WASHINGTON — President Trump argued Tuesday that policies meant to mitigate the effect of climate change are all just a bunch of hot air, calling them “the greatest con-job ever perpetrated” in scathing remarks to the United Nations General Assembly.
“You know, it used to be global cooling. If you look back in the 1920s and 1930s, they said global cooling will kill the world,” Trump riffed during his wide-ranging speech. “Then they said global warming will kill the world.”
“Now they can just call it climate change, because that way they can’t miss,” he vented. “Climate change — because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, is climate change.
“It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
Trump went on to argue that ominous predictions about the Earth’s temperature rising to dangerous levels due to fossil fuel emissions have been wildly overstated.
“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes,” Trump groused without naming specific examples.
While there are articles in the New York Times from the 1920s about explorers investigating the Arctic to study whether there will be a new “ice age,” some critics have argued that the idea of global cooling was not as pervasive then as the theory of global warming is currently.
Still, many dire predictions from scientists about global warming have not come to fruition. Famously, Glacier National Park was forced to take down signs predicting that all its glaciers would be melted away by 2020.
Echoing comments on the campaign trail, Trump dismissed the use of “pathetic” and “expensive” windmills, while saying that solar panels were “taking away farmland.”
“Most expensive energy ever conceived,” Trump complained, adding that “we’re not letting this happen in America.”
“I’ve been right about everything, and I’m telling you that if you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail,” Trump crowed at another point. “I’m the president of the United States, but I worry about Europe.”
“The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction.”
He pointed to Europe’s higher heat-related death rate compared to the US, something he and researchers blamed on the continent’s culture of frowning on air conditioning.
“So while the US has approximately 1,300 heat-related deaths annually — that’s a lot — Europe loses more than 175,000 people to heat deaths each year, because the cost is so expensive you can’t turn on an air conditioner,” the president said. “That’s not the Europe that I love and know.”
Trump stressed that the US was “ready to provide any country with abundant, affordable energy supplies if you need them.”
Throughout his 57-minute speech, Trump wove in jabs about climate change between his riffs on immigration, wars raging around the world, the failings of th the UN, and boasts about his accomplishments as president.
Foreign leaders and dignitaries in the audience remained largely solemn when Trump spoke, greeting his climate change remarks with murmurs of discussion.
