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Half a dozen years after Donald Trump allegedly penned a questionable birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, the current American leader signed to something that now appears almost as shocking: a document demanding measures on the environmental emergency.

In 2009, Trump, then a property magnate and television star, was part of a coalition of business leaders behind a full-page advertisement calling for laws to “address climate change, an urgent issue confronting the United States and the planet today”. The US needs to lead on clean energy, the signatories wrote, to avoid “catastrophic and irreversible consequences for mankind and our world”.

Today, the letter is jarring. The globe continues to dawdle in policy in its response to the climate crisis but clean energy is expanding, responsible for nearly every additional power generation and attracting twice the funding of fossil fuels globally. The economy, as those business leaders from 2009 would now note, has changed.

Most notably, though, Trump has become the world's foremost advocate of carbon-based energy, directing the might of the US presidency into a defensive fight to keep the world stuck in the era of combusted carbon. There is now no fiercer individual adversary to the collective effort to stave off climate breakdown than the current administration.

As world leaders gather for international environmental negotiations next month, the increase of the administration's opposition towards environmental measures will be apparent. The US state department's office that deals with environmental talks has been eliminated as “unnecessary”, making it uncertain who, if anyone, will represent the world's leading financial and military global power in Belem.

Similar to his initial presidency, Trump has again withdrawn the US from the Paris climate deal, opened up more territories for fossil fuel extraction, and begun dismantling clean air protections that would have prevented thousands of deaths across America. These rollbacks will “deal a blow through the heart of the climate change religion”, as Lee Zeldin, Trump's leader of the environmental regulator, gleefully put it.

But Trump's latest spell in the White House has gone even further, to radical measures that have surprised many onlookers.

Instead of simply support a carbon energy sector that contributed significantly to his election campaign, the president has begun eliminating renewable initiatives: stopping offshore windfarms that had previously authorized, banning renewable energy from government property, and removing subsidies for clean energy and zero-emission vehicles (while handing new public funds to a seemingly futile effort to revive the coal industry).

“We are certainly in a different environment than we were in the initial presidency,” said a former climate negotiator, who was the lead environmental diplomat for the US during Trump's initial administration.

“The emphasis on dismantling rather than building. It's difficult to witness. We're not present for a significant worldwide concern and are surrendering that ground to our rivals, which is not good for the United States.”

Unsatisfied with jettisoning conservative economic principles in the US energy market, Trump has attempted involvement in foreign nations' environmental strategies, criticizing the UK for installing wind turbines and for not drilling enough petroleum for his preference. He has also pushed the EU to consent to buy $750 billion in US oil and gas over the coming 36 months, as well as striking fossil fuel deals with Japan and the Korean peninsula.

“Nations are on the edge of collapse because of the green energy agenda,” Trump told stony-faced leaders during a UN speech recently. “If you don't get away from this environmental fraud, your country is going to decline. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again.”

The president has tried to rewire terminology around energy and climate, too. Trump, who was apparently influenced by his aversion at seeing wind turbines from his overseas property in 2011, has called turbine power “unattractive”, “disgusting” and “pathetic”. The climate crisis is, in his words, a “hoax”.

The government has cut or concealed inconvenient climate research, removed references of global warming from official sites and produced an flawed report in their place and even, despite Trump's claimed support for open dialogue, compiled a list of banned terms, such as “carbon reduction”, “environmentally friendly”, “pollutants” and “green”. The mere reporting of greenhouse gas emissions is now forbidden, too.

Fossil fuels, meanwhile, have been renamed. “I've established a little standing order in the executive mansion,” the president revealed to the UN. “Never use the word ‘the mineral’, only use the words ‘environmentally attractive carbon fuel’. Seems more appealing, doesn't it?”

These actions has slowed the adoption of clean energy in the US: in the initial six months of the year, concerned businesses closed or downscaled more than $22 billion in clean energy projects, costing more than 16,000 jobs, most of them in conservative areas.

Energy prices are increasing for Americans as a consequence; and the US's planet-heating emissions, while continuing to decline, are expected to slow their current reduction rate in the coming period.

This agenda is confusing even on Trump's stated objectives, analysts have said. The president has discussed making American energy “dominant” and of the need for jobs and additional capacity to power AI data centers, and yet has undercut this by attempting to stamp out renewables.

“I find it difficult with this – if you are genuine about US power leadership you need to implement, deploy, deploy,” said Abraham Silverman, an power analyst at the academic institution.

“It's confusing and very strange to say wind and solar has zero place in the American system when these are often the quickest and most affordable sources. There's a real tension in the government's primary statements.”

The US government's abandonment of environmental issues raises broader questions about America's place in the global community, too. In the geopolitical struggle with the Asian nation, contrasting approaches are being promoted to the rest of the world: one that stays dependent to the fossil fuels touted by the planet's largest fossil fuel exporter, or one that shifts to renewable technology, probably manufactured overseas.

“The president continues to embarrass the US on the global stage and undermine the interests of US citizens at home,” said a former climate advisor, the previous top climate adviser to the previous administration.

The expert believes that American cities and states committed to climate action can help to address the gap left by the national administration. Economies and sub-national governments will continue to shift, even if Trump tries to halt regions from reducing emissions. But from China's viewpoint, the competition to shape energy, and thereby alter the overall trajectory of this century, may have concluded.

“The final opportunity for the US to jump on the green bandwagon has left the station,” said a China analyst, a Asian environmental specialist at the Asia Society Policy Institute, of Trump's dismemberment of the climate legislation, Biden's environmental law. “Domestically, this isn't considered like a rivalry. The US is {just not|sim