On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump wasted no time dismantling his predecessor's climate policies and promising a new era of fossil-fuel dominance.
As promised, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, one of dozens of executive orders he signed in the hours after being inaugurated as the 47th president.
Under Trump's marker, the fossil fuel industry was promised new horizons and renewable energy industries were put in the back seat of the American economy.
While it's still not clear how many of these decrees will pan out as Trump intends, the consequences are likely to be felt across the world.
What is the Paris Agreement and its purpose?
Ratified in 2015, the Paris Climate Agreement is the global pact for countries to do their part to avoid the catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures.
Beyond practicalities, it is the grandest symbol for the world's ambition on climate action — something Donald Trump does not like.
Trump has railed against the Paris Agreement for most of the past decade, arguing it "disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries".
Now, the US will join a motley crew of outcasts, with Iran, Yemen and Libya the only nations that haven't joined.
This move comes as no surprise. It's the second time Trump has pulled out of the accord, although Biden was quick to flourish his own pen on his first day in office in 2021 to return the US to the pact.
Under the Paris Agreement, each country puts forward its own targets for how much it will reduce emissions, and the targets are meant to get more ambitious over the years. Last month, before leaving office, Biden announced bold new targets to cut US climate pollution by 61-66 per cent by 2035.
During Trump's first term in office, US emissions flatlined, going up one year slightly, down the following in 2019, before dropping significantly in 2020. Of course, that was during a global pandemic that ground life to a halt and slowed industry.
What does it mean for the Paris Agreement goal for 2050?
The Paris Agreement is often talked about alongside "net zero emissions by 2050", but its official goal is to keep temperature increases below 2 degrees, and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible. To do that, we need to be reducing our emissions now, and the big emitters like the US are key to that.
The United States isn't just a global superpower, it's also the world's second-largest emitter after China, so there were concerns when Trump first withdrew from the Paris Agreement that it would trigger an exodus.
That never transpired and it's unclear if any countries will follow Trump's exit this time, although Argentina's President Javier Milei indicated his own doubts about the deal and withdrew his country's delegation from the COP29 summit in November.
Richie Merzian was a climate diplomat with the Australian government when the US first withdrew from the agreement in 2017, and says it caused serious concerns about the future of the agreement.
"Having said that, what you did see happen is that a lot of countries stepped up to fill that gap and the world, in a sense, continued to progress down the pathway of net zero," he said.
"This time around, it seems less impactful that the US has decided to withdraw, because we've been here before, we know the world will continue. And on top of that, the economics have shifted so dramatically that it just makes financial sense to invest in renewables. It's the cheapest new power you can build."
Under the Paris Agreement, global emissions have continued to rise, but the world is no longer on track for the level of catastrophic warming as it was before the pact, and renewable energy investment is at record highs.
[Datawrapper emissions]When the US withdrew the last time, the leadership vacuum it left was quickly filled by European countries that pulled forward with strong emissions cuts, climate policies and green investments.
This time round, China is also expected to step into the gap and play an even bigger role in climate diplomacy. China already leads the world in clean technologies.
"It's where most solar panels are made, where most EVs are made. It's really become the industry leader," Merzian said.
The fate of the world's largest climate policy
Joe Biden made climate action a core pillar of his presidency, introducing the world's largest climate policy ever, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Trump wants to unwind it, and targeted the IRA in his flurry of executive orders. The "unleashing American energy" order instructed government agencies to pause the release of money from the program.
It poured billions of dollars into clean technologies across the country, such as electric vehicle manufacturing, batteries, solar, and household upgrades. But the most significant funds flowed to American businesses to drive manufacturing and clean energy investments at home.
Unpicking the IRA goldrush might be harder and less popular than Trump expects. A whopping 85 per cent of the investments from the IRA have gone to projects in Republican congressional districts — Trump communities — meaning some Republican politicians are keen to keep those investments.
[Datawrapper IRA top 10]Instead of reducing costs, independent research firm Rhodian Group concluded that rolling back the IRA and Biden's climate policies might have the opposite effect.
"[It] could raise average household energy costs by as much as $489 a year in 2035 … [and] drive greenhouse gas emissions levels 24 to 36 per cent higher compared to current policy in 2035," the group's research found.
Former climate diplomat Richie Merzian is now the CEO of the Clean Energy Investing Group and says that any moves by the US to wind back climate investments is "ceding the floor to China".
"Investors want certainty and when you're investing in a renewable energy project, you're investing for 20, 25 years. If you have a US government that is chopping and changing … those are not the signals that capital want to see," he said.
What other executive orders did Trump sign?
One of the president's campaign slogans was "drill, baby, drill" — a sentiment at the heart of several of his other executive orders.
In an action declaring an "energy emergency", Trump paved the way for the administration to expand oil and gas drilling.
The order claimed the nation's "inadequate energy supply and infrastructure" and "reliance on foreign energy" were leading to higher energy prices for everyday Americans.
However, over the past six years the US has produced more crude oil than any other nation in global history.
"America is actually the number one fossil fuel producer in the world," noted Tim Buckley, founder of independent think-tank Climate Energy Finance.
"They're 30 per cent bigger than Saudi Arabia when it comes to oil production. They have had a massive investment over the last decade in domestic fossil fuel production.
"I think this is a fabricated emergency in order to provide the immediate from day one opportunity for Trump to pay back his fossil fuel incumbent industry sponsors."
It's worth noting that Trump asked for $1 billion in donations from the fossil fuel industry, promising to wind back environmental restrictions and climate policies in exchange, as first reported in the Washington Post in May.
So does the US have an energy emergency?
During the past five years, the US produced more energy than it consumed. However, it does still import 6.4 million barrels of oil per day — most of which are types it can't produce domestically and needs for refining.
Buckley says Americans already have cheap gas, and more won't help their bills.
"America has the lowest cost gas in the world. Up until two years ago, 95-99 per cent of that gas was used domestically to power American industry," he said.
Even if it is possible to boost production, it's not guaranteed to bring down energy prices.
"That's one of the fallacies — that the average person is going to benefit from low energy prices," Buckley said.
"The average person in America in manufacturing has benefited because downstream industries benefited and therefore they've been good jobs. But America has already got low-cost gas."
Trump also suspended new offshore wind energy projects, claiming without evidence that these projects were behind an increase in whale deaths.
"We've seen Trump throw the offshore wind under the bus already but that industry is actually relatively expensive. Onshore wind is a third of the price in America," Buckley said.
"We know onshore wind is far more competitive than even a gas-fired power plant in America. And we're seeing batteries absolutely winning that race in America already today and that's with really cheap gas."
Revoking the 'electric vehicle mandate'
In an order revoking 78 Biden-era actions, Trump stamped out what he called the "electric vehicle mandate".
There is no mandate for buying EVs, however, Biden set a goal for half of new vehicle sales in the US to be electric by the year 2030 and introduced subsidies for Americans buying electric cars.
Gail Broadbent, an EV policy researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, believes the move was most likely in response to lobbying from American car manufacturers.
"[That policy] doesn't mean that people can't buy whatever car they want, it's just that it would encourage the manufacturers to sell more low-emission vehicles. And it doesn't mean they have to be fully electric, it could be hybrid-electric," she told the ABC.
"American car manufacturers have been caught short, not producing the sorts of electric vehicles that people want to buy … and they've been overtaken by the Chinese in the EV space.
"[Trump's order] is to signal to them: 'we have got your back and we want you to make more American manufacturing'."
But Trump's position on electric cars highlights the chaotic and contradictory nature of his executive orders.
Elon Musk is a constant presence by Trump's side and owns America's largest EV maker. Another of Trump's executive orders aims to make the US a world leader in rare-earth minerals — EVs are the biggest market for these resources.
Investment could leave America
Just because the president has signed these executive orders doesn't guarantee they will be introduced. Some run counter to laws passed by Congress, or state laws, and others are already being challenged in court.
But it's the clearest symbol of what Trump thinks about climate policies and progress.
For the rest of the world, the US stepping back from the global climate race could open up new money for investments, according CEO of the Clean Energy Investing Group, Richie Merzian.
"The US for the last few years has been a massive vacuum cleaner for investment because of the IRA. Capital that is being invested in the US right now will need a new home," he said.
"Asia is where the majority of the world's emissions are, where the majority of the world's energy is consumed. It's where the majority of the world's climate solutions are being manufactured.
"So I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a lot more investment flow to the Asia Pacific — Australia included."
There's no sugarcoating that this is good news for the fossil fuel industry, and bad news for efforts to reduce the damage caused by climate change, but Buckley says it's not going to halt the transition that's underway, and in the long-term, Americans may just be the poorer for it.
"America will capitalise on the industries of the past and they'll profit from that for the next couple of years. The billionaires will get richer and the American economy, like the Australian economy, will just continue to de-industrialise," he said.
"So are there more profits to be made in the short term? Yes. I think it is myopic short-termism."
