With the world at COP30, Trump administration rolls back environmental rules

As representatives from nearly 200 countries wrapped up negotiations at the UN’s COP30 climate summit this week, not only was the United States absent, but the Trump administration also presented a series of sweeping proposals aimed at rolling back environmental protections and encouraging fossil fuel drilling.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference concluded Friday in the Brazilian city of Belém, where delegates gathered to develop a road map to phase out fossil fuels, strengthen climate action and limit global warming.

For the first time in the history of the summit, the United States – one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases – did not send a delegation. Instead, the Trump administration this week announced a plan to open new oil drilling off the coasts of California and Florida for the first time in decades and proposed rule changes to weaken the Endangered Species Act and limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to protect wetlands and waterways.

“These rules reinforce the administration’s refusal to seriously address the climate crisis and, in fact, push us in the opposite direction,” said Jessie Ritter, associate vice president for waters and coasts at the National Wildlife Federation, a conservation group.

The White House told NBC News on Friday that this week’s “historic” announcements are aimed at “advancing President Trump’s agenda of American energy dominance.”

“President Trump is reversing government excesses, restoring energy security, and protecting American jobs by removing excessive and burdensome regulations and creating new opportunities to ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL,'” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “President Trump serves the American people, not the radical climate activists who were victims of the biggest scam of the century. »

Ritter said the new proposals show the world the extent to which the United States has retreated from meaningful climate action.

“I doubt it will surprise people watching us internationally,” she said. “But it is unfortunate, given the example the United States has set and what our leadership, or lack thereof, is encouraging other countries to do.”

The Trump administration’s announcement Thursday that it plans to open about 1.27 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters to oil drilling sparked a bipartisan reaction.

Although the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas industry trade association, hailed the program as a “historic step toward unlocking our nation’s vast offshore resources,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) insisted on maintaining the current moratorium on drilling, which Trump extended during his first term.

“I spoke to @SecretaryBurgum and made clear my expectations that this moratorium must remain in place and that in any plan, Florida’s coasts must stay clear of oil drilling in order to protect Florida’s tourism, environment and military training opportunities,” Scott wrote on X Thursday, referring to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Nationwide, California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on

“We will not stand idly by while our coastal economy and communities are put at risk,” he said.

The drilling directive came just three days after the Trump administration proposed significant limits to the Clean Water Act of 1972, which would roll back pollution and runoff protections for most of the nation’s small streams and wetlands. The rule would restrict the definition of bodies that qualify as “waters of the United States” under the law.

If finalized, the changes would mean fewer freshwater resources would be under federal protection since the law was enacted, according to Jon Devine, who leads the water policy team at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.

“By the EPA’s own estimates, only about 19 percent of the nation’s wetlands would be protected from destruction and unregulated development if this were finalized,” Devin said.

Wetlands act as flood buffers by absorbing and storing water during extreme precipitation and other high runoff events. As the planet warms, coastal and inland flooding is expected to become more frequent and severe.

“Many places in the United States that are increasingly prone to flooding due to climate change will be at even greater risk,” Devine said.

Wetlands and streams also feed other bodies of water that provide an essential supply of drinking water across the country. Critics therefore fear that this policy could make drinking water unsafe in some communities.

The third major environmental rollback announced this week was a set of four rules that would erode protections under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The proposed changes aim to make it easier to remove species listed as threatened or endangered and make it more difficult to add new protected species and their habitats to the list. The rules, if adopted, would also allow the government to consider “economic impacts” in decisions to list or delist species.

Taken together, Ritter said, these three proposals are consistent with the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.

“These decisions prioritize short-term gains, often for a few industries and special interests, over things that have been largely bipartisan and important to people for decades,” Ritter said.

The impacts of the changes may not be visible immediately, she added, but the scale of the long-term consequences could be immense.

“It’s really not an exaggeration to say that this is going to affect every American in one way or another,” she said. “It’s all connected, and it’s hubris to think that we can have these massive negative impacts on our waterways and wetlands, our animals, our coastal waters, without impacting humans.”