Despite monsoon floods in Pakistan killing over 1,700 people, heatwaves claiming hundreds of lives in Europe, and Hurricane Imelda battering the Bahamas, US President Donald Trump took to the podium at the 80th United Nations Assembly to dismiss climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
For more than 10 minutes, Trump delivered one of the most comprehensive rejections of climate science ever voiced by a sitting US President on the international stage. He called green energy policies a “scam” that would cause nations to “fail”, referred to coal as “clean”, and described the carbon footprint as “a hoax made up by people with evil intentions.”
The timing was telling. A day earlier, UN Secretary-General António Guterres had told world leaders that the Paris Climate Agreement had “made a difference” and had lowered projected warming from a catastrophic 4°C trajectory to 2.6°C.
However, he warned that this was far from the treaty’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C, given the planet has already heated by more than 1.2°C above preindustrial levels.
Guterres emphasized that fossil fuels are “running out of road”, pointing out that last year, clean energy attracted US$2 trillion in investment, US$800 billion more than that for fossil fuel spending, and up by nearly 70% from 10 years ago.
DevelopmentAid has examined Trump’s key assertions against scientific evidence, economic data, and the stated positions of the governments he cited.
Claim 1: Trump called climate change “the greatest con job”, saying that U.N. predictions were “wrong” and global warming was a “hoax”.
✔️ Fact check: Scientific consensus leaves little doubt. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s authoritative scientific body that draws on thousands of peer-reviewed studies, states unequivocally that human activities have caused global warming.
NASA data confirms that the Earth has already warmed by 1.2°C since the late 1800s, with the last 10 years being the hottest on record.
The predictions that Trump dismissed as “wrong” have largely proven to be accurate. UN climate models from the 1990s projected warming of 0.15–0.3°C per decade under high emissions, and the observed warming has tracked at almost exactly 0.2°C per decade.
In addition, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reaffirmed that climate change detrimentally affects human health and welfare, stressing that the scientific evidence is indisputable.
Claim 2: Trump stated that renewable energy is a “joke”, “pathetic”, and “the most expensive energy ever conceived”.
✔️ Fact check: According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 91% of new renewable projects in 2024 were cheaper than the cheapest fossil fuels. On average, solar was 41% cheaper and onshore wind 53% cheaper.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that low-carbon power, mostly renewables and nuclear, made up 80% of new electricity capacity in 2024. For the first time, renewables and nuclear together now supply 40% of global electricity. The IEA predicts that renewables will meet 95% of new electricity demand by 2027.
Claim 3: Trump stated that he withdrew from the “fake” Paris accord because “we were supposed to pay like US$1 trillion” while China “didn’t have to pay until 2030”.
✔️ Fact check: No provision in the Paris Agreement required the United States to pay US$1 trillion. Under President Joe Biden’s administration, Washington pledged US$11 billion annually toward international climate finance, although Congress allocated considerably less than even this amount.
Trump also mischaracterized how the agreement treats China. The accord, which entered into force in November 2016, established no mandatory payment schedule for any nation. Instead, countries submitted voluntary emissions targets. China pledged to peak its emissions by 2030; the US chose 2025. These were self-determined commitments, not special treatment for Beijing.
Claim 4: Trump claimed that China makes wind turbines but “barely uses them.”
✔️ Fact check: Data from the IEA shows that in 2024, wind and solar supplied about one-fifth of China’s electricity, making it the largest generator of renewable power worldwide. However, China was also the world’s largest coal producer in 2024, contributing to 55% of total global consumption.
Claim 5: Trump stated that Europe is collapsing because of the green energy scam; Germany has abandoned its climate commitments and returned to fossil fuels.
✔️ Fact check: Economic data contradicts the narrative regarding Europe’s collapse. The European Union economy grew by 1% in 2024, with the eurozone expanding by 0.9%. The European Commission’s spring 2025 forecast predicts continued moderate growth of 1.1% for the EU in 2025. In his address, the UN’s António Guterres highlighted that clean energy drove 33% of the EU’s GDP growth in 2023.
Germany, meanwhile, has expanded its renewable capacity. In September 2025, Federal Minister Katherina Reiche confirmed that nearly 60% of Germany’s electricity comes from renewables and reaffirmed the legally binding goal of reaching 80% by 2030, despite cost challenges.
Claim 6: Trump referred to carbon footprint as a “hoax and nonsense made up by people with evil intentions”.
✔️ Fact check: The carbon footprint is a standard scientific measure of greenhouse gas emissions. The UN Environment Programme has calculated the global average footprint at 4.7 tonnes CO₂ per person annually.
This metric has been endorsed by the IPCC and forms the basis for UN national emissions inventories. Corporations worldwide also use it to track and reduce emissions.
Claim 7: Trump praised coal as being “clean” and reliable, claiming modern technology has transformed it into an environmentally acceptable fuel.
✔️ Fact check: Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Al Gore, co-founder of Climate Trace, attributed 8.7 million deaths annually to fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil. A 2023 study by Environmental Research linked U.S. coal plants to 460,000 deaths between 1999 and 2020.
The IEA has identified coal to be the single largest source of energy-related CO₂, responsible for 40% of global fossil fuel emissions in 2023.
Even advanced clean coal technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, cannot eliminate the substantial quantities of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter that coal plants produce.
Claim 8: Trump argued that efforts to cut carbon emissions come at the expense of jobs, with Europe acting as proof of this.
✔️ Fact check: Employment data demonstrates the opposite trend. IRENA estimates the sector employed 16.2 million people in 2023, more than the combined workforce in oil, which employs 7.6 million, and coal, with 6.2 million workers. Solar supports 7.2 million jobs worldwide, and wind about 1.5 million.
The International Labour Organization projects that renewable energy could create 18 million net new jobs by 2030, far exceeding the losses in the fossil fuels industry. In contrast, coal employment is expected to decline, with nearly 1 million jobs predicted to disappear by 2050.
