On 20 January 2017 Donald Trump takes office as President of the United States. During the months of the electoral campaign, Trump was criticised for not having published programmes on a series of fundamental issues ranging from climate change to public research funding, through to cybersecurity.

All of Trump's public statements on these issues and, where available, the details extrapolated from his electoral website, nonetheless help to clarify the ideas he will want to put into practice once he has taken power.

The official Trump campaign website made no mention of environmental issues, and the section on programmes was, by many accounts, lacking. The possible guidelines must therefore be traced through his statements at congresses, rallies and on social media.

Donald Trump and the environment

Donald Trump has repeatedly described anthropogenic climate change as a hoax and has repeatedly said that the Paris Agreement should be "cancelled".

He is opposed to environmental regulations, which he sees as getting in the way of work and as economically damaging.

First and foremost, he appears to want to drastically cut funding for the US Environmental Protection Agency, and it is said that he has already selected economist Myron Ebell, a well-known climate change denier, to head the EPA. Myron Ebell's biography makes him look like a mannequin placed there deliberately to deny every remotely alarming scientific conclusion on the most pressing environmental issues. In America, when they organise television debates, they like to have someone for and someone against. Since it has now become impossible to find anyone who denies global warming, except him, they always invite him to play that role. There is also another candidate as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Kathleen Hartnett White. She is from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (Tppf) and can be heard arguing about the benefits of CO2 in the atmosphere. Seriously: "We can be optimistic, CO2 in the atmosphere has positive effects. Satellites show us that the Earth is greening."

Trump naturally emphasises that he is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Hillary Clinton on exiting coal, fracking, and fossil fuels — topics that draw applause from environmentalists and concern from miners.

It is likely that Trump will seek to weaken or kill the Clean Power Plan, the cornerstone of Obama's efforts to reduce CO2 emissions from the country's power plants, an essential part of the commitments to combat global warming (two thirds of the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past twenty years is caused by fossil fuels).

Donald Trump's view of the Paris Agreement is that it damages the United States and should therefore be renegotiated. Withdrawing from it would be difficult, given that it is a binding agreement and the US has ratified it. He could disregard it unilaterally.

In reality, Trump does not have only environmental rules in his sights. He has expressed his intention to withdraw the country from trade agreements and military alliances that are not yielding benefits for the United States, and has promised to bring down the agreement struck by the Obama administration with Iran on nuclear power.

The Washington Post described his plans as "dangerous and nonsensical". He manages to horrify even George W. Bush's own experts. Christine Whitman, who under Bush Jr headed the EPA and now runs a centre for pro-nuclear energy education, says of Trump's speeches: "He talks about turning back the clock, and I think that is very dangerous."

Donald Trump and renewable energy

Trump's plan is extremely focused on America's energy independence, at all costs, and fully supports deregulation in favour of fossil fuels.

He declares, here and there, that he listens to "rational" environmental concerns, but not at the expense of declining oil, gas and fracking production in the United States. So much so that he would like to appoint Harold Hamm, an American fracking billionaire, as Energy Secretary. "But hopes of having him as secretary are fading," writes Christopher Helman in Forbes, "he has too many new wells to go and drill."

Trump called clean energy incentives "a disaster" during the presidential debate at Hofstra University in September.

During the electoral campaign he repeatedly cited a study by the Institute of Energy Research (Ier), an obscure non-profit organisation, according to which scrapping environmental regulations on fossil fuel production in the US would generate 700 billion dollars a year. The study had been signed by Joseph Mason, a professor of banking law at Louisiana State University.

It was pointed out that the Ier is affiliated with the American Energy Alliance, a pro-fossil fuel, anti-carbon tax lobby linked to Charles and David Koch. Many economists are sceptical of these findings and indeed, "That is not academic research and would never have seen the light of day in a scientific journal," according to Thomas Kinnaman of Bucknell University, as quoted by Cnbc.

Donald Trump's first 100 days on energy

The electoral website carries the full text of Donald Trump's policy manifesto on the subject of energy, under the title An America First Energy Plan. His rallies — for example on 5 May in Charleston, Virginia, and on 25 May in North Dakota in front of miners and mining company executives — are packed both with attacks on rival Hillary Clinton and with broadsides against the "bureaucrats at the environmental agency", as well as lists of promises to be kept.

It begins with an observation.

Oil and gas production in the US has increased significantly over the last ten years. Our oil imports have been cut in half. All of this has happened despite massive new bureaucratic and political barriers. President Obama has done everything possible to interfere in the American way of doing energy. He has made life much more difficult for North Dakota, with costly regulations designed to make it harder to turn a profit. If Hillary Clinton comes to power, things will get much worse. She will shut down energy production in this country.

He then lists the misdeeds of the Obama administration.

The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against seven oil companies in North Dakota over the deaths of 28 birds, while the administration fast-tracks wind projects that kill more than 1 million birds every year.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service abuses the Endangered Species Act to restrict oil exploration.
What's more, President Obama is now proposing a $10-per-barrel tax on American-produced oil in the middle of a recession. At the same time, he has brought this country to its lowest number of oil rigs since 1999, resulting in thousands of job losses. The incredible energy potential of the United States remains untapped. This is an entirely self-inflicted wound.

Trump continues his list of Barack Obama's "failings".

He rejected the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have generated 42,000 jobs.
He has done everything in his power to kill the coal mining industry.
He has aggressively blocked oil and gas production.
Actions that have denied millions of Americans access to the energy wealth that lies beneath their feet.

"As badly as President Obama has done," Donald Trump continues, "Hillary Clinton will do worse."

She will intensify the war on American energy, and will unleash the environmental protection agency to control every aspect of our lives.
She has declared that "we have to move away from coal and all other fossil fuels", blocking trillions of dollars of American wealth.
In March, Hillary Clinton said: "By the time all my policies are in place, I don't think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue." Bear in mind that shale gas could create 2 million jobs in 7 years.

Donald Trump's plan for (dirty) energy self-sufficiency is based on these figures. According to him, "America has one and a half times more oil than the proven reserves of all Opec countries. It has more gas than Russia, Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It has three times more coal than Russia. The oil and gas reserves on federal lands are worth $50 trillion."

And, in conclusion, here is his first hundred days action plan.

• "We will rescind all of Obama's job-destroying actions, including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.
• We will save the coal sector and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton's extremism.
• I will ask Trans Canada to reapply for a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.
• We will lift all moratoriums on oil production in federal areas.
• We will revoke the rules that prevent drilling with new techniques. These techniques create millions of jobs with the smallest ecological footprint ever.
• We will cancel our membership of the Paris Agreement and stop all payments in American tax dollars to UN programmes combating global warming."