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The "war on coal" is over, Donald Trump has declared, prompting alarm in some quarters that the international pact to fight climate change is too.
In signing his "Energy Independence" executive order, Mr Trump eliminated numerous Barack Obama-era restrictions on fossil fuel production, in what the new President says is an effort to boost domestic energy production.
The US President says his plan to go back to the future on power will launch "a new energy revolution" that will put "miners back to work".
In keeping with his "America first" pledge to revitalise American industry and manufacturing, Mr Trump signalled he was not going to let international climate change targets and regulations agreed to by his predecessor stand in his way.
So what does this mean for the Paris climate change deal rest of the world has agreed to?
Trump is sticking to the Paris deal... for now
This executive order does not withdraw the US from the Paris agreement. Officially, the Trump administration has yet to decide whether it intends to withdraw from the international roadmap for addressing climate change.
That said, Mr Trump's order could make it more difficult, though not impossible, for the US to achieve its carbon reduction goals.
Some of the "job-killing regulations" Mr Trump has cancelled include a three-year moratorium on new coal mines on federal land and rules limiting methane emissions from oil and gas plants.
These are measures Mr Obama put in place to combat climate change and help America meet the commitments it made in Paris.
Remember, that December 2015 deal aimed to:
- Limit global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and aim for 1.5C
- Make greenhouse gas emissions peak "as soon as possible", followed by a rapid reduction
- Eliminate use of coal, oil and gas for energy
- Replace fossil fuels with solar, wind power
Jobs, not climate a focus for Trump
Mr Trump has called global warming a "hoax" invented by the Chinese, and his Environmental Protection Agency boss Scott Pruitt says he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming, against the overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed scientific studies.
"My administration is putting an end to the war on coal," Mr Trump said as he signed his executive order, flanked on by more than a dozen coal miners.
"This is all about: bringing back our jobs, bringing back our dreams and making America wealthy again."
Throughout the election, Mr Trump campaigned heavily — and won (bigly) — in economically depressed swaths of states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, promising to ditch regulations that stifled business.
Economic woes in these parts of the US have been driven by mine closures and manufacturing job losses as a result of automation and globalisation.
It's no surprise then that Mr Trump has moved early in his presidency to implement policies he says will give jobs for blue-collar workers who backed him, by boosting domestic energy production, especially oil, natural gas and coal.
Job growth is a good thing, though, right?
Yes... but with the number of clean energy jobs soaring, there's evidence to suggest Mr Trump's policy could prove counterproductive for US workers.
While Republicans have blamed Obama-era environmental regulations for the loss of coal jobs, official data shows that US mines have been shedding jobs for decades because of industry changes and competition from natural gas.
But Mr Trump's promise runs counter to market forces.
In recent years solar panels and wind turbines have boomed, meaning emissions-free electricity production is cheaper than burning coal and created heaps of jobs.
According to an Energy Department analysis released in January, coal mining now accounts for fewer than 75,000 US jobs — those in wind, solar and biofuels — now accounts for more than 650,000 US jobs.
Christiana Figueres, the UN's former top official on climate change, says while coal was "the motor of most of our economic development last century... it's entered the books of history".
Even a natural Trump administration — and fossil fuels — ally was unsure of the job benefits of the White House's move.
"I cannot tell you how many jobs the executive order is going to create but I can tell you that it provides confidence in this administration's commitment to the coal industry," Kentucky Coal Association president Tyler White said.
Yet another court challenge flagged
This executive order does make good on promises Mr Trump made during the campaign — but that doesn't mean the White House is not in for a fight.
As with the Trump Administration's problematic travel bans, this US policy about-face could be heading to the courts.
Environmental groups are already warning that they will be taking legal action to prevent some of these policies from being implemented.
Left-leaning states like California and New York and other states have also said they will oppose any effort to dump Obama-era climate change measures.
California Governor Jerry Brown, for one, says he's confident Mr Obama's Clean Power Plan will be upheld in court.
ABC/AP
Topics: donald-trump, climate-change, environment, mining-environmental-issues, environmental-management, environmental-policy, world-politics, government-and-politics, united-states
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