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Half a dozen years following Donald Trump allegedly penned a suggestive greeting to the financier, the sitting US president signed to something that now appears equally surprising: a letter calling for measures on the environmental emergency.

Back in 2009, the businessman, then a property magnate and television star, was part of a coalition of corporate executives behind a full-page advertisement urging laws to “address global warming, an urgent issue confronting the United States and the planet today”. The US needs to take the forefront on clean energy, the signatories wrote, to avoid “catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet”.

Today, the letter is jarring. The globe continues to dawdle politically in its reaction to the climate crisis but renewable power is booming, responsible for nearly every new energy capacity and attracting twice the funding of traditional energy worldwide. The market, as those business leaders from 2009 would now observe, has shifted.

Most notably, though, Trump has become the planet's leading proponent of fossil fuels, throwing the power of the US presidency into a defensive fight to maintain the world mired in the era of burning fossil fuels. There is now no fiercer individual adversary to the collective effort to stave off environmental collapse than Trump.

When world leaders convene for UN climate talks next month, the increase of Trump's hostility towards environmental measures will be evident. The US state department's office that handles environmental talks has been eliminated as “redundant”, making it unclear who, if anyone, will represent 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As in his first term, Trump has again withdrawn the US from the international environmental agreement, thrown open more land and waters for fossil fuel extraction, and set about dismantling clean air protections that would have prevented thousands of deaths across America. These reversals will “drive a stake through the heart of the climate change religion”, as the EPA head, the president's head of the environmental regulator, enthusiastically put it.

But Trump's current term in the White House has gone even further, to extremes that have astonished many onlookers.

Rather than simply support a carbon energy sector that contributed significantly to his political race, Trump has set about eliminating renewable initiatives: halting offshore windfarms that had previously authorized, prohibiting renewable energy from federal land, and eliminating financial support for clean energy and zero-emission vehicles (while providing new public funds to a apparently hopeless effort to revive coal).

“We're definitely in a changed situation than we were in the first Trump administration,” said Kim Carnahan, who was the lead environmental diplomat for the US during the president's first term.

“There's a focus on dismantling rather than construction. It's difficult to witness. We're absent for a significant worldwide concern and are ceding that ground to our rivals, which is detrimental for the United States.”

Unsatisfied with abandoning Republican economic principles in the American power sector, Trump has attempted involvement in other countries' climate policies, criticizing the UK for installing renewable generators and for not drilling enough oil for his liking. He has also pressured the EU to agree to buy $750bn in US oil and gas over the coming 36 months, as well as concluding fossil fuel deals with the Asian nation and the Korean peninsula.

“Nations are on the brink of collapse because of the renewable power initiative,” the president told stony-faced officials during a international address recently. “Unless you get away from this environmental fraud, your nation is going to decline. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again.”

The president has tried to rewire language around energy and climate, too. The leader, who was seemingly radicalised by his aversion at viewing wind turbines from his Scottish golf course in 2011, has called turbine power “unattractive”, “repulsive” and “inadequate”. The environmental emergency is, in his words, a “falsehood”.

His administration has cut or concealed unfavorable environmental studies, removed references of climate change from official sites and created an error-strewn study in their place and even, despite Trump's supposed support for free speech, drawn up a inventory of prohibited phrases, such as “carbon reduction”, “environmentally friendly”, “emissions” and “green”. The simple documentation of greenhouse gas emissions is now forbidden, too.

Fossil fuels, meanwhile, have been rebranded. “I have a little standing order in the White House,” Trump revealed to the UN. “Avoid using the word ‘the mineral’, only use the words ‘clean, beautiful coal’. Sounds much better, doesn't it?”

All of this has hindered the adoption of renewable power in the US: in the initial six months of the year, concerned businesses terminated or reduced more than $22bn in renewable initiatives, eliminating more than sixteen thousand positions, primarily in conservative areas.

Power costs are rising for Americans as a consequence; and the US's global warming pollutants, while continuing to decline, are expected to worsen their already sluggish descent in the coming period.

These policies is confusing even on the president's stated objectives, analysts have said. The president has discussed making American energy “dominant” and of the necessity for employment and additional capacity to fuel AI data centers, and yet has undercut this by attempting to stamp out renewables.

“I find it difficult with this – if you are genuine about US power leadership you need to deploy, establish, deploy,” said Abraham Silverman, an energy expert at the academic institution.

“It's puzzling and quite unusual to say renewable energy has zero place in the US grid when these are often the quickest and most affordable sources. A genuine contradiction in the administration's main messages.”

America's neglect of environmental issues raises larger inquiries about America's place in the world, too. In the international competition with the Asian nation, contrasting approaches are being promoted to the rest of the world: one that remains hooked to the traditional energy touted by the world's biggest fossil fuel exporter, or one that shifts to renewable technology, probably made in China.

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

The expert believes that local governments dedicated to climate action can help to fill the void left by the federal government. Economies and local authorities will continue to shift, even if the administration tries to halt regions from reducing emissions. But from the Asian nation's perspective, the race to shape energy, and thereby alter the overall trajectory of this century, may already be over.

“The final opportunity for the US to join the green bandwagon has departed,” said Li Shuo, a Asian environmental specialist at the research organization, of Trump's dismemberment of the climate legislation, Biden's environmental law. “In China, this isn't considered like a rivalry. The US is {just not|sim