With Trump declaring war on climate action, is this the last straw?
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With Trump declaring war on climate action, is this the last straw?
Nick O’Malley Environment and Climate Editor SMH February 18, 2025
On the first day of his fourth week in office, Donald Trump called reporters into the Oval Office, where he sat behind the Resolute desk preparing to sign an executive order.
Using the symbolic power of the office and the desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to president Rutherford Hayes, to convey the significance of a presidential action to the American people is not uncommon. John F. Kennedy sat at the same desk to address the American people on his decision to force the integration of Southern universities. He noted that the implications of civil rights extended beyond American borders, that a nation could not preach freedom internationally while denying it at home.
Trump, too, was concerned with policy that had international implications.
“We’re going back to plastic straws. [Paper straws] don’t work,” he said. “They break. They explode if something’s hot. They don’t last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation.”
He took up a thick black sharpie and with an attitude of stern concentration signed a presidential order requiring “the development of a National Strategy to End the Use of Paper Straws within 45 days to alleviate the forced use of paper straws nationwide”.
Trump’s paper straws decree is probably the pettiest of his assaults on climate and environmental action, but it is illustrative of a frenzy of activity that is difficult to track.
Some highlights: Since January 20 the Trump administration has pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement and rescinded $US4bn to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund. It has blocked billions of dollars worth of climate-related grants scheduled to be delivered by the Environmental Protection Agency, and billions more that would have been delivered internationally via the United States Agency for International Development, an early target of Trump’s DOGE wrecking crew.
It is unravelling the Inflation Reduction Act, the greatest single commitment to climate action ever enacted in the US. That act authorised almost $US900 billion in federal spending to support clean energy through tax breaks, grants and loan guarantees to support US clean tech development and deployment to help halve US emissions by 2035. Its authors had sought to “Republican-proof” the program by directing much of its spending to the development of new industries in Republican states, but Trump’s toe-cutters have not spared it.
The New York Times has reported, for example, that $US5 billion had been committed to build 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030. So far, $US511m has been awarded in contracts but only $US40m has been spent. Funding has been suspended.
The administration has demoted and sacked senior staff working on climate programs at the EPA and the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Fossil fuel lobbyists have been appointed to EPA leadership positions. Staff of the Department of Energy have reportedly been instructed not to use the phrases “climate change,” “emissions reduction” or “Paris Agreement” in written memos, briefings or other written communication. It has instructed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the world’s single most significant sources of reliable climate data and research, to quarantine grants related to global warming, setting off fears.
Trump has declared an “energy emergency”, scrapped both environmental restrictions on oil and gas exploration and permits for wind farms, all to the benefit of an oil and gas industry that spent $US219m installing his government.
So what is the impact? When Trump last abandoned the Paris Accord, many observers argued they would rather have a recalcitrant US alone outside the tent rather than wrecking things within. The UN treaty that drives the global climate response demands consensus in key votes. Having the US side with fossil states such as Russia and Saudi Arabia might have gummed up a cumbersome process even further.
This time the threat is greater. Populism is surging the world over and there is a risk that other countries might follow the US out the door. Argentina has already sent ominous smoke signals. Further, Trump’s failure to deliver on contributions to the Green Climate Fund could prompt recipient nations to abandon their own climate action.
But other things have changed too. Despite its best efforts, the last Trump administration was unable to breathe new life into the coal sector because it was already in structural decline by the time he took office. The same is now true – in the medium term – of the oil and gas sector.
Renewables are already the cheapest form of new energy and their growth continues to defy even the most optimistic predictions. This weekend, the International Energy Agency published a report showing that renewables were now meeting all new demand caused by a surging global hunger for electricity. The prime engine for all this new clean tech is China, which has built up its solar, wind and battery sector so fast that it is now not only exporting solar panels, batteries and EVs, but the factories that build them and the finance that builds the factories.
The energy economist Tim Buckley has tracked $US140 billion in deals done by China to build EV, wind turbine, solar and battery factories across the world since 2020. This rapid expansion has allowed Europe to reduce its energy dependence on Russia and accelerate decarbonisation of its economy.
In December, China hit a target it had set itself to ensure half of all new cars sold were electric, and there is growing evidence its oil consumption may peak this year.
These advances by the world’s second-largest economy and largest single source of greenhouse gases are cause for celebration, but are they enough to save the world?
In short, no. The world needs all hands. As global temperature records continue to fall by the month and the costs of climate continue to grow – about $US16 million an hour by one recent estimate – it is clear we are already out of time.
The US, says one American veteran of the UN climate process who asked not to be named so he could speak openly about the Trump administration, has been a vital source of monetary and practical aid in combating climate change, and diplomatic might in the Paris process.
Now, when the technology exists to decarbonise the global economy, when what is needed is unanimity of ambition and speed, the US has become a dead weight.
Trump won’t stop the shift to green power because the US has been overtaken by market realities. Clean tech has won. Rather, in the twilight of the fossil era, Trump’s donors will make out like bandits while his nation cedes its leading position in future industries and a dangerously hot world grows needlessly hotter.