Trump’s Executive Orders Mean Real Damage to U.S. Economy, Communities, and Clean Energy Gains

In a Day 1 executive order, President Trump withdrew U.S. participation in the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement, the framework for global cooperation on confronting the existential challenge of our time. The move is part of the “whole-of-government unwinding” of climate progress and clean energy gains explicitly called for in Project 2025 and further outlined in the wish list handed to Trump by the billionaire oil and gas donors who helped bankroll his campaign.  

Trump’s action won’t stop the global shift away from the fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis. It won’t stop investments—a record $2.1 trillion last year alone—in cleaner ways to power our future. It could well slow the pace of that shift, however, just when we need to speed it up. 

Last year eclipsed 2023 as the hottest year in the 175-year global record, and we’re seeing the results in every community in the country. 

This is an order to abandon ship, cut U.S. climate leadership adrift, and toss our children overboard into rising seas. 

It’s created uncertainty that threatens global climate momentum. It sidelines American diplomacy at a critical moment, when the possibility of averting climate catastrophe hangs in the balance. It takes the United States out of the room where the rules are made to shape the global clean energy economy, drive innovation, and create more resilient societies. It leaves others to fill the void.

The Trump administration took especially harsh aim at some of our nation’s most vulnerable communities, canceling government efforts to help low-income communities, people of color, and others, both urban and rural, on the frontlines and fence-lines of environmental hazard and harm. 

If successful, this effort would catapult our society back to an era of outright oppression. The result could be to sacrifice communities that lack the power or political access to stand up to projects that do more harm than good. It could keep vulnerable communities from accessing safe drinking water, clean energy, and essential supports and protections. 

That’s environmental injustice. It should have no place in our country. 

The Trump administration is attempting to reverse three decades of federal efforts to address environmental inequity and advance environmental justice, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. If the administration prevails, low-income communities and people of color will pay a high and grievous price. 

Hours after taking office, Trump launched a broadside attack on one of the cheapest sources of new electricity, an effort to halt the growth of clean wind power produced right here at home.  

In a Day 1 executive order, Trump halted new leases for wind farms on federal ocean waters; hit pause on permits for new wind projects on land or at sea; threatened to revoke or attach conditions to existing leases; and ordered actions that could create new impediments to approval of future wind projects. 

In his zeal to prop up dirty fuels at the expense of the nation’s future, Trump is taking actions that would drive up electricity bills and slow the growth of a proven energy source that’s making the power grid more reliable just when the power is needed most. 

Clean energy is the future. Trump won’t stop the shift to wind power—or clean energy more broadly. He is, however, doing all he can to bog down momentum in the transition to cleaner ways to power our growth, create chaos in the market and sow investor uncertainty. That, in itself, can do real damage.  

Trump launched a four-front attack on electric vehicles (EVs), the companies that make them, and the consumers who choose to drive them. 

In a Day 1 executive order, Trump said he would repeal or weaken federal clean car standards; consider eliminating tax credits that make electric vehicles more affordable for consumers and businesses to buy; halt federal funding for a nationwide network of electric charging stations; and strip out states’ authority to cut tailpipe pollution beyond what the federal government requires. 

If successful, Trump’s reckless assault would make EVs more expensive to build, buy, and charge, hurting drivers and limiting their choices of which car to buy to meet their needs and save them money. It would mean our cars create more of the air pollution that aggravates asthma, heart disease, and other respiratory ailments. And it would increase the carbon pollution that’s driving the climate crisis, all to pad the fortunes of the billionaire oil and gas donors who Trump solicited to help bankroll his campaign. 

This is what American oligarchy looks like: government in service of a privileged few, with the rest of the country paying the price.   

As part of a Day 1 executive order, Trump sought to expose more than 625 million acres of ocean waters to the hazard and harm of oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific, eastern Gulf of Mexico, and off the coast of Alaska.  

President Biden protected those waters by withdrawing them from consideration for offshore oil and gas leasing and reinstating similar protections put in place by President Obama. In revoking protections, Trump’s order puts the interests of Big Oil billionaires over the health of our oceans. 

The issue is likely headed to court. While Trump asserts the authority to revoke Biden’s actions, a 2019 federal court ruling (from the last time he tried this) concluded he does not. 

Trump’s order charts the wrong direction for our energy future. It’s time to reduce, not increase, the ocean waters, marine life and coastal communities exposed to the ongoing harm and catastrophic risks of offshore oil and gas operations. 

Trump issued a Day 1 executive order that singles out Alaska, dealing over much of the state as a sacrifice zone for oil, gas, mining, and timber companies to exploit for industry profit. 

The order targets three treasured and irreplaceable landscapes: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and the Tongass National Forest, the largest temperate rainforest in the world. 

Yet a fourth, the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, is threatened by Trump’s order to allow a destructive copper mine in the backcountry wilderness, along with more than 200 miles of industrial service roads. The Biden administration halted the project last year: Trump’s order gives the destructive project new life.  

Beyond that, Trump’s order would allow a vast new network of gas and oil pipelines and other infrastructure crisscrossing wildlife habitat and disrupting migratory routes of wildlife. And it sets millions of acres of federal lands and resources managed by Indigenous Peoples to be transferred to the state and to private actors. 

Trump signed a Day 1 executive order to end the pause that President Biden put on the review of new projects proposed to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) far into the future.  

The order contains directives meant to fast-track federal review of such projects, just as Trump’s billionaire oil and gas donors requested, and to prioritize industry benefits above disastrous consequences for the climate and local communities. 

The intent is to help lock in LNG exports for decades to come. That would threaten the communities where those plants would be sited, putting at risk the health of low-income families and people of color. 

 It would accelerate the climate crisis that’s taking a rising toll on families, communities and businesses across the country and around the world. And it would force U.S. consumers and businesses to compete with markets overseas for gas produced in this country.