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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
Photo: Donald Trump signed the "Energy Independence" order surrounded by coal industry workers. (Reuters: Carlos Barria)
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.
