![anuary 8, 2025 image of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California engulfed over 14,000 acres and over 7,000 structures.](/sites/default/files/styles/600_proportional/public/2025-01/20250108_LosAngeles_Eaton_fire_burns_homes_AP25008811364082.jpg?itok=xMGiIF9C)
January 8, 2025 image of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California. The fire has as of this writing engulfed over 14,000 acres and over 9,400 structures. Photo: AP
The rash of executive orders signed by Trump on day one contained extremely dangerous moves on the environment and climate change. These orders aim to knock down any and all laws, policies and people in government that might put any limits whatsoever on drilling, refining, and burning more oil, gas and coal. This will lead to pumping even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than now! (Greenhouse gases—for example, carbon dioxide [CO2], methane and nitrous oxide—are the main cause of global warming.) Trump has already packed his nominations to the cabinet and other high positions with responsibility for the environment with science-denying lunatics and those who oppose on principle any restriction on capitalist investment.
Here is the basic reality: 2024 was the hottest year, in a series of hottest years, for our planet on record. Glaciers are melting, seas are rising, forest fires rage, and destructive storms of all kinds are intensifying. Climate change is real—it is driven by the system that dominates the planet, capitalism-imperialism (see revcom.us Special Resource Page “Capitalism-Imperialism Is Destroying the Planet... Only Revolution Gives Humanity a Real Chance to Save It” for much more on this.)
The Democrats give lip service to stopping climate change, but Biden and Harris boasted that under their time in office the U.S. became the world’s number one producer of oil and gas. As a previous revcom.us article put it, “The U.S. is #1 in destroying the climate; the U.S. is #1 in history in injecting greenhouse gases (carbon and methane that trap heat in the atmosphere); the U.S. military is the #1 institutional injector of greenhouse gases.” What Trump wants to do to the environment is even worse and more criminal than that.
Denying Scientific Fact that Greenhouse Gases Are Damaging Life on This Planet
In the executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy,” Trump ordered government agencies to challenge the Biden Administration’s “endangerment” findings, which say that the greenhouse gases are a danger. These findings were backed by the U.S. Supreme Court1 and are the legal basis for much of what the government has done in response to climate change. What the U.S. has done on climate change is actually pitiful. But Trump and the anti-science fanatics now running the government want to turn reality on its head and deny firmly established and extremely well-tested and well-documented scientific facts.
Ordering U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords
Trump attacks the 2016 Paris Climate Accords as a big barrier to U.S. economic development. The Paris Accords, an international treaty that was supposed to limit global warming, have been utterly ineffective in stopping rampant and destructive climate change. But to Trump, even the pretense of any constraints on U.S. drilling for, and use of, gas and oil is unacceptable. In addition to withdrawing from the Paris Accords, Trump also ordered U.S. withdrawal from any other international climate agreements.
Declaring a “National Energy Emergency”
One of Trump’s orders declared a “national energy emergency.” This is the first time the U.S. has declared an “energy emergency,” which is based on the claim that the energy needs of the nation are being held back by environmental regulations. In signing the order, Trump said it “means you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem." This includes ignoring and suspending existing environmental restrictions on drilling, refining, and pipeline construction. This “emergency” declaration will lead to more poisoning of the air and water, and further drive endangered species to extinction (at a time when an estimated two million species are in danger). It will contribute to the intimidation that Trump/MAGA fascism uses to try to stun people into going along with horrors.
Enabling Drilling in Wildlife Reserve and Ending Protections for Alaska’s Coast
A Trump order opens up gas and oil drilling in the vast, beautiful, and unique Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge is home to and considered sacred by the native Gwich’in people. Trump also ended restrictions on logging and roadbuilding in an Alaskan forest that is home to wolves, bears, salmon, and other creatures. He ordered loosening restrictions on hunting, fishing and trapping in national preserves in Alaska. Trump also issued orders to “rescind, revoke, revise, amend, defer or grant exemptions from any and all” laws, rules and regulations restricting drilling for oil and gas in the state of Alaska.
Withdrawing Federal Support for Renewable Energy Sources
The Biden administration gave support to developing means to produce energy that did not involve the production of greenhouse gases, especially solar panels and windmills. (Biden falsely claimed that he was adequately addressing the climate crisis with this support—when he led the U.S. to become #1 in the world in producing and exporting oil and gas, which remains the foundation of the U.S. energy production.) Trump’s order on “Unleashing American Energy” seeks to end all government support for solar and wind power while bolstering “oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy”—that is, everything except solar and wind.
Rescinding Biden Orders Limiting Offshore Oil Drilling
One Trump executive order immediately ended 78 executive orders that Biden had signed. One of those Biden orders blocked oil and gas drilling on the entire U.S. East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coast off Washington, Oregon, and California, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska. Trump wants to undo all that to unleash offshore drilling. Offshore drilling has led to disastrous oil spills and leaks in the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coast, and other places all over the world.
We Cannot, and Do Not Have to, Live in the Nightmare World Trump Is Seeking
This list is only part of what Trump has ordered in relation to climate change and the environment as he takes power. These first steps already amount to a massive assault on the planet. Not all the extreme measures he is ordering go into effect immediately, and some are being challenged in the courts. But the courts, especially the Supreme Court, are dominated by fascists and have recently overturned long-standing environmental legislation. And Trump is moving quickly to demoralize and paralyze the millions who are alarmed about, and deeply care about, climate change and the threat to humanity and the planet.
At a time when what is urgently needed is a radical transformation from the destructive way capitalism-imperialism has wracked the environment, Trump and the MAGA fascists aim to defy science and reality and accelerate everything that is leading to disaster. But this is NOT the only world possible.
Bob Avakian has written the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which is the only constitution ever written, anywhere and at any time, which puts taking care of the environment as one of the central elements of building a whole, new emancipating society.
This is distilled in “We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System”:
Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, Finally Abolishing War, and Systematically Addressing the Environmental Crisis
The new socialist government will not develop or use nuclear weapons and will take concrete steps and wage determined struggle to abolish nuclear weapons everywhere, with the ultimate goal of finally abolishing wars among human beings, with the abolition of the capitalist-imperialist system, and all systems and relations of exploitation and oppression, which are the basis for wars. This new socialist government will move, quickly, systematically and effectively, to address the already acute and fast accelerating environmental crisis, with the aim of bringing into being a world where humanity can truly be fit caretakers of the earth.
All this is not just a dream, or a wish—it is what is possible and necessary in the interests of the masses of people in this country and the great majority of humanity, and for the future of humanity as a whole.