Despite COP28 Pledge, World Leaders Continue to Boost Fossil Fuels. But Civil Society, Courts, and Climate Reality are Pushing Back
President Trump targets federal AND state climate rules and policies in new orders to turbocharge the fossil fuel industry.
Screen shot of President Donald Trump signing executive orders at a White House event promoting the coal industry on April 8, 2025
In December 2023, the nations of the world that have been convening annual summits for nearly 30 years to try to tackle the climate crisis through the United Nations multilateral system finally acknowledged the need to transition away from fossil fuels. At the COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai, the final outcome document included, for the first time, a call to transition away from fossil fuels in the energy system. Since then, however, world leaders have shown little evidence that they plan to follow through on this pledge. The COP29 summit last year failed to reaffirm the commitment to move away from coal, oil, and gas, and the United States saw Donald Trump return to power on a platform to unleash “energy dominance” by turbocharging fossil fuel production.
The UN climate summit this year – COP 30 – will be held in Brazil in November. Ahead of the summit, over 180 civil society organizations representing Indigenous, youth, and environmental advocates signed onto a letter demanding that COP30 recognize and support the commitment made in Dubai of a global transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy.
“As mentioned in your first letter from the President-designate of COP30, we are halfway through the decisive decade for climate action. Yet, instead of meaningful progress, we see escalating climate disasters and human suffering – no longer distant tragedies but crises reaching our own backyards,” the letter states. “The science is unequivocal: there is no room for new coal mines or oil and gas fields if the world is to limit warming to 1.5°C - especially in critical ecosystems like the Amazon, where COP30 will be hosted. Tripling renewables by 2030 is essential, but without a managed and rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, it won’t be enough.”
Indigenous leaders from Brazil, the Pacific, and Canada delivered the letter on Thursday, April 10 to COP30 President, André Corrêa do Lago, and Brazil’s Environment and Climate Change Minister, Marina Silva.
Norwegian Supreme Court Blocks Offshore Oil Fields Development
While civil society groups continue to demand a swift and equitable move away from fossil fuels, Norwegian climate campaigners just won an important court victory that will block development of several offshore oil and gas fields while the government reevaluates the fields’ climate impacts. On April 11, the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled in favor of environmental groups Greenpeace Nordic and Natur og Ungdom (Young Friends of the Earth Norway) in reinstating a temporary ban on developing three oil fields in the North Sea. The district court issued the ban last year after finding the Norwegian government did not adequately assess the emissions impact of developing the fields, but an appeals court later overturned the ban. Now, Norway’s Supreme Court has reversed that decision.
“This is an important victory for the rule of law and the future of both people and nature,” Frode Pleym, head of Greenpeace Nordic, said in a statement. “These oil and gas fields were approved illegally, and now Norway’s highest court has reinstated the ruling that all production and development must be stopped.”
Trump Targets Federal Rules and State Policies with Sweeping Orders
In the United States, meanwhile, President Trump is going all out on boosting fossil fuel development and catering to the interests of the oil and gas industry, which spent tens of millions of dollars on his presidential campaign. Trump signed multiple executive orders this past week promoting fossil fuels and directing his administration to stop climate and environmental policies that burden the fossil fuel industry. One order, for example, attempts to undo hundreds of existing rules under dozens of federal statutes pertaining to energy and the environment. The order directs federal agencies and departments to insert “sunset” provisions into these rules that will make them expire one year after the sunsetting provisions are established.
Environmental advocates say Trump’s order is unlawful. “With the stroke of a pen, he is illegally trying to erase more than 50 years of basic safeguards that protect our drinking water, the air we breathe, and secure our communities from the threats of nuclear waste and oil spills,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said in a statement.
“There’s no magic wand the administration might wave to sweep away multiple rules on a White House whim,” said Michael Wall, chief litigation officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “He cannot do this by fiat.”
In another newly issued executive order, Trump takes aim at virtually all state and local climate laws, policies, regulations and actions that he views as interfering with his pro-polluter “energy dominance” agenda. The order directs the Department of Justice to go after climate laws and initiatives, such as state climate “superfund” laws and climate accountability lawsuits targeting fossil fuel companies – and put a stop to them.
“The Attorney General shall expeditiously take all appropriate action to stop the enforcement of State laws and continuation of civil actions identified in subsection (a) of this section that the Attorney General determines to be illegal,” the order states. It instructs the Attorney General, in consultation with agency heads, to identify “all state and local laws” that may hinder fossil fuel development and that pertain to climate change, environmental justice, “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) initiatives, or greenhouse gas emissions – putting essentially all state climate and environmental policies in the administration’s crosshairs.
Legal experts say that Trump’s order is sweeping overreach and he does not have authority to unilaterally nullify state laws.
“We’ve never seen the federal government go after state laws like this before,” Patrick Parenteau, emeritus professor of law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told me.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who formerly served as attorney general in Rhode Island, called Trump’s order a “lawless assault on every state’s ability to protect the health and well-being of its own citizens.”
“Not only does this latest Big Oil fever dream violate state sovereignty, it tries to void decades of state-enacted policies that lower energy costs for families, protect clean air and water, reduce the carbon pollution responsible for climate change, and protect Americans from the price shocks of dependence on fossil fuels,” Whitehouse said. “Mere weeks after the Big Oil executives who bankrolled Trump’s campaign asked him to kill exactly these kinds of policies, Trump is rewarding his fossil fuel overlords by putting his corrupt Department of Justice into their service.”
Whitehouse was referring to a White House meeting last month between Trump and major oil CEOs, during which they discussed the industry’s growing climate-related legal headaches, including climate superfund laws and more than two dozen climate lawsuits that aim to hold large polluters liable for the damaging climate impacts of their products. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the oil executives asked for Trump’s help in killing these state laws and legal actions, which could put companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron on the hook to pay billions of dollars.
“Trump appeared to agree with the industry that the states’ actions had the potential to undermine his energy-dominance agenda and signaled he would consider ways his administration could help the industry,” the WSJ reported.
That is precisely what Trump’s new executive order does in instructing the Department of Justice to intervene in an effort to stop the state actions. The order specifically calls out the climate superfund laws enacted by Vermont and New York last year as well as state climate lawsuits against oil companies. Trump’s order does not clarify how the Attorney General should try to stop the state climate laws and lawsuits, but it does set a deadline of 60 days for the AG to report back and make any further recommendations. Any moves from the Department of Justice acting on the order will therefore happen quickly, over the next few weeks.
Climate advocates rebuked Trump’s order as a brazen attack on state rights. “It’s a clear attempt to silence communities demanding justice and accountability from the polluting corporations that have lied to the public for decades,” said Kathy Mulvey, accountability campaign director in the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “State and local governments have both the authority and the responsibility to act, especially when federal leadership fails—and this overreaching order aims to intimidate state officials and obstruct that ability.”
“Reality Wins Against Lies”
The federal government under Trump is reversing all progress made on advancing climate action and clean energy while doubling down on the very activities – extracting and burning fossil fuels – that drive the climate emergency. During an event at the White House on April 8 promoting the coal industry, Trump signed several executive orders to boost coal use and production and keep uneconomic and polluting coal plants running. Coal, of course, is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel there is, and combusting it unleashes hazardous air pollutants that harm human health. Trump’s touting of it as “beautiful, clean” coal is nothing but a big, beautiful lie.
Trump’s speech during that coal event was filled with other false statements, as is typical for him, like claiming the Paris Climate Agreement was costing the US trillions of dollars while other countries pay nothing. The reality is that failing to take climate action will be economically devastating, but Trump fundamentally does not understand this threat. He dismissed the gravity of climate change once again in his speech, saying: “You don’t have to worry about the air is getting warmer, the ocean will rise one-quarter of an inch within the next 500 to 600 years, giving you a little bit more waterfront property.”
Speaking outside the US Capitol on Wednesday at a press conference condemning the Trump EPA’s assault on environmental protections, Senator Whitehouse called out Trump’s nonsense and his subservience to his Big Oil donors.
“In the face of all the risks and all the danger to our economy, Trump will do nothing but lie about climate change being a hoax. He will use the power and pressure of the federal government to do what the fossil fuel industry wants, including his latest stunt of telling the Attorney General that she’s got to investigate state and local climate laws, like they’re a crime of some kind. This is bullying thug-ocracy of the worst order, paid for and chosen by the fossil fuel industry,” Whitehouse said.
“Lies in the end won’t work,” he added. “Reality wins against lies sooner or later.”