US President Donald Trump Labels Climate Change A 'Hoax' At UN, Igniting Global Concern

The denial of climate change is certainly not new, given that climate deniers were hard at work 30-40 years ago when the impacts of climate change were nowhere near as severe as now, but climate denialism got a seat at the high table of international leaders last week. The person chaperoning it there was US President Donald Trump. As he rambled on at the United Nations General Assembly, he resorted to his non-serious shock-and-awe approach to pontificate on climate change.

This, he bombastically declared, was “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” President Trump went on to loftily and unscientifically announce that the carbon footprint is “nonsense” and “a hoax made up by people with evil intentions” and “all the predictions made by the UN and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people.”

In making such unfounded assertions that fly in the face of decades of climate science findings, President Trump unfortunately, perhaps intentionally, circled the world back to the early 1990s, ignoring the work since, which has demonstrated that fossil fuel emissions led to global warming and climate change with devastating impacts, especially for the poor, in every country. It must be recalled that he pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement and eased regulations and emission norms for coal plants. The UN reported that, between 2000 and 2019, climate change caused at least $2.8 trillion in loss and damage, or around $16.3 million per hour, and projected potential economic losses of $1.7-$3.1 trillion annually by 2050.

Ten years ago, at the Paris Conference of Parties (COP), the UN’s annual climate summit of world leaders, an agreement was reached that global warming would be limited to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels; any rise above that would be devastating economically and socially. The 1.5-degree C cap was breached last year, which was also the hottest year on record since 1850. In fact, the years from 2015 to 2024 were the ten warmest on record globally. The cumulative impact has been unprecedented high temperatures, bitter winters in unlikely places, flash floods and cloudbursts in every country, and wildfires, all leading to the thousands of lives lost, economies disrupted, and the impending submergence of tiny nations like Tuvalu. The US has seen massive wildfires and flash floods this year.

For President Trump to then dismiss climate change demands answers; they are not far behind. The ‘big oil’ or fossil fuel lobby, analysis shows, spent a stunning USD 445 million from January 2023 to November 2024 on Trump’s re-election and donated USD 19 million to his inaugural fund this January. The fossil fuel industry has spent decades and billions denying every atom of climate science. It found its most powerful spokesperson in President Trump, regrettably for the world.

Published on: Monday, September 29, 2025, 11:33 AM IST