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Six years after Donald Trump reportedly penned a questionable greeting to Jeffrey Epstein, the current American leader put his name to something that now appears equally surprising: a letter calling for action on the climate crisis.

Back in 2009, the businessman, then a property magnate and television star, was part of a coalition of business leaders behind a full-page advertisement calling for legislation to “address climate change, an immediate challenge confronting the United States and the world today”. The US needs to lead on renewable power, the signatories wrote, to avoid “disastrous and irreversible effects for mankind and our world”.

Nowadays, the letter is striking. The world still delays politically in its reaction to the climate crisis but clean energy is expanding, accounting for almost all additional power generation and drawing twice the funding 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 might of the US presidency into a rearguard battle to keep the world stuck in the age of combusted carbon. There is now no fiercer single opponent to the unified attempt to prevent climate breakdown than Trump.

As global representatives convene for UN climate talks next month, the increase of the administration's opposition towards environmental measures will be evident. The US state department's division that handles climate negotiations has been abolished as “unnecessary”, making it unclear who, should any attend, will represent the world's leading economic and defense global power in Belem.

As in his initial presidency, the administration has again withdrawn the US from the Paris climate deal, opened up more land and waters for oil and gas drilling, and set about dismantling pollution controls that would have avoided thousands of deaths throughout the nation. These rollbacks will “deal a blow through the heart of the climate change religion”, as Lee Zeldin, the president's leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, enthusiastically put it.

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

Instead of simply support a fossil fuel industry that donated handsomely to his election campaign, Trump has set about obliterating clean energy projects: stopping ocean-based turbines that had previously authorized, prohibiting wind and solar from federal land, and removing subsidies for clean energy and zero-emission vehicles (while handing new public funds to a apparently hopeless attempt to restore the coal industry).

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

“The emphasis on dismantling rather than construction. It's hard to see. We're not present for a significant worldwide concern and are ceding that position to our rivals, which is detrimental for the United States.”

Not content with jettisoning conservative economic principles in the US energy market, the president has attempted involvement in other countries' climate policies, scolding the UK for erecting renewable generators and for not extracting enough oil for his liking. He has also pressured the EU to consent to purchase $750 billion in American fossil fuels over the next three years, as well as striking carbon energy agreements with the Asian nation and the Korean peninsula.

“Countries are on the edge of destruction because of the renewable power initiative,” Trump told stony-faced leaders during a international address last month. “If you don't 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 great again.”

Trump has attempted to reshape language around power and environment, too. The leader, who was seemingly radicalised by his disgust at viewing wind turbines from his Scottish golf course in 2011, has called wind energy “unattractive”, “repulsive” and “pathetic”. The environmental emergency is, in his words, a “hoax”.

His administration has eliminated or concealed unfavorable environmental studies, deleted mentions of global warming from government websites and produced an error-strewn study in their stead and even, despite the president's claimed support for free speech, drawn up a inventory of banned terms, such as “carbon reduction”, “sustainable”, “pollutants” and “eco-friendly”. The simple documentation of greenhouse gas emissions is now forbidden, too.

Fossil fuels, in contrast, have been renamed. “I have a little standing order in the White House,” Trump confided 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 slowed the adoption of renewable power in the US: in the first half of the year, concerned companies terminated or reduced more than $22bn in renewable initiatives, eliminating more than sixteen thousand positions, primarily in conservative areas.

Energy prices are increasing for Americans as a result; and the nation's global warming pollutants, while still falling, are expected to worsen their already sluggish descent in the coming period.

These policies is perplexing even on Trump's own terms, experts have said. Trump has spoken of making American energy “leading” and of the necessity for employment and new generation to power technology infrastructure, and yet has undermined this by attempting to stamp out clean energy.

“I do struggle with this – if you are serious about US power leadership you need to deploy, deploy, deploy,” said Abraham Silverman, an power analyst at Johns Hopkins University.

“It's confusing and very strange to say renewable energy has no role in the US grid when these are frequently the quickest and most affordable sources. There's a real tension in the administration's primary statements.”

America's abandonment of environmental issues prompts broader questions about America's place in the global community, too. In the geopolitical struggle with the Asian nation, 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 oil and gas producer, or one that transitions to clean energy components, likely made in China.

“The president repeatedly humiliates the US on the global stage and weaken the concerns of Americans at home,” said Gina McCarthy, the former top climate adviser to the previous administration.

The expert believes that American cities and states dedicated to climate action can help to address the gap left by the national administration. Markets and sub-national governments will continue to shift, even if Trump tries to halt states from reducing emissions. But from the Asian nation's perspective, the competition to shape energy, and thereby alter the general direction of this era, may have concluded.

“The final opportunity for the US to join the green bandwagon has left the station,” said Li Shuo, a China climate policy expert at the research organization, of the administration's dismemberment of the climate legislation, the previous president's signature climate bill. “In China, this isn't considered like a rivalry. The US is {just not|sim