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Six years after the president allegedly wrote a questionable birthday note to the financier, the current American leader put his name to something that now seems almost as shocking: a letter demanding measures on the climate crisis.

In 2009, the businessman, then a property magnate and television star, was among a coalition of corporate executives behind a full-page advertisement calling for laws to “control global warming, an urgent issue facing the United States and the planet today”. The US needs to lead on clean energy, Trump and the others wrote, to avoid “disastrous and permanent consequences for mankind and our world”.

Today, the letter is jarring. The globe still delays in policy in its reaction to the environmental emergency but renewable power is expanding, responsible for nearly every additional power generation and attracting double the investment of fossil fuels worldwide. The economy, as those business leaders from 2009 would now observe, has changed.

Most notably, though, Trump has become the world's foremost advocate of fossil fuels, throwing the power of the American leadership into a rearguard battle to keep the world stuck in the age of burning fossil fuels. There is now no stronger single opponent to the unified attempt to prevent climate breakdown than the current administration.

When world leaders gather for UN climate talks in the coming weeks, the escalation of the administration's opposition towards environmental measures will be evident. The American diplomatic corps' division that handles environmental talks has been eliminated as “redundant”, making it unclear who, if anyone, will speak for the world's leading financial and military global power in Belem.

As in his first term, Trump has again withdrawn the US from the international environmental agreement, thrown open more territories for fossil fuel extraction, and begun dismantling clean air protections that would have prevented thousands of deaths throughout the nation. These rollbacks will “drive a stake through the core of the environmental movement”, as the EPA head, the president's leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, enthusiastically put it.

But Trump's latest spell in the executive branch has gone even further, to radical measures that have surprised many observers.

Rather than simply boost a carbon energy sector that donated handsomely to his election campaign, the president has begun eliminating clean energy projects: halting offshore windfarms that had previously authorized, banning renewable energy from federal land, and eliminating subsidies for clean energy and zero-emission vehicles (while handing fresh taxpayer dollars to a apparently hopeless effort to revive the coal industry).

“We are certainly in a different environment than we were in the first Trump administration,” said a former climate negotiator, who was the chief climate negotiator for the US during Trump's first term.

“There's a focus on dismantling rather than building. It's difficult to witness. We're not present for a major global issue and are ceding that ground to our rivals, which is not good for the United States.”

Not content with abandoning Republican free-market orthodoxy in the US energy market, the president has attempted involvement in other countries' climate policies, scolding the UK for installing wind turbines and for not extracting enough petroleum for his liking. He has also pushed the EU to consent to purchase $750bn in American fossil fuels over the next three years, as well as concluding carbon energy agreements with the Asian nation and South Korea.

“Countries are on the brink of collapse because of the renewable power initiative,” the president told unresponsive officials during a UN speech recently. “Unless you distance yourselves from this environmental fraud, your nation is going to decline. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be prosperous once more.”

The president has tried to rewire terminology around power and environment, too. The leader, who was seemingly radicalised by his aversion at seeing renewable generators from his overseas property in 2011, has called turbine power “ugly”, “disgusting” and “pathetic”. The climate crisis is, in his words, a “falsehood”.

The government has cut or hidden unfavorable environmental studies, removed references of global warming from official sites and created an error-strewn study in their place and even, despite the president's claimed support for free speech, compiled a list of prohibited phrases, such as “decarbonisation”, “environmentally friendly”, “emissions” and “green”. The simple documentation of greenhouse gas emissions is now verboten, too.

Fossil fuels, in contrast, have been rebranded. “I've established a small directive in the White House,” the president revealed to the UN. “Avoid using the word ‘the mineral’, only use the words ‘environmentally attractive carbon fuel’. Sounds much better, doesn't it?”

All of this has slowed the adoption of renewable power in the US: in the initial six months of the year, spooked businesses terminated or reduced more than $22bn in clean energy projects, costing more than sixteen thousand positions, primarily in conservative areas.

Power costs are increasing for Americans as a result; and the US's global warming pollutants, while still falling, are expected to slow their current reduction rate in the coming period.

This agenda is perplexing even on Trump's stated objectives, experts have said. The president has discussed making American energy “leading” and of the need for employment and additional capacity to fuel AI data centers, and yet has undermined this by attempting to stamp out clean energy.

“I find it difficult with this – if you are genuine about US power leadership you need to deploy, establish, deploy,” said Abraham Silverman, an power analyst at Johns Hopkins University.

“It's puzzling and very strange to say wind and solar has no role in the US grid when these are frequently the quickest and most affordable options. A genuine contradiction in the government's primary statements.”

The US government's neglect of climate concerns raises broader questions about the US position in the global community, too. In the geopolitical struggle with China, contrasting approaches are being promoted to the rest of the world: one that remains hooked to the traditional energy advocated by the world's biggest fossil fuel exporter, or one that transitions to renewable technology, likely made in China.

“Trump continues to embarrass the US on the global stage and weaken the interests of Americans at home,” said a former climate advisor, the former top climate adviser to Joe Biden.

McCarthy believes that American cities and states dedicated to climate action can help to fill the void left by the federal government. Economies and local authorities will continue to evolve, even if the administration tries to halt regions from reducing emissions. But from the Asian nation's viewpoint, the competition to influence power, and thereby change the overall trajectory of this era, may already be over.

“The last chance for the US to join the renewable movement has left the station,” said Li Shuo, a Asian environmental specialist at the research organization, of the administration's dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden's signature climate bill. “Domestically, this isn't considered like a rivalry. The US is {just not|sim