WASHINGTON (Jan 25): President Donald Trump wasted no time in laying the groundwork for a sweeping anti-climate agenda, signing a series of executive orders just hours after being sworn into office that seek to unravel former president Joe Biden’s policies and double down on fossil fuel extraction.

That was just the beginning. The rest of the week brought even more executive orders, the deletion of White House climate webpages, postponing climate-related seminars, vows to shrink or dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency and more. Many of these efforts were signalled ahead of time and have repeated steps Trump took the first time he was in office, though on a more accelerated timeline. “It is all happening very fast,” says Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

The dizzying pace of announcements gives the impression that the nation’s entire climate landscape has changed in less than a week, even when that’s not entirely true, explains Burger. While much has indeed happened, he says, “lots of these things are not actually doing what they sound like they’re doing — they’re telling others to look into things and come back with a plan to pursue a broad policy.” Ultimately, whether or not most things take effect and then stay in place will likely be determined in the courts.

It’s also important to note that the flurry of action is strategic in how disorienting it can all be. “The sheer threat of it kind of gets undermined by the onslaught,” Burger says.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the most notable climate-related actions taken so far by the Trump administration:

In one of Trump’s first acts, he signed an order directing the US to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the deal that nearly 200 countries signed to rein in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic warming. Trump did this the last time he was in office too, giving the US the particular distinction of being the only country to not only ditch the agreement once but twice. It will take at least a year for the move to become official. Environmental leaders have decried the withdrawal, which could give other blocs and nations, especially China, more leverage in global climate talks.

Relatedly, Trump also revoked the US International Climate Finance plan, which had directed billions to help other countries respond to climate impacts.

Via executive order, Trump directed agencies to “immediately pause” and review the spending of money through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, two major Biden-era laws. The next day, the administration clarified that the pause only relates to energy-related programs, including ones tied to renewable energy and electric vehicle charging but not, say, bridges or highways. The pause is expected to last 90 days, after which federal officials have been directed to share their reviews with the White House and provide recommendations on next steps to take.

“Some affected loan guarantees, grants and federal contracts may have been in place for a significant time and support projects that are already well under construction,” Keith Martin, a partner at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, writes in a note on Trump’s executive orders. It’s unclear what will happen after the pause, and climate experts say there are sure to be legal fights over any attempts to claw back spending.

In a first-of-its-kind manoeuvre, Trump on Monday declared a national energy emergency. The executive order prioritises fossil fuels, hydropower, biofuels and nuclear over other energy sources. Because the nation has been producing record levels of oil and gas, calling an emergency is “a farce,” says Alan Krupnick, a senior fellow at the nonprofit research institution Resources for the Future. But the move does have “real impacts,” Krupnick says, because the president is directing federal agencies to tap into emergency powers that can give them more discretion to “disregard or reduce regard for environmental damages” during specific energy-related project reviews, such as for pipelines. If that happens, expect environmental groups to sue.

As part of his broader energy order, Trump ordered his administration to look into the elimination of subsidies and other policies supporting electric vehicles. In particular, he stated his interest in terminating “state emissions waivers that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles.” This signals Trump is looking to renew his first-term challenge of California’s ability to limit gas-powered car sales.

The Interior Department on Monday ordered a 60-day halt in approval of leases, rights of way and other authorisations tied to wind and solar projects on federal lands and waters. In a separate move, Trump signed an executive order, also on Monday, that temporarily halts permitting for new offshore wind projects. Trump has been vocal about his dislike of wind for years, and experts anticipated his targeting of the energy source this time around.

In sharp contrast to his actions on renewable energy and electric vehicles, Trump immediately moved to lift a Biden-era ban on new liquefied natural gas export licenses. In late December, the Biden administration released a study finding additional exports would raise natural gas prices for US consumers and worsen global warming. Trump similarly revoked offshore oil and gas leasing bans, though it’s unclear how soon new offshore lease sales would occur.

Trump not only overturned Biden’s executive orders directing federal agencies to further consider environmental justice in everything they do, he also revoked a 1994 Clinton-era executive order on the issue. The impacts of these rollbacks are tricky to determine: This is partly because agencies may have built environmental justice considerations into their regulations, and undoing that could require new, slow regulatory changes, notes Alice Kaswan, a law professor at the University of San Francisco. One clear immediate impact, though, is the expected shuttering of various environmental justice offices and positions across government.

Biden created the American Climate Corps, a program designed to get young people working in climate-related starter jobs across the country. This week, Trump dissolved it. It’s unclear if and how this affects people already in jobs they got through the program, which didn’t start from scratch but was built from and embedded within an existing network of job programs run by state and national partners.

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