Environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration

The environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration represented a shift from the policy priorities and goals of the preceding Barack Obama administration. Where President Obama's environmental agenda prioritized the reduction of carbon emissions through the use of renewable energy with the goal of conserving the environment for future generations, the Trump administration policy was for the US to attain energy independence based on fossil fuel use and to rescind many environmental regulations. By the end of Trump's term, his administration had rolled back 98 environmental rules and regulations, leaving an additional 14 rollbacks still in progress. As of early 2021, the Biden administration was making a public accounting of regulatory decisions under the Trump administration that had been influenced by politics rather than science.

The Trump administration supported energy development on federal land, including gas and oil drilling in national forests and near national monuments and parks. Soon after taking office, Trump began to implement his "America First Energy Plan" and signed executive orders to approve two controversial oil pipelines. In 2018, the Department of the Interior announced plans to allow drilling in nearly all U.S. waters, the largest expansion of offshore oil and gas leasing ever proposed. In 2019, the Administration completed plans for opening the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

Trump and his cabinet appointees did not believe the consensus of most scientists that climate change will have catastrophic impacts nor that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to climate change. Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, leaving the U.S. the only nation that was not part of the agreement. He avoided environmental discussions at both the 44th G7 summit held in Canada and the 45th G7 summit held in France by departing early from these conferences. In September 2019, the Trump administration replaced the Obama-era Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which did not cap emissions. In April 2020, he issued his new vehicle emissions standards, which were projected to result in an additional billion tons of carbon dioxide, increasing annual U.S. emissions by about one-fifth. In 2020, environmentalists feared that a successful reelection of Trump could have resulted in severe and irreversible changes in the climate.

The administration repealed the Clean Water Rule and rewrote the EPA's pollution-control policies—including policies on chemicals known to be serious health risks—particularly benefiting the chemicals industry, A 2018 analysis reported that the Trump administration's rollbacks and proposed reversals of environmental rules would likely "cost the lives of over 80,000 US residents per decade and lead to respiratory problems for many more than 1 million people."