Trump’s Day One Executive Orders Will Worsen Climate Crisis: The Alaskan Refuge and the World’s Richest Country
Alaska is the location of a controversial oil and gas project which was approved by the Biden administration in 2023, in one executive order. 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. The Secretary of Interior had temporarily paused oil and gas leasing in the refuge, but that order has been withdrawn.
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. Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change the Environment at the London School of Economics, says that it’s the world’s richest country turning its back on the poor when they are suffering the most.
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. Joe Biden did something in his first act as president – he rejoined the Paris Agreement. It will take at least one year for the US to leave the Agreement.
Source: Trump’s Day One Executive Orders Will Worsen Climate Crisis
Trump’s Emergency Declaration: Why the U.S. is a “Dangerous and Growing Threat” to Americans’ Wellbeing, National Security, and Foreign Policy
It is not yet known how the day-one executive orders will be implemented or how quickly they will be felt. Trump’s travel ban executive order was challenged by courts when it appeared to be a violation of the US Constitution.
In issuing the order for the emergency declaration, Trump said, “The United States’ insufficient energy production, transportation, refining, and generation constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to our Nation’s economy, national security, and foreign policy.” He blamed “the harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration.”
Trump invoked presidential authority under the National Emergencies Act, which he also used in 2019 to build a wall along the southern U.S. border. This gives the President more power to sidestep bureaucratic processes and public notifications. A Brennan Center analysis “identified 137 statutory powers that may become available to the president when he declares a national emergency.”
In this case those powers include suspending some environmental regulations under landmark laws such as the Endangered Species Act and speeding up energy project approval processes.
Trump left wind and solar power out of the definition of energy because they were a focus of the Biden administration’s climate policies. They make up a large portion of the country’s electricity generation.
Sam Sankar, an attorney and senior leader with Earthjustice, says it’s striking that the emergency he seems to be declaring is a lack of fossil fuel production. He says that’s strange because “the U.S. is currently producing more oil and gas than any nation on the planet ever has in the history of human civilization.”
Trump’s order doesn’t mention the climate-heating effects of burning fossil fuels. Instead it says Americans are suffering from high energy prices. It looks ahead to technology like artificial intelligence that will increase electricity demand as well as the fact that there is an “imminence and growing threat” to the US’ prosperity and national security.
To fix that, Trump wants to cut regulations and speed up approval processes to deploy more oil drilling rigs, build more pipelines, and bring more power plants onto the grid.
Stein says the emergency declaration also authorizes special provisions to grant approvals for energy projects under several existing laws including the Clean Water Act and the Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act. She said it authorizes emergency consultation and construction authority for the Army Corps of Engineers.
There will be a lot of checks on President Trump’s emergency powers. Agencies must determine what options are available before that happens.
“You can’t challenge presidential statements or orders any more than you can challenge presidential speeches,” Sankar says, “So what matters is when things happen on the ground that actually affect people.”
He says one example could be if the Trump administration stops paying funds that were obligated under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in 2022. It provided hundreds of billions of dollars of incentives to encourage technologies that reduce or eliminate the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.
Dayton welcomes that because he doesn’t think complicated problems like energy production, climate change or immigration should be handled through presidential emergency declarations.
“These are hard things and I think you need to have politics over them – not to invest the presidency with this magic wand and say we can do all these things without any debate,” Dayton says.