Trump administration’s fossil fuel surge pushes world toward brink of destruction

By removing the world’s largest economy from the international fight against global warming while forcibly expanding production of oil and coal, the Trump administration has decisively shifted the planet’s trajectory, making the goal of limiting catastrophic climate change nearly impossible to reach.

In a single week, the administration executed a one-two punch against the global climate system.

First, it formally withdrew the United States from the foundational United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty that underpins all international cooperation to slow planetary heating.

This move severs the U.S. from the world’s primary scientific and diplomatic bodies on climate, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Simultaneously, through military force and executive order, it seized operational control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves—the largest in the world—and moved to protect all revenue from their sale in U.S.-controlled accounts.

These actions are not an oversight but a deliberate strategy. The White House stated the withdrawn institutions promote “radical climate policies” and “globalist agendas”, while framing the capture of Venezuelan oil as a matter of national security and regional stability.

This comes atop a relentless domestic campaign to resuscitate the coal industry, throttle renewable energy projects, and erase regulations on air pollution from power plants.

The scientific reality, however, operates independently of political decrees.

A United Nations report confirmed the world is on track for a devastating temperature rise of between 2.3 and 2.8 degrees Celsius this century.

The U.S. withdrawal from its climate commitments alone is predicted to add another 0.1 degrees Celsius to that total.

The World Meteorological Organization reports an 80% likelihood that global temperatures will temporarily exceed the critical 1.5-degree Celsius threshold within the next five years.

Each fraction of a degree beyond that benchmark locks in exponentially worse storms, heatwaves, droughts, and sea-level rise.

“This is a colossal own goal which will leave the U.S. less secure and less prosperous,” said Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief. He warned it would mean “less affordable energy, food, transport and insurance for American households” as climate disasters intensify.

The administration’s own recent environmental ruling reveals a stark disregard for this causality; the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule that explicitly refuses to calculate the health benefits of reducing air pollution, ignoring the value of lives saved and hospital visits avoided.

The agency will now only consider the economic costs to industries forced to comply with pollution limits, rather than the financial benefits of improved public health.

The geopolitical cost is equally profound. By abandoning the treaties and institutions that facilitate collective action, the U.S. has not merely stepped back but has actively undermined the fragile framework of international law and cooperation.

The move surrenders global leadership and economic advantage in the clean energy transition to rivals like China, which now dominates investment and trade in low-carbon technologies.

The consequence is a world pushed closer to the edge. The administration’s agenda ensures U.S. emissions will rise, guaranteeing that the “Trump floods, Trump droughts, and Trump wildfires” predicted by one climate scientist will carry an American brand.

The path to a livable planet has not just been neglected; it has been deliberately and systematically blocked. The bill for this failure, measured in dollars, lives, and stability, will now come due for every American and for people around the world.