The same week wildfires ravaged Los Angeles, President Donald Trump signed a number of executive orders pushing back on environmental goals.

Trump rescinded more than 10 of Biden’s executive orders on protecting the environment and tackling climate change on his first day in office Jan. 20. Though not specified in the Constitution, executive orders are mandates that do not require approval from Congress and have been historically used for controversial matters or to raise public awareness, according to the Congressional Research Service. Labeling Biden’s executive orders as “climate extremism,” the new administration said the excessive use of federal funds on environmental goals have contributed to inflation and burdened businesses with strict regulations.

Sejal Patel, the executive director at LA-based nonprofit Rising Communities, said January’s wildfires – which caused estimated losses of up to $164 billion for LA county – have made climate change a more visible and pressing matter. In fact, UCLA researchers found that the fires were linked to extreme heat conditions influenced by global warming.

“We had fires, and that’s impacted people’s jobs. That’s impacted people’s homes, people’s livelihoods,” Patel said. “The more behind we get in moving on the Paris Accords, the crazier the impacts are going to be.”

One of Trump’s many orders included the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, a United Nations international treaty aimed at reducing global warming and signed by 196 countries in 2015.

As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the richest country in the world, the U.S. pulling out of the treaty could send the message to other countries that environmental goals are no longer feasible or even a priority, law professor and executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment Cara Horowitz said. She added that by pulling out of a major leadership position on the international stage, the U.S. is allowing competing countries such as China to take major economic opportunities. In fact, the global clean energy market received a record $2 trillion in investments last year, with China taking a notable lead in the market, according to Bloomberg.

The nation may also be missing out on economic opportunities at home.

On his first day, Trump also declared a “national energy emergency” and ordered the opening of protected areas for oil drilling to create more jobs and reduce oil and gas prices for consumers.

However, renewable energy sources were the cheapest source of energy in 2020, and its prices are predicted to fall up to 49% more in the next ten years, according to Bloomberg. Furthermore, the International Renewable Energy Agency found that retiring and replacing coal plants for solar or wind-powered energy technologies could save the U.S. $5.6 billion per year while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions by one-third. Horowitz said Trump’s orders may be at odds with the economics of the energy industry.

“Economically, the (energy) grid has become cleaner in recent years, in part because renewable energy is actually cheaper than fossil fuels, and so there are forces in the environmental realm that are going to work against him,” Horowitz said.

The new administration also rescinded the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed in 2022 to dedicate over one trillion dollars to environmental goals over the course of 10 years. Through the IRA, California has received $2.6 billion for climate and clean energy initiatives.

Patel said a $500,000 grant issued to Rising Communities through the Environmental Protection Agency under the IRA was frozen following Trump’s orders.

“A lot of organizations in Los Angeles received huge grants to provide environmental justice and environmental cleanup in their areas,” Patel said. “That’s been really sad, that we aren’t able to move on those.”

As a partner of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA since 2023, Rising Communities uses federal funds for projects such as helping local residents navigate the shutdown of the country’s largest urban oil fields located in the LA Basin. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom mandated the closure of oil fields in LA county to combat excess greenhouse gas emissions and pollution-related health risks, which disproportionately affect low-income racial minorities living near the fields.

In addition to uncertainty and sadness felt among those in the environmental world, IoES doctoral candidate Tyson Timmer said Trump’s actions revealed a need for stronger legislation on climate change.

“Some of it was a little bit of frustration because a lot of executive orders are filling the gap where the legislature, who is actually supposed to make the laws, isn’t doing anything,” Timmer said.

Timmer added that the lack of specific and clear legislation on a matter can lead to the use of executive orders, often the case for environmental laws, which face both inherent and systemic barriers to passage due to their theoretical nature, according to Harvard Law School. However, executive orders can be overturned by Congress or the courts if found to be unconstitutional. Many of Trump’s executive orders – such as the freeze in federal funding – are currently being challenged in court, a years-long process that Horowitz said could delay the actual implementation of Trump’s orders until much later in his term if they are not overturned.

While the president has complete authority on foreign policy decisions such as pulling out the Paris Agreement and proposing federal guidelines, Horowitz added that states such as California – the fifth largest economy in the world – have the power to challenge Trump’s executive orders in court and focus on strengthening climate laws and initiatives at the state level. Timmer also said California has historically led by example in following through with sizable environmental intiatives including regulating businesses – such as mandating more electric vehicle sales or shutting down oil fields.

“California – being one of the larger, most economically important states – can really wield its power to not let them roll it (environmental initiatives) back so hard,” Timmer said. “We’re going to see a lot more states take that type of action in the next four years.”