In a confrontational speech to the UN General Assembly, US President Donald Trump rejected global efforts to transition to renewable energy and urged countries to keep drilling for fossil fuels – dismissing scientists’ warnings that this could set the world on a dangerous trajectory of unfettered warming.
Under the Trump administration, the White House has reversed ambitious climate policies and has walked away from climate action at the UN by crippling climate finance and removing US diplomats from key summits.
In Tuesday’s speech at the UN headquarters in New York, Trump made a series of false statements about renewable energy, the Paris Agreement, climate finance and climate science – describing climate change as “the greatest con job”.
Gina McCarthy, a climate adviser to former US President Joe Biden, said Trump had embarrassed the United States on the global stage, thrown away US climate leadership and washed his hands of responsibility for protecting Americans from climate disasters.
Others dismissed the significance of Trump’s words, however.
Ilana Seid, a diplomat from the Pacific nation of Palau and the chair of the small island developing states negotiating group AOSIS, told a press conference the Republican president’s words were “not surprising” because his “position on climate has always been what it is”.
Here we address some of the false statements made by Trump:
Renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels
Trump said in his speech that renewable energy, and in particular wind power, is “a joke”, calling it expensive and unreliable as a source of energy to power factories.
“[Wind power is the] most expensive energy ever conceived. You’re supposed to make money with energy, not lose money. You lose money the governments have to subsidise. You can’t put them out with that massive subsidy,” he said.
In reality, 91% of the new renewable power projects commissioned in 2024 were more cost-effective than any fossil fuel-fired alternative, according to analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
The global average cost of electricity generated by solar panels (PV) and onshore wind was 41% and 53% cheaper last year, respectively, than the cheapest new fossil fuel-fired power plant, the report found.
Additionally, on a global level, government subsidies for fossil fuel consumption were nine times higher than those for renewable energy in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
China uses wind power more than the US
Trump said that, while China sells wind turbines, “they barely use them”, and that most of the Asian country’s energy comes from coal, fossil gas or “almost anything” but wind.
Although most Chinese energy does still come from coal, China also produces more electricity from wind power than any other country in the world – over twice as much as the United States.
China is building new wind and solar installations faster than any other country in the world, accounting for close to 70% of global wind installations in 2024, according to the Global Wind Report.
All these efforts on clean energy put China’s carbon dioxide emissions into reverse for the first time this year, with a 1.6% decrease during the first quarter, when compared with 2024.
Even under Biden, US did not pay its fair share
Trump said the US “was paying so much more than every country” due to the “fake Paris accord”. While it was not clear what money he was referring to, climate experts say that even under the Biden administration, the United States has not been contributing its fair share of global climate finance.
In 2022, when Biden was president, the US paid $14.37 billion in climate finance. While this was $370 million more than the second-biggest contributor, Japan, an analysis by the ODI think-tank suggests that due to the size of the US economy, the contribution was just a third of its fair share of developed countries’ $100 billion commitment.
Only Greece paid a smaller part of its fair share, and the US was largely responsible for developed countries’ notorious failure to meet the $100 billion goal on time, according to the ODI study.
Environmentalists do not want to “kill all the cows”
Trump said in his speech that radical American environmentalists are demanding “no more cows – we don’t want cows anymore because they want to kill all the cows”.
Many Western politicians and lobbyists opposed to climate action have made similar assertions when referring to green policies that affect food.
Beef is one of the highest-emitting food sources and some environmentalists have encouraged people to shift their diets towards chicken, fish or vegetables.
Last year, the World Bank advised governments to shift subsidies from high-emitting to low-emitting foods.
But, while some environmentalists want to shut down cattle farms, none have proposed killing cows. The beef industry – which they are challenging – kills nearly a million cows a day.
