THE PUZZLING PUZZLE: Each piece laid to dismantle the country’s environmental and climate protections

In the first year of this administration, we’ve seen a seemingly never ending stream of executive orders and climate policy changes coming out of the White House. Without context, it’s hard to see any patterns through all of the noise. It’s hard to make sense of all of the data points. 

Luckily, we have organizations like the Climate Action Campaign (CAC). For the past year, they’ve kept a tracker on their website of this administration’s climate policies and actions. Through this list, we can start to understand and visualize the scope of setbacks to our clean air, water, emergency response systems, and our communities at large. 

The first data point on CAC’s tracker actually takes place before the President took office for the second time. On December 10, 2024, the president elect sent out a post on Truth Social: “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

On Day 1, January 20, 2025, there are eight entries on CAC’s tracker. 

That first day, the President signed a series of executive orders (EOs) aimed at dismantling the country’s environmental and climate protections. 

First, a regulatory freeze. This executive order froze any in-progress climate, clean-air, and consumer protections.

Then came the Emergency Energy Declaration. This order declared a national energy emergency, allowing the federal government to circumvent laws like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act in service of fossil fuel companies. It immediately gave direct authority to the federal government to expedite fossil fuel, infrastructure, and mining projects. 

Right there at the resolute desk, another Executive Order signed on day one: "Unleashing American Energy." The order also rescinded a previous executive order that required the White House Council on Environmental Quality to assess and report environmental and community impacts. 

Those environmental quality assessments, now deemed “not required,” were originally put in place to determine the safety and wellbeing of our families and our friends and our own delicate bodies.

Then, came the ban on windmill construction and open of offshore drilling permits.

Then, the Science Advisory Board at the EPA was fired. At the same moment, the EPA halted $7 billion dollars of contractually obligated grants for solar energy.

The 10-1 deregulation initiative, signed as an executive order, demands that all government agencies remove 10 regulations or rules for every new regulation or rule they come up with. In a gift to fossil fuel companies, this directly opened the door for complete deregulation of the energy industry. 

Then the EPA announced plans to fire 1100 employees. 

That same day, February 3, 2025, Interior Secretary Burgum ordered the reinstatement of fossil fuel leases. He opened more public land for drilling and issued multiple orders weakening the protection of public lands and monuments. 

A few weeks ago, on January 27, 2026, the President pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, the international agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier this week, the Secretary of the Interior closed the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the research center that is integral to our early warning weather response systems around the country.  Now, local warning systems will have significantly less data to use in order to protect people from wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding. The long-term effects of those day-one executive actions are still yet to be felt in their entirety.  A lot of the decisions and policies from the first few weeks of the administration were explicitly in service of selling and burning more fossil fuels without regard for public safety or public health. Every decision since has been a follow through on a deregulation promise, or at the very least an effort to curb the “alarmism” that the administration claims comes out of research centers like NCAR.

The administration is actively deregulating America to the benefit of energy companies, while at the same time, more than 40 individuals with ties to the energy industry work in the administration. We can do the math.

The undeniable truth is, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you drink water and breathe air. You owe it to yourself to remember, as you raise that water to your delicate human lips for a drink, that in today’s America, you are solely responsible for protecting yourself from whatever harm may be in that glass. The government has entirely eliminated their role in that effort. Drink responsibly.