President Trump went on a rant against climate change at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, calling it the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and saying that the scientific consensus on global warming was created by “stupid people.” He also berated countries, including close allies of the United States, for adopting renewable energy.
It added up to an extraordinary diatribe that ignored the human suffering exacted by the heat waves, wildfires and deadly floods that are aggravated by the burning of fossil fuels and, at the same time, stood at odds with the rapid expansion of renewable energy all over the world.
He chose his two targets, demonizing immigrants and green energy, and called them a “double-tailed monster” that he claimed, without evidence, are “destroying” Europe. Both subjects play well to his base in the Republican Party. But it was remarkable that he said all this to a global audience.
“You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you’re going to be great again,” he said. “I worry about Europe, I love the people of Europe. I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration.”
His attacks on clean energy appear to be part of an effort by the White House to derail European Union’s legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and stoke a political backlash against Europe’s clean energy advances.
Wind and solar power are generally among the cheapest forms of energy in much of the world, according to independent energy analysts, and global investments in renewables exceed investments in coal, oil and gas.
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The post Trump to World: Green Energy Is a Scam and Climate Science Is From ‘Stupid People’ appeared first on New York Times.
