Trump vows to abandon global pact and ‘drill, baby, drill’

President Donald Trump has once again vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, the world’s most important effort to tackle rising temperatures.

The first Trump administration made a similar move in 2017, but that move was promptly reversed on President Joe Biden’s first day in office in 2021.

The US will now have to wait a year before it is officially out of the pact. The White House announced a “national energy emergency,” outlining a series of changes that would reverse U.S. climate regulations and increase oil and gas production.

It comes after global temperatures in 2024 rose more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels for the first time in a calendar year.

Although the Paris Agreement is not a legally binding treaty, it is the document that drives global cooperation to limit the causes of global warming.

President Trump’s antipathy to this collaborative approach was echoed in his 2017 statement that he had been elected to “represent the people of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

This temperature limit was set in the Paris Agreement as a level beyond which the world would face extremely dangerous impacts.

The US now joins Iran, Yemen and Libya as the only countries currently outside the deal, which was signed 10 years ago in the French capital.

At the White House on Monday night, Trump signed the order to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, including a letter to the United Nations explaining the decision.

He also announced a “national energy emergency” to reverse many of the Biden-era environmental regulations.

Trump called the Paris accord a “ripoff” during a speech at the Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, after his inauguration.

“We’re drilling, baby, drilling,” he said earlier in his inaugural address.

The new president also promised that the United States would usher in a new age of oil and gas exploration.

“We will bring prices down, replenish our strategic reserves, right up to the top, and export American energy all over the world,” he told the audience.

“We will become a rich nation again, and it is the liquid gold beneath our feet that will help do that.”

But the American fossil fuels are already flowing like never before.

Since 2016, US oil production has increased by 70%, and the US is now the world’s dominant producer and exporter.

Similarly, exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have gone from almost zero in 2016 to the United States becoming the world leader.

The new administration says the president will also end the “green new deal,” a reference to the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate policy that channeled billions into clean energy.

The president says he will also cancel efforts to increase ownership of electric vehicles, what he calls the Biden “EV mandate,” and he will strengthen efforts to save the U.S. auto industry.

He also wants to stop the leasing of federal lands and waters to “massive wind farms that degrade our national landscape.”

UN climate chief Simon Stiell said America risks missing out on a global clean energy boom worth $2 billion last year.

“Embracing it will mean massive profits, millions of manufacturing jobs and clean air,” he said in a statement.

“Ignoring it only sends all that enormous wealth to competing economies, while climate disasters like droughts, wildfires and superstorms keep getting worse, destroying property and businesses, hitting nationwide food production and driving price inflation throughout the economy.”

President Trump’s earlier efforts to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement served as a rallying cry for many Americans who were horrified to leave.

Internationally, the US withdrawal was also a unifying force for the countries.

This time, however, the withdrawal could be far more damaging to global efforts to limit emissions, as climate change has fallen down the list of priorities for governments.

There are other countries, such as Argentina, that may follow in the US’s footsteps.

Developing countries are also reeling from COP29 in Azerbaijan, as the richer world struggled to improve financing support.

But having survived the previous Trump attack, there is also a sense that this may not be the last American word on the Paris accord.

“The door remains open to the Paris Agreement and we welcome constructive engagement from all countries,” said the UN’s Simon Stiell.