In 2025 the United States fossil fuel production reached record levels, with offshore oil production the highest annual output on record.

And in 2026,to enable even more land to be exploited, the Trump administration has revised regulations under the Endangered Species Act to open habitats of imperiled wildlife to development, logging, mining and other uses. The aim is to make it easier to boost fossil fuel extraction and so “strengthen American energy independence” [1].

The results will be two-fold:

Firstly, it will endanger many of the 1,700 species and their habitats which were previously protected by the Act and so prevented from going extinct, most famously the bald eagle. [2]

Second, it will increase the local and global threats caused by climate change as the US emits even more greenhouse gases.

But of course Trump does not believe that climate change has anything to do with greenhouse gases. In his speech to the United Nations he called it a “green energy scam” [3]. 

And this comes at the time when about 888 wildfires are actively burning across Canada and nearly 3 million hectares of land have been destroyed. As a result of the drifting smoke, US cities including Detroit, Chicago, Washington DC, and New York had the worst air quality in the world [4].

Trump wants Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to give an explanation over Canada’s “willful negligence,” accusing the country of “not properly maintaining” their forests and brush. He probably neither knows nor cares that Canada has invested about C$12bn ($8.5bn; £6.4bn) in forests sustainability and fire prevention [5]. And he probably also does not know that the US has lost about half the same area of land as Canada. And if he did, you can be sure he would find some excuse and still blame it all on his neighbour.

And he certainly would never admit that the cause of these fires is the global warming which he is actively promoting.

References

[1] Trump Administration Finalizes Endangered Species Act Regulation Reform, US US Department of the Interior, 17 July 2026

[2] ‘Death sentence’: Trump administration to open habitats of endangered species to logging and mining, The Guardian, 10 July 2022.

[3] Donald Trump’s Speech to UN General Assembly 2025, UNA Coventry website, 27 September 2025.

[4] What to know about the Canadian and US wildfires and their impact, BBC News, 16 July 2026.

[5] Trump threatens new Canada tariffs over fires sending ‘filthy’ air into US cities, BBC News, 17 July 2026