US President Donald Trump called climate change policies a “global scam” during an address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, saying renewable energy was destructive and unreliable.“It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” Trump said, criticizing decades of environmental predictions from UN officials and climate activists, and pointing to past warnings of both global warming and cooling.“They just call it ‘climate change’ now, because that way it covers everything — hotter, colder, whatever happens,” he said.The president then attacked wind and solar power for being “pathetic” as well as heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing.“They’re a joke, they’re too expensive. They have to be rebuilt all the time. They rust, they rot, and they only survive with massive government subsidies,” he said, adding that such wind and solar projects were “ruining” landscapes in countries such as Britain and taking up valuable farmland.Trump accused European governments of undermining their own economies with “green energy agendas,” claiming that high electricity prices had contributed to “175,000 heat-related deaths” in Europe.He argued that carbon reduction efforts in Western nations had been offset by rising emissions from China and its neighbors, such as India, which he said now produces more CO₂ than all developed countries combined.“Europe reduced its own carbon footprint by 37%. Congratulations, Europe, you cost yourself a lot of jobs,” he said..Trump withdraws from Paris climate agreement, declares national energy emergency.“So Europe sacrifices factories and jobs, only to be wiped out by a 54% global increase [in emissions].”The president then defended his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, calling it a “fake deal” that forced the US to shoulder unfair costs while granting leniency to China and Russia.“The United States was supposed to pay [around] a trillion dollars. I said, ‘This is another scam,’” he said.Linking energy to geopolitics, Trump suggested that “radicalized environmentalists” were crippling Western nations while adversaries exploited the situation.“The entire globalist concept of asking successful industrialized nations to inflict pain on themselves must be rejected completely and totally,” he said.“You're supposed to make money with energy, not lose money. We lose money, and then governments have to subsidize.”Despite his hard-edged tone, Trump framed his remarks as a warning not only for the US but for its allies.“I love Europe, I love the people of Europe,” he said.“But if you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.”
