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World News
28 September 2025

Trump’s UN Climate Rant Sparks Global Showdown

As Trump denounces climate science at the UN, world leaders and scientists push forward with renewable energy and new climate commitments ahead of COP30 in Brazil.

On a brisk late September morning in New York, the United Nations General Assembly became the latest battleground in the world’s ongoing climate debate—a debate that, despite years of science and diplomacy, remains as charged and divisive as ever. Just days apart, two very different visions for the planet’s future were laid out: one marked by defiant skepticism, the other by cautious hope and collective resolve.

President Donald Trump, never one to shy away from controversy, took center stage on September 26, 2025, for what was supposed to be a 15-minute address. Instead, he delivered a meandering hour-long speech that, according to multiple outlets, spent nearly a quarter of its time denouncing climate science, renewable energy, and the assembled international audience. Trump’s rhetoric was as blunt as ever, declaring climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He went further, dismissing the scientific consensus on global warming as the work of “stupid people.”

“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong,” Trump insisted, before claiming, “They said global warming will kill the world. But then it started getting cooler.” According to BBC, Trump’s assertions ran counter to the overwhelming scientific consensus. NASA’s Gavin Schmidt and other climate scientists were quick to point out that recent temperature records have actually exceeded the upper bounds of earlier forecasts—if anything, the world is heating up faster than expected.

Trump’s speech didn’t stop at climate skepticism. He linked the issue to his ongoing crusade against immigration, dubbing clean energy and immigrants “a double-tailed monster” that he said was “destroying” Europe. Germany, in particular, found itself in Trump’s crosshairs for what he called “a very sick path both on immigration by the way and energy.” He urged world leaders to return to “strong borders and traditional energy sources,” calling wind and solar “a joke” and “pathetic.” As reported by The Guardian, Trump boasted of U.S. dominance in oil and gas production and described his efforts to pressure allies like the UK to abandon climate goals and drill for more fossil fuels.

While Trump’s remarks drew sharp criticism from climate advocates and scientists, they also underscored how deeply climate policy has become entwined with broader political and cultural battles. Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist, called it “the stupidest speech in UN history,” while climate journalist Emily Atkin described it as “the dumbest climate speech of all time.” The spectacle, for many observers, was a stark reminder that clean energy and climate action remain deeply polarizing topics, especially in the context of American politics.

The timing of Trump’s tirade was particularly striking. The very next day, September 27, the UN hosted a special summit on climate change, convened by Secretary-General António Guterres and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Trump was notably absent, as was Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, disappointing many climate advocates. Yet the summit pressed on, with China—currently the world’s largest carbon polluter—making a significant intervention. President Xi Jinping, addressing the assembly via video, pledged for the first time that China would achieve absolute emissions reductions, calling the green transition “the trend of the times.”

“Although individual countries are moving against the current, the international community should stay focused on the right direction,” said Xi, in a thinly veiled rebuke of Trump’s stance. While China’s new commitments still fall short of what’s required to meet the Paris Agreement’s ambitious targets, the country has a track record of underpromising and overdelivering, according to The New York Times. The contrast between the U.S. and China on climate leadership was hard to ignore.

Meanwhile, the Paris Agreement, signed a decade ago, faces its own moment of reckoning. Jennifer Morgan, former executive director of Greenpeace International and Germany’s former state secretary for climate policy, reflected on the agreement’s progress and pitfalls in a recent op-ed for Project Syndicate. She noted that, despite political upheavals—from Brexit to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine—most governments have continued to honor the agreement’s five-year cycle of increasing climate ambition. “The vast majority of governments have actually done that,” Morgan observed, highlighting that in 2024, renewables accounted for a stunning 92.5 percent of all new installed electricity capacity worldwide. Even more impressively, 75 percent of new wind and solar photovoltaic projects now generate electricity more cheaply than existing coal, gas, or oil plants.

This shift, Morgan argues, is not a matter of ideology. “Clean energy drives growth, enhances competitiveness, reduces energy price volatility, and improves quality of life,” she wrote. Yet, she acknowledged the world is still not on track to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. War, conflict, and the economic fallout from the pandemic have strained public finances and made governments wary. The international order itself, built after World War II, feels increasingly fragile.

Still, Morgan sees hope in what Brazilians call “mutirão”—a collective coming together to tackle shared problems. The upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, will be a critical test of that spirit. Countries are expected to present updated national climate plans, and Morgan urges leaders to recommit to the Paris goals: modernizing energy systems, transitioning away from fossil fuels, scaling up renewables, and hitting targets for climate finance. She spotlights Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility proposal as a potentially transformative tool for financing forest conservation, and calls on wealthy nations to double or triple their support for climate adaptation in vulnerable countries.

For Morgan and many others, a just energy transition isn’t just about technology—it’s about fairness, resilience, and ensuring that no community is left behind. She emphasizes the need for solutions that address energy grids, storage, and locally sourced renewables, while also pushing fossil fuel producers and consumers to accelerate the shift away from carbon-intensive energy.

Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president and longtime climate advocate, echoed this sense of urgency and possibility. “We are going to win this struggle, we are going to be successful,” Gore said at the summit. “The remaining question is whether or not we will win it in time to avoid the terrible negative tipping points that are out there.”

As world leaders prepare for COP30 and the next round of climate commitments, the stakes could hardly be higher. The Paris Agreement’s framework—flexible yet binding, ambitious yet pragmatic—has delivered real progress, but the clock is ticking. In the end, the choice is clear: double down on what’s working, or risk losing ground to division and denial. The coming months will reveal whether the world’s nations are ready to come together, mutirão-style, and meet the moment.