Trump Signs Executive Orders to Promote Fossil Fuels and End Climate Policies

Hours after his inauguration on Monday, President Trump signed a barrage of executive orders to grant his administration new powers to promote fossil fuels and to withdraw support for renewable energy, signaling that the United States government would no longer fight climate change.

Mr. Trump ordered the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement on global warming for a second time. He initiated plans to open vast areas of public land and federal waters, including fragile wilderness in Alaska, for oil drilling and mining. He ordered the elimination of government offices and programs aimed at protecting poor communities from pollution. And he said he would repeal regulations aimed at promoting electric vehicles and would halt approvals of new wind farms in federal waters.

Mr. Trump also declared a national energy emergency despite the fact that the United States is currently producing more oil and natural gas than any other country. He was the first president to do so, claiming that this declaration could help speed the development of pipelines, refineries, mines and other facilities for fossil fuels.

“We’re going to drill, baby, drill and do all of the things that we wanted to,” Mr. Trump told a cheering crowd of supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington shortly before he began signing some of the orders.

And, he said, “We aren’t going to do the wind thing.”

Mr. Trump’s dramatic pivot to fossil fuels comes after the hottest year in recorded history and as scientists say the world is running out of time to keep global warming at relatively low levels. Last year, emissions from burning coal, oil and gas helped push average global temperatures past 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. Scientists have said that every fraction of a degree of warming above that level brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.

Many of Mr. Trump’s energy policies cannot be achieved with the mere stroke of a pen because some would require action by federal agencies or Congress and others could face legal challenges. He also could not, by fiat, rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, or Denali in Alaska, the highest mountain peak in North America, to Mount McKinley. Mr. Trump promised to do both.

But taken together, the declarations underscore how Mr. Trump views the world: oil and gas are symbols of strength and power, and plentiful fossil fuels will ensure that the United States is able to dominate allies and rivals alike. Unspoken was the fact that the country is historically the biggest source of the greenhouse gases that are dangerously heating the planet.

Instead, Mr. Trump said the United States had “the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth, and we are going to use it. We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserve up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world.” ...