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Six years after Donald Trump allegedly wrote a questionable birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, the current American leader signed to something that now seems almost as shocking: a document demanding measures on the climate crisis.

Back in 2009, Trump, then a real estate developer and reality TV personality, was part of a coalition of corporate executives behind a full-page advertisement urging legislation to “control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today”. The US needs to take the forefront on clean energy, Trump and the others wrote, to avoid “disastrous and irreversible effects for humanity and our world”.

Today, the letter is jarring. The globe still delays politically in its response to the environmental emergency but renewable power is booming, accounting for nearly every new energy capacity and drawing double the investment of fossil fuels worldwide. The market, as those business leaders from 2009 would now observe, has shifted.

Most starkly, though, the president has become the planet's foremost advocate of fossil fuels, throwing the power of the American leadership into a rearguard battle to keep the world stuck in the era of combusted carbon. There is now no fiercer individual adversary to the collective effort to stave off climate breakdown than the current administration.

As world leaders convene for international environmental negotiations in the coming weeks, the escalation of the administration's opposition towards climate action will be apparent. The American diplomatic corps' office that deals with climate negotiations has been eliminated as “unnecessary”, making it uncertain who, if anyone, will speak for the planet's foremost financial and defense superpower in the upcoming talks.

Similar to his first term, Trump has again pulled out the US from the international environmental agreement, thrown open more land and waters for fossil fuel extraction, and set about dismantling clean air protections that would have prevented numerous fatalities across America. These rollbacks will “drive a stake through the core of the environmental movement”, as Lee Zeldin, Trump's leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, gleefully put it.

However the administration's latest spell in the executive branch has progressed beyond, to radical measures that have astonished many observers.

Instead of simply boost a fossil fuel industry that contributed significantly to his election campaign, the president has begun eliminating clean energy projects: stopping offshore windfarms that had already been approved, prohibiting wind and solar from federal land, and removing subsidies for renewables and electric cars (while handing new public funds to a apparently hopeless attempt to revive coal).

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

“The emphasis on dismantlement rather than building. It's hard to see. We're not present for a major global issue and are ceding that ground to our competitors, which is detrimental for the United States.”

Unsatisfied with jettisoning Republican economic principles in the US energy market, the president has attempted involvement in foreign nations' climate policies, criticizing the UK for installing wind turbines and for not extracting enough petroleum for his liking. He has also pressured the EU to consent to buy $750bn in US oil and gas over the next three years, as well as concluding fossil fuel deals with Japan and the Korean peninsula.

“Countries are on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda,” Trump told stony-faced officials during a UN speech last month. “Unless you get away from this green scam, your country is going to decline. You need secure boundaries and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again.”

Trump has attempted to reshape language around energy and climate, too. Trump, who was seemingly radicalised by his aversion at viewing renewable generators from his overseas property in 2011, has called wind energy “unattractive”, “repulsive” and “inadequate”. The environmental emergency is, in his words, a “hoax”.

The government has cut or concealed unfavorable environmental studies, removed mentions of climate change from government websites and produced an error-strewn study in their stead and even, despite the president's supposed support for open dialogue, drawn up a inventory of banned terms, such as “decarbonisation”, “sustainable”, “pollutants” and “eco-friendly”. The simple documentation of greenhouse gas emissions is now forbidden, too.

Carbon energy, in contrast, have been renamed. “I've established a little standing order in the White House,” the president confided to the UN. “Never use the word ‘coal’, only use the words ‘clean, beautiful coal’. Seems more appealing, doesn't it?”

These actions has slowed the implementation of renewable power in the US: in the first half of the year, concerned businesses closed or downscaled more than $22bn in clean energy projects, costing more than 16,000 jobs, most of them in Republican-held districts.

Power costs are increasing for US citizens as a consequence; 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 confusing even on Trump's own terms, experts have said. The president has spoken of making US power “dominant” and of the necessity for jobs and additional capacity to fuel AI data centers, and yet has undercut this by attempting to stamp out renewables.

“I do struggle with this – if you are genuine about American energy dominance you need to implement, establish, deploy,” said Abraham Silverman, an energy expert at the academic institution.

“It's confusing and quite unusual to say wind and solar has no role in the American system when these are often the fastest and cheapest sources. A genuine contradiction in the government's main messages.”

America's neglect of climate concerns prompts broader questions about America's place in the world, too. In the geopolitical struggle with the Asian nation, two very different visions are being touted to the rest of the world: one that remains hooked to the traditional energy advocated by the world's biggest oil and gas producer, or one that transitions to renewable technology, likely made in China.

“The president continues to embarrass the US on the world platform and weaken the concerns of Americans at home,” said Gina McCarthy, the previous lead environmental consultant to Joe Biden.

McCarthy believes that local governments committed to climate action can help to address the gap left by the national administration. Economies and local authorities will continue to shift, even if the administration tries to stop states from reducing emissions. But from the Asian nation's viewpoint, the competition to influence power, and thereby alter the general direction of this century, may have concluded.

“The final opportunity for the US to join the renewable movement has left the station,” said a China analyst, a Asian environmental specialist at the Asia Society Policy Institute, of Trump's dismemberment of the climate legislation, the previous president's environmental law. “Domestically, this isn't considered like a competition. The US is {just not|sim