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Six years following the president allegedly wrote a suggestive birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, the sitting US president put his name to something that now appears almost as shocking: a letter calling for action on the climate crisis.

In 2009, Trump, then a property magnate and reality TV personality, was among a group of corporate executives behind a large ad calling for legislation to “address climate change, an immediate challenge confronting the United States and the world today”. The US needs to take the forefront on renewable power, Trump and the others wrote, to avoid “disastrous and permanent consequences for mankind and our planet”.

Nowadays, the document is jarring. The globe still delays in policy in its reaction to the climate crisis but clean energy is expanding, responsible for almost all new energy capacity and attracting double the investment of traditional energy globally. The economy, as those business leaders from 2009 would now note, has shifted.

Most starkly, though, the president has become the planet's foremost advocate of carbon-based energy, directing the might of the American leadership into a defensive fight to maintain the world stuck in the era of combusted carbon. There is now no fiercer single opponent to the unified attempt to prevent climate breakdown than Trump.

As world leaders gather for international environmental negotiations next month, the escalation of Trump's hostility towards environmental measures will be evident. The American diplomatic corps' division that deals with climate negotiations has been abolished as “unnecessary”, making it unclear who, should any attend, will speak for the planet's foremost economic and defense superpower in the upcoming talks.

As in his first term, the administration has again withdrawn the US from the Paris climate deal, opened up more land and waters for fossil fuel extraction, and begun dismantling clean air protections that would have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 environmental movement”, as the EPA head, the president's head of the environmental regulator, gleefully put it.

But Trump's latest spell in the executive branch has gone even further, to radical measures that have astonished many observers.

Instead of simply boost a fossil fuel industry that donated handsomely to his election campaign, Trump has begun eliminating clean energy projects: halting offshore windfarms that had previously authorized, prohibiting renewable energy from government property, and removing financial support for clean energy and electric cars (while providing new public funds to a apparently hopeless attempt to revive the coal industry).

“We're definitely in a changed situation than we were in the first Trump administration,” said Kim Carnahan, who was the lead environmental diplomat for the US during Trump's initial administration.

“The emphasis on dismantling rather than building. It's hard to see. We're absent for a major global issue and are surrendering that ground to our competitors, which is detrimental for the United States.”

Unsatisfied with jettisoning conservative economic principles in the US energy market, Trump has sought to intervene in foreign nations' climate policies, scolding the UK for installing wind turbines and for not extracting enough petroleum for his preference. He has also pressured the EU to agree to buy $750bn in American fossil fuels over the coming 36 months, as well as striking carbon energy agreements with the Asian nation and South Korea.

“Countries are on the edge of destruction because of the renewable power initiative,” the president told unresponsive leaders during a UN speech last month. “If you don't get away from this green scam, your nation is going to fail. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be prosperous once more.”

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

The government has cut or concealed inconvenient climate research, deleted references of climate change from government websites and produced an flawed report in their place and even, despite the president's claimed support for free speech, compiled a inventory of prohibited phrases, such as “carbon reduction”, “sustainable”, “pollutants” and “eco-friendly”. The simple documentation of greenhouse gas emissions is now forbidden, too.

Carbon energy, in contrast, have been rebranded. “I've established a little standing order in the executive mansion,” Trump confided to the UN. “Never use the word ‘coal’, only use the words ‘environmentally attractive carbon fuel’. Seems more appealing, doesn't it?”

All of this has hindered the implementation of clean energy in the US: in the initial six months of the year, spooked businesses terminated or reduced more than $22 billion in renewable initiatives, costing more than sixteen thousand positions, most of them in conservative areas.

Energy prices are increasing for US citizens as a result; and the US's planet-heating emissions, while still falling, are expected to worsen their already sluggish descent in the years ahead.

These policies is confusing even on the president's own terms, experts have said. The president has spoken of making American energy “leading” and of the necessity for jobs and new generation to fuel AI data centers, and yet has undercut this by attempting to stamp out clean energy.

“I find it difficult with this – if you are serious about American energy dominance you need to deploy, establish, deploy,” said Abraham Silverman, an power analyst at the academic institution.

“It's confusing and quite unusual to say renewable energy has no role in the US grid when these are frequently the quickest and most affordable options. There's a real tension in the government's main messages.”

America's neglect of climate concerns raises broader questions about the US position in the world, too. In the geopolitical struggle with the Asian nation, two very different visions are being touted to the global community: one that stays dependent to the fossil fuels advocated by the planet's largest oil and gas producer, or one that transitions to renewable technology, likely manufactured overseas.

“Trump repeatedly humiliates the US on the global stage and weaken the interests of US citizens at home,” said Gina McCarthy, the former lead environmental consultant to Joe Biden.

The expert believes that local governments dedicated to climate action can help to address the gap left by the federal government. Economies and local authorities will continue to evolve, even if the administration tries to halt states from cutting pollution. But from China's perspective, the race to shape energy, and thereby change the general direction of this era, may already be over.

“The last chance for the US to join the renewable movement has left the station,” said Li Shuo, a China climate policy expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute, of Trump's dismantling of the climate legislation, Biden's signature climate bill. “In China, this isn't even treated like a rivalry. The US is {just not|sim