So declared Donald Trump in his 20th January inauguration address, delivered to a collection of billionaires (including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook), influencers-turned-right-wing-grifters (Logan and Jake Paul) and the odd populist global leader (President Javier Milei of Argentina and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy). He continued by evoking the spirit of financially-driven American settler colonialism as he laid out his plans for land and natural resource use.
These were not words that inspired hope for a world which cannot afford any delays in climate action. However, nor were they unexpected. For Trump, anthropogenic climate change has long been a “hoax”, while he has dismissed Democratic efforts to decarbonise as a “Green New Scam”. During his first term as president, the Trump administration reversed over 125 environmental policies. He achieved this principally through unilateral executive orders which do not require approval by Congress. It is this tool that he has already employed to partially dismantle the climate policies enacted by his predecessor.
On his first day back in office, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement. This was the UN accord signed in 2015 which (non-bindingly) committed countries to reduce their carbon emissions. While the move grabbed headlines, it was again not unforeseeable: Trump had done the same during his first term, before this decision was reversed under the Biden administration.
The withdrawal came in conjunction with a declaration of a “national energy emergency”, aimed to facilitate an expansion of fossil fuel extraction and use across the US. Biden-era restrictions on liquid natural gas (LNG) exports and oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Circle have been scrapped, as has a goal that 50% of all new cars sold by 2030 be electric vehicles (EVs).
The scale of change implemented by Trump in his first few weeks in office sets a concerning precedent for the shape the rest of his term could take. Many projections already have the planet soaring past the Paris Agreement’s aspirational target of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. A recent Guardian survey of climate scientists on their estimates for temperature change even reached a consensus prediction of a minimum 2.5°C rise by 2100. With this in mind, any delays in the global shift to renewables will seriously undermine attempts to mitigate the most damaging consequences of climate change.
Clues to Trump’s precise plans for energy and the planet may lie in his inauguration speech. Trump cited “manifest destiny” (the belief that it was the United States’ God-given duty to expand its borders) and “the spirit of the frontier”. He thus invoked the pioneer culture of expansion and economic exploitation of lands during the 19th and 20th centuries, making explicit his desires to capitalise on America’s vast reserves of “liquid gold”.
Out of the political limelight, the Senate hearing of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum – slated to become the next Secretary of the Interior – gave more of an indication of the intricacies of the regime’s energy policy. The Department of the Interior is charged with the management of all federal lands, including National Parks and reservations (autonomous areas governed by the Indigenous tribes who inhabit them).
Burgum paradoxically received the endorsement of numerous tribes, the very groups who suffered most from manifest destiny expansionism and resource extraction. These endorsements were largely consequences of Burgum’s willingness as governor to allow North Dakota’s tribes to continue drilling. While national Indigenous groups, such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), have voiced concern over the care the Trump administration will pay to sacred tribal lands, Mark Fox – chairman of North Dakota’s more economically-minded Three Affiliated Tribes – had no such qualms. Fox “prayed and hoped that Governor Burgum was going to be selected” for the role of Interior Secretary, as it would allow him to act in the interests of a group that made $188 million from extraction of oil and gas on its reservation lands in 2020 alone.
During his questioning by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Burgum repeatedly emphasised his and Trump’s conviction that having a “baseload” of fossil fuels was crucial for the US’s energy security. Although, as Senator Angus King of Maine pointed out, North Dakota generates 36% of its electricity through wind, Burgum appeared sceptical of the efficacy and reliability of rehashing this strategy nationwide.
Burgum also framed energy as a foreign policy or national security issue. Often referring to the new “Cold War” America has found itself in against China, Burgum warned of the possibility of “los[ing] the AI arms race” due to a lack of baseload. And he dismayingly gave no indication that he would push back against Trump’s demands. Of course, following the recent development of DeepSeek – a Chinese generative AI with comparable functionality yet far lower cost than GPT-4 – it appears that American AI now faces concerns beyond just energy provision.
The most striking sentiment expressed during the confirmation hearings was the Trump administration’s overarching stance on public lands. Burgum described them as simply vessels for the oil and gas that dwell within them, existing purely for the purpose of extraction. As Burgum impassively put it, Trump views these lands as “America’s balance sheet”.
In spite of this, it is important not to despair. Although intending to curtail investment into renewables and increase fossil fuel extraction, Trump will be hampered by the realities of a world far more committed to green energy than it was when he came into office eight years ago. Trump will be unable to stop the global market’s march towards renewable energy. He has vowed to dismantle Biden’s flagship Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provided hundreds of billions in clean energy investment, but should ultimately only be able to harm its EV, offshore wind, and heat pump provisions. Onshore wind, solar, and nuclear energy development will continue largely without impediment, if without encouragement. Furthermore, the epicentre of renewable technology innovation has long been Silicon Valley, and private investment should continue even as federal funding dries up: a Goldman Sachs estimate calculated that the IRA will drive $2.9 trillion in cumulative investments up to 2032.
As Burgum’s hearing showed, short-term energy security is the name of the game for Trump 2.0. Beyond that, Trump appears to be setting himself up to appeal to an American nostalgia for a deregulated, pioneering past. A nation whose power was founded on its rapid industrialisation and exploitation of its vast natural resources has forgotten its modernising heritage. Instead of continuing its tradition of energy innovation, it is now, with Trump at its helm, replaying its greatest hits. These tunes have not aged well, though, and fall on ungrateful ears. Nevertheless, the rest of humanity is mostly resolved to continue the fight against the climate crisis, in spite of this setback.