By MELINA WALLING and SETH BORENSTEIN
NEW YORK (AP) — Some international locations’ leaders are watching rising seas threaten to swallow their properties. Others are watching their residents die in floods, hurricanes and warmth waves, all exacerbated by local weather change.
However the world U.S. President Donald Trump described in his speech on the United Nations Common Meeting on Tuesday didn’t match the one many world leaders within the viewers are contending with. Nor did it align with what scientists have lengthy been observing.
“This ‘local weather change,’ it’s the best con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my view,” Trump mentioned. “All of those predictions made by the United Nations and lots of others, usually for dangerous causes, had been unsuitable. They had been made by silly those who have price their international locations fortunes and given those self same international locations no likelihood for achievement. In case you don’t get away from this inexperienced rip-off, your nation goes to fail.”
Trump has lengthy been a critic of local weather science and polices geared toward serving to the world transition to inexperienced energies like wind and photo voltaic. His speech Tuesday, nevertheless, was one among his most expansive to this point. It included false statements and making connections between issues that aren’t linked.
Ilana Seid, an envoy from the island nation of Palau and head of the group of small island states, was within the viewers. She mentioned it’s what they’ve come to anticipate from Trump and the US. She added that not performing on local weather change will “be a betrayal of probably the most weak,” a sentiment echoed by Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi, who mentioned that “we’re endangering the lives of harmless folks on the planet.”
For Adelle Thomas, a local weather scientist who has printed greater than 40 research and has a doctorate, local weather change disasters are private, too. A vice chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change, the world’s prime physique on local weather science, Thomas is from the Bahamas and mentioned she skilled firsthand “the devastation of the local weather catastrophe” when Hurricane Sandy hit the Caribbean and New York Metropolis, the town Trump was talking from, in 2012.
“Hundreds of thousands of individuals world wide can already testify to the devastation that local weather change has delivered to their lives,” she mentioned. ‘The proof just isn’t summary. It’s lived, it’s lethal, and it calls for pressing motion.”
A have a look at a few of Trump’s statements Tuesday, the science behind them and the response.
On renewable vitality
WHAT HE SAID: Trump known as renewable sources of vitality like wind energy a “joke” and “pathetic,” falsely claiming they don’t work, are too costly and too weak.
THE BACKSTORY: Photo voltaic and wind at the moment are “virtually all the time” the least costly and the quickest choices for brand spanking new electrical energy technology, in line with a July report from the United Nations. That report additionally mentioned the world has handed a “optimistic tipping level” the place these vitality sources will solely proceed to grow to be extra widespread.
The three most cost-effective electrical energy sources globally final yr had been onshore wind, photo voltaic panels and new hydropower, in line with an vitality price report by the Worldwide Renewable Power Company (IRENA).
Subsidies endorsed by Trump and the Republican celebration are artificially retaining fossil fuels viable, mentioned College of Pennsylvania local weather scientist Michael Mann. “If one had been actually in favor of the ‘free market’ to find out this, then fossil fuels could be disappearing even quicker,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Relatedly, Trump falsely claimed European electrical energy payments at the moment are “two to a few occasions larger than the US, and our payments are coming method down.” However the truth is retail electrical energy costs in the US have elevated quicker than the speed of inflation since 2022, in line with the U.S. Power Info Administration. The company expects costs to proceed growing by 2026.
On the worldwide politics of local weather, the UN and the Paris Accord
WHAT HE SAID: Trump blasted the U.N.’s local weather efforts, saying he withdrew America from the “faux” Paris local weather accord as a result of “America was paying a lot greater than each nation, others weren’t paying.”
THE BACKSTORY: The Paris Settlement, determined by worldwide consensus in 2015, is a voluntary however binding doc wherein every nation is requested to set its personal nationwide objective to curb planet-warming emissions and determine how a lot cash it is going to contribute to the international locations that will likely be hit hardest by local weather change.
As a result of carbon dioxide stays within the environment for greater than a century, the US has put out extra of the warmth trapping fuel than another nation, despite the fact that China now’s the No. 1 carbon polluter. Since 1850, the U.S. has contributed 24% of the human-caused carbon dioxide that’s within the air, in line with International Carbon Mission knowledge. Your complete continent of Africa, with 4 occasions the inhabitants of the U.S., is answerable for about 3%.
On coal being known as clear
WHAT HE SAID: “I’ve a bit of standing order within the White Home. By no means use the phrase ‘coal.’ Solely use the phrases ‘clear, stunning coal.’ Sounds a lot better, doesn’t it?”
THE BACKSTORY: Coal kills hundreds of thousands of individuals a yr. “The president can faux coal is clear, however actual folks — moms, fathers, sons, and daughters— will die for this lie,’’ mentioned Stanford College local weather scientist Rob Jackson..
Trump additionally known as the carbon footprint “a hoax made up by folks with evil intentions,” a competition that Texas A&M College local weather scientist Andrew Dessler agreed with. Dessler mentioned the time period was coined by oiil firms and will have been designed to shift the duty for combatting local weather change away from companies to people.
The science of local weather change began 169 years in the past when Eunice Foote did easy experiments with flasks and daylight exhibiting that carbon dioxide trapped extra warmth than the common environment. It’s an experiment that may be repeated at dwelling and has been carried out in labs a whole lot of occasions and in greenhouses world wide day-after-day. It’s primary physics and chemistry with a lengthy historical past.
“It’s unequivocal that human affect has warmed the environment, ocean and land,” reported the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change, which is a whole lot of scientists, with doctorates within the discipline.
In 2018, Trump’s personal authorities mentioned: “The impacts of worldwide local weather change are already being felt in the US and are projected to accentuate sooner or later.”
On cows and methane
WHAT HE SAID: In “the US, we now have nonetheless radicalized environmentalists they usually need the factories to cease. Every little thing ought to cease. No extra cows. We don’t need cows anymore.”
THE BACKSTORY: Cows belch methane, a robust greenhouse fuel. Around the globe, cattle are sometimes raised on lands the place forests have minimize down. Since forests seize carbon dioxide, reducing them to boost cattle ends in a doublt whammy. Nonetheless, nobody is suggesting that cows be gotten rid of, mentioned Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the Altering Markets Basis.
“This polarizing and divisive language misrepresents the environmental message,” Urbancic wrote. “What’s true, nevertheless, is that reducing methane emissions is a fast win to gradual international heating and meet local weather targets.”
Trump additionally blamed soiled air blowing in from afar, floating rubbish within the ocean coming from different international locations and “radicalized environmentalists.”
Though the US does certainly now have cleaner air than it has in a long time, the air pollution seeping into communities is primarily attributable to native soiled vitality and trade tasks, not by different international locations. And lots of specialists have mentioned the largest blow to native air and water high quality is the Trump administration’s personal wide-ranging rollbacks to the facility of the U.S. Environmental Safety Company and different bedrock environmental legal guidelines.
“It’s unhappy to see marine particles, a globally necessary challenge, being misrepresented so fully,” mentioned Lucy Woodall, an affiliate professor of marine conservation and coverage on the College of Exeter.
Related Press reporters Matthew Daly, Jennifer McDermott and Annika Hammerschlag contributed to this report.
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