Trump Rejects Climate Science at UN, China Announces Emissions Target

NEW YORK — At the United Nations General Assembly this week, U.S. President Donald Trump used a speech on Tuesday to reject mainstream climate science and disparage renewable energy, calling climate change a "con job" and criticising wind and solar power. The remarks drew sharp rebuttals at a high‑level U.N. climate summit the following day, where more than 100 world leaders gathered and China announced its first economywide emissions reduction target.

Trump told the General Assembly that predictions about climate change were wrong and described the push toward green energy as economically harmful. He called wind power "a joke" and instructed aides to describe coal as "clean, beautiful coal," comments that scientists and diplomats in the U.N. chamber characterized as factually inaccurate or misleading. Ilana Seid, ambassador for Palau and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said the remarks were unsurprising and warned that failing to act on climate change would betray vulnerable countries. Adelle Thomas, vice chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the evidence of warming is lived and deadly and "demands urgent action."