By Evan Halper, Maxine Joselow and Chico Harlan, The Washington PostA natural gas flare burns near an oil pump jack at the New Harmony Oil Field in Grayville, Illinois.
Trump is expected to immediately take aim at the Paris climate accord. His plan to withdraw the United States from the pact - as he did during his first term - comes at a critical moment for the compact aimed at limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius “One can only hope that Donald Trump will put conspiracy theories to the side and take the decisive action to address the climate crisis,” Dan Lashof, U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, said in a statement. “But I won’t hold my breath, and neither will the global community nor U.S. state and local leaders. We are moving forward.”
The incoming president will have much more latitude to reverse dozens of environmental rules that oil and gas executives find burdensome. During an April dinner at his Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump asked oil executives to steer $1 billion toward his campaign while promising to relax industry regulations. When Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement for the first time, a group called America Is All In announced that dozens of states, cities and corporations were will committed to the pact. Gina McCarthy, the former White House climate czar under Biden and the managing co-chair of America is All In, vowed in a statement Wednesday to continue that fight.