas; exploring deep-sea environments; and overseeing the conservation of marine life, including fishing activities and the protection of endangered species. Its products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product.
“The loss of anybody at NOAA is directly connected to services lost by every individual in the United States,” said Rachel Brittin, NOAA’s former federal deputy director of external affairs. The value provided by NOAA’s weather forecasts alone is 6.2 times the cost of producing them, with $5.
1 billion in spending — both private and public sector — creating $31.5 billion in economic benefit. The Trump administration last week issued the first round of layoffs at the EPA targeting hundreds of employees involved in environmental justice work.
The move, which the agency described as “ necessary ” to “ensure the efficient and effective operation of our programs,” affects programs aimed at empowering communities working on solutions to local environmental and public health issues as well as helping communities understand and address exposure to multiple environmental harms and risks. In January, without providing any justification, the agency removed independent climate scientists from two key advisory panels: the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and Science Advisory Board. Both were established by Congress to ensure that environmental policies are scientifically sound and not politicized.
One of Trump’s first executive orders mandated the U.S.’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement , which the president described as an “unfair, one-sided .
.. rip-off.
” The move, which Trump had already attempted during his first term but former president Joe Biden was quick to reverse, places the nation alongside Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the only countries in the world outside the accord. The withdrawal, likely to take effect within a year, threatens “to drag others with him,” Amnesty International warned . Adopted by nearly every nation in 2015, the Paris Agreement required all countries to set emissions-reduction pledges, breaking new ground in international climate policy.
The order also instructed the immediate cessation or revocation of any financial commitments made by the U.S. under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty that provides the framework for international climate negotiations, including for the Paris Agreement.
The U.S .contributes about a fifth of the UNFCCC’s budget.
The administration fell short of leaving the UNFCCC, which all UN nations are signed up to, retaining the right to attend, speak, and vote at future COP talks. Some experts have pointed out that leaving the treaty would require Senate majority and would “deeply harm long-term U.S.
interests.” In March, Trump withdrew the U.S.
from the board of the UN’s Loss and Damage Fund, a hard-fought climate damage fund aimed at helping developing nations cope with climate change-fuelled disasters. It was not immediately clear whether this also meant the country was pulling out entirely from the fund, which is hosted by the World Bank and whose president is appointed by the US. Instituted at the COP27 summit in 2022, the fund marked a huge win for developing countries seeking justice for the damage incurring from a crisis they did not create.
As of 23 January 2025, 27 countries and regions have pledged a total of U.S. $741 million to the fund, according to UN figures .
$17.5 million came from the US. Contributions to the Biden-era U.
S. International Climate Finance Plan, established to channel multilateral and bilateral institutions to assist developing countries in climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as $4 billion in U.S.
pledges to the Green Climate Fund, the world’s largest fund for global climate action, were also halted. In February, a State Department delegation was banned from travelling to China for a key meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where its member governments agreed on the outlines, timelines, and budget of its upcoming reports . Founded in 1988 to advance scientific knowledge about human-made climate change, the IPCC publishes comprehensive scientific assessments every five to seven years to inform policymakers on the crisis and its potential future risks, and puts forward adaptation and mitigation recommendations.
It is considered the world’s most authoritative scientific body on the matter . Johan Rockström, an internationally acclaimed Earth scientist and Director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the U.S.
’ withdrawal from the talks was “another irresponsible self-destructive U.S. behaviour” that “will damage U.
S. science and society.” In a highly symbolic move, the U.
S. last month voted against a UN resolution on creating an International Day of Peaceful Coexistence and reaffirming the 2030 Agenda, a global framework to achieve sustainable development and promote piece and prosperity around the world. It was the only country to reject the resolution along with Israel and Argentina.
U.S. representative to the UN Edward Heartney said during a UN General Assembly plenary meeting that the 2030 Agenda “advance[s] a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with U.
S. sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans.” He added that the U.
S. was ready to “care first and foremost for our own,” referring to Trump’s “America first” agenda. The 2030 Agenda, which was unanimously adopted by all UN members in 2015, consists of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promoting a “universal, integrated, transformative and human rights-based vision for sustainable development, peace and security.
” The goals, to be achieved by this decade’s end, concern topics from poverty alleviation to biodiversity conservation, gender equality, and quality education..
