NEW YORK — President Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations on Tuesday signaled that he is no longer content to sit on the sidelines as much of the world battles global warming.
Instead, Trump made clear his administration would actively seek to undermine international efforts to tackle climate change. He used the bully pulpit to both tout the benefits of U.S.-produced fossil fuels — which are adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere — and ridicule other nations for embracing green policies and renewable energy.
“I’m telling you that if you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail,” Trump told a room filled with world leaders who had gathered for the 80th United Nations General Assembly.
Trump’s attack on climate policies and the science that underpins them comes at a critical moment in the global effort to mitigate rising temperatures and other effects of burning fossil fuels.
On Wednesday, world leaders are expected to make new 10-year pledges to cut their planet-warming emissions. And in November, international climate negotiations are set to take place in Brazil.
Expectations are low, prompted in part by a lack of U.S. leadership, but also other global challenges that have kept countries from investing more in the energy transition and translating their pledges into action.
Internal divisions have hindered efforts by the European Union to put forward a concrete target for emissions cuts out to 2035 and there’s little optimism that China — the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases — will set a high bar, despite its massive clean energy investments.
For its part, the Trump administration has made the global climate fight more difficult not just by peddling U.S. fossil fuels internationally but by encouraging countries to roll back policies that would make it harder to do so. The European Union has agreed in a recent trade deal with the U.S. to purchase $750 billion worth of energy, such as natural gas, over the remainder of Trump’s term.
During his U.N. speech, Trump proposed that European leaders dismantle wind projects and instead increase oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, a message he directed to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“I hope the Prime Minister is listening, because I told it to him three days in a row. That’s all he heard. ‘North Sea oil, North Sea’ because I want to see them do well,” Trump said.
But Trump’s climate message — both to the United Kingdom and the rest of the world — may not resonate as far as he would like.
In an interview Monday before Trump’s speech, U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband called the country’s clean energy mission “the route to energy security and good jobs and climate action.”
“If you look at the direction of travel, and you listen to the determination of countries here, the countries I meet, people are just getting on with it,” Miliband told POLITICO’s E&E News, referring to the clean energy transition.
“I’m confident that what we’re doing is not only in the interest of the British people but is what the British people elected us to do,” he added.
Ahead of Trump’s speech, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres gave a pre-rebuttal to what was coming, saying the clean energy future is already here.
“No government, industry or special interest can stop it,” he said. “But some are trying.”
In many places, renewables are increasingly a cheaper and more viable option for energy, and they’re creating jobs and reducing dependence on expensive and volatile fossil fuel imports — all elements that Guterres and other Climate Week attendees pointed out.
Trump’s comments spread across New York City on Tuesday. Many had only seen snippets or read coverage of his remarks as they bounced from meetings and events, more focused on their own speeches or engagements than Trump’s turn at the rostrum.
Some leaders even flicked to Trump’s speech at those events. During one address, COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago made a reference to believing in climate science, saying with a quip, “which nowadays is not so obvious.”
A diplomat from a developing country who requested anonymity to speak without fear of reprisal from the Trump administration, said the president’s speech doesn’t resonate with much of the world.
“We don’t have time for denialism,” the diplomat said, referring to the impacts of drought, flooding and heat waves. “We’re dealing with realities on the ground.”
On Sunday, nearly 20 leaders signed a letter calling for a “just and equitable” clean energy transition.
“The situation is clear: a clean energy transition is happening, and it is here to stay,” says the letter, which includes Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
At the United Nations on Tuesday, the Brazilian president encouraged countries to strengthen their climate commitments and announced the creation of the Tropical Forests Forever Fund, a new global forest preservation effort to which Brazil will contribute $1 billion.
“Climate change needs to be brought to the heart of the U.N. so that it gets the attention it deserves: a council linked to the general assembly with the power and legitimacy to monitor commitments and provide coherence to climate action,” he said.
Trump is almost certain to oppose such a move.
At home, he has cleared away regulations for oil and gas while actively undermining its competition — namely by blocking several major offshore wind projects. His administration has slashed billions of dollars in federal research, deleted climate data and proposed mothballing climate satellites now in orbit.
His comments Tuesday underscore that the U.S. is done with addressing an issue he sees as irrelevant — though he hasn’t yet moved to exit the U.N. treaty that underpins global climate efforts.
But Trump told the leaders that immigration and wind turbines posed grave threats to their countries.
“Immigration and the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet,” Trump said. “Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects.”
