And so the Trump era (part two) has begun.

The first day of President Donald Trump’s second term in office saw a flurry of executive orders – and landed the new agenda right on the doorstep of The Bahamas.

How so? Well, there is obviously the talk of immigration raids and what that will do, especially given the solicitation by his transition team seeking the deportation of illegal migrants to our shores, whether they came from here originally or not.

However, there is a more meaningful impact for the Davis administration particularly.

What is the number one policy issue for The Bahamas?

You all might have different answers. Crime, perhaps. The economy. Tourism? Certainly not transparency. Maybe tackling the cost of living.

But the government has made clear in the past what is top of its list.

Says who? Well, back in November, Foreign Affairs Minister clearly stated that the number one issue for The Bahamas is climate change.

During the opening of Diplomatic Week in Grand Bahama, he said the country had to address climate change – and warned that severe sea level rise could leave 70 percent of New Providence underwater by 2100.

He said: “It’s existential for us. With 80 percent of our land mass within a meter of the sea, and here on Grand Bahama, the highest point on this island is 48ft above sea level.”

He added: “We just come from the Pacific Islands and the predictions there are equally dire.”

His is not the only voice to have sounded such a warning. Prime Minister Philip Davis has built his reputation around the world on sounding the warning alarm over climate change – and on trying to make industrialised nations pay for the damage they have caused in terms of global warming.

In October 2021, he called climate change “the greatest existential threat that The Bahamas has ever faced” – and his predecessors have been singing from the same hymn sheet over the years.

In 2019, Dr Hubert Minnis, when referencing the impact of storms, asked the United Nations General Assembly: “How will we survive, how can we develop, how will we continue to exist?”

In 2015, Perry Christie talked in Paris of an “existential threat to the survival of small island developing states”.

In 2009, Hubert Ingraham warned that climate change “is a serious threat to our economic viability, our social development and our territorial integrity”.

Administration after administration has warned of the perils facing our nation from climate change.

And now, on day one of the Trump administration, the new president has set about tearing up the ambitions or protections in place.

He signed documents to say he will formally withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreements. That is a repeat of what he did in his first term in office – but which was reversed by his successor, President Joe Biden.

The Paris climate pact set a goal of trying to reduce global warming – it sought to keep long-term global temperatures from warming 1.5C above pre-industrial times, and if not that, then well below 2C.

It would do this by cutting emissions from coal, oil and gas.

The US is not the only United Nations country not to be a part of the agreement – it joins Iran, Libya and Yemen.

Trump also declared an “energy emergency” – which will give additional powers. The goal is to produce more coal and, as Trump said in his inauguration speech: “We will drill, baby, drill. We will be a rich nation again and it is the liquid gold under our feet that will help us do it.”

He talked of using fossil fuels to “export American energy all over the world”, even though the US is already a net exporter of fossil fuels, producing more oil and gas than any other country in the world.

Add to that Trump’s opposition to laws requiring appliances to be more efficient, and emissions are only going one way, both literally and figuratively – up.

What does that do for The Bahamas’ number one policy?

The horse has bolted – and we are left trying to secure the stable door.

If this is the signature policy of the Davis administration, it has just suffered a sizeable blow.

The US, of course, is not the world – and other countries have said they intend to persist with the Paris agreement. But it does not make the task any easier.