Six years ago, President Donald Trump infuriated environmental activists by mocking the green campaigner Greta Thunberg during the UN General Assembly meetings. Now he is causing shock again. At the UN on Tuesday, Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”. He also derided renewable energy as a “scam”, lambasted Europe’s “suicidal [green] energy ideas” and heaped particular vitriol on wind turbines.
So what should the wider world conclude? One rational response would be to weep. After all, there is widespread scientific evidence that carbon emissions are warming the planet. António Guterres, UN secretary-general, admitted this week that efforts to stop temperatures rising more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial average “are collapsing”. Worse still, a new report from Hank Paulson, former US Treasury secretary, suggests that biodiversity loss is accelerating. Trump’s indifference to this is a moral crime.
However, another rational reaction to the president’s tirade would also be to laugh — at him. For one thing Tuesday showed is that he is badly out of touch with the realpolitik of modern energy. While Trump apparently views green innovations as just a “woke” crusade, those actually driving the renewables boom now see it differently. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, spelled out this shift in New York just before Trump’s tirade. “Clean energy is not only about addressing climate change. It is in my view also about energy security and prosperity,” she said.