Trump’s UN Speech Wasn’t Chaos, It Was a Payback Plan for Big Oil
From calling clean energy “a scam” to promising drilling permits “on Day 1,” Trump’s climate denial is less ideology than transaction
“The energy transition has truly taken off,” President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen told an audience at an event held alongside the annual United Nations Climate Summit meetings last week. “In 2024, almost two trillion dollars were invested worldwide in clean energy, and for every euro dollar spent on fossil fuels, more than two went into clean energy. And the economic case is clear.” von der Leven urged business leaders and governments to work together to scale up investments in clean energy to get the world to net zero emissions.
That’s not what the President of the United States said in his address to the United Nations.
President Trump instead gave a speech that’s difficult to describe without minimizing how terrible it was for our country. Reading through the whole transcript, I was reminded of media critique that became common during Trump’s first presidential run and term: By selectively quoting or paraphrasing his public addresses, news outlets inadvertently make him seem more coherent than he seems if you watch or read everything he’s said verbatim. I’m going to skip doing the same here.
There was a coherence to Trump’s UN speech, though. Trump blamed most of the world’s problems on migrants. He also rejected climate science, vilified scientific experts, and doubled down on the use of fossil fuels. Even with all its non-sequiturs, insults, false or misleading claims, the speech makes perfect sense, from one perspective. If we consider that Trump using his stature as president of the United States to call renewable energy “a scam” on the world’s stage is akin to Trump writing on Truth Social that his supporters should buy his crypto meme coins (or the Trump administration giving $22 billion in contracts to Space X after Elon Musk gave $277 million to support him and other Republican candidates), the speech transforms from verbal chaos to the clear calculations of a corrupt politician who is very comfortable with running very real self-dealing scams from our highest office.
Trump has an openly transactional relationship with the fossil fuel industry. During an event hosted at Mar-a-Lago last year, Trump asked oil CEOs to give $1 billion to his campaign, promising to gut President Biden’s landmark climate legislation and prevent the United States from committing to any future ambitious climate goals. According to the Washington Post, at the event, Trump told oil executives that they’d get coveted drilling permits “on Day 1” and his administration would approve their mergers.
Oil companies spent $96 million in direct contributions to support Trump’s campaign during the 2024 campaign cycle, plus an additional $80 million on advertising supporting Trump and other Republicans, according to a report from the nonprofit Climate Power. As we try to take in those numbers, it’s important to keep in mind that oil companies almost certainly gave more in dark money that is by definition difficult if not impossible to trace. So, we can’t know how much fossil fuel companies really spent to get a president in their pocket.
As Democracy News previously described, in one example, oil producer Energy Transfer Partners and its CEO, Kelcy Warren, were the largest donors to the Trump supporting super PAC MAGA Inc., donating a combined $25 million. After Trump took office this January, his administration greenlit a major Energy Transfer Partners project, and Warren’s personal net worth increased by 10% in a single day.
Executives at companies like Energy Transfer Partners knew what they were buying. According to Politico, oil industry lawyers and lobbyists pre-drafted executive orders that they wanted President Trump to sign. “As promised, Trump is rewarding the industry by adopting its policy agenda as his own,” writes Owen Bacskai of the Brennan Center. “The fossil fuel industry is reaping major returns on its investment in the Trump administration.”
The Republican megabill Trump signed into law gutted Biden’s renewable energy incentives and instead gave oil and gas companies $18 billion in tax breaks. As the Climate Power report concludes, “Trump’s close ties to oil and gas executives and his willingness to prioritize their agenda underscore the relationship between his political ambitions and Big Oil’s financial goals.”
If the current situation wasn’t so bleak, it would be comical that Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (which, despite its name, was largely a climate bill) was lampooned by Republicans as if it were in service of the wealthy because it offered tax incentives for buying electric vehicles. The Biden-era clean energy incentives — which provided things like tax breaks for installing solar panels and explicitly focused some of its programs around encouraging clean energy in low-income areas — were designed to make renewable energy accessible and widespread. Trump’s energy policy is designed to funnel money to energy barons like Kelcy Warren, whose personal net worth is an estimated $8.2 billion. There’s nothing populist about Trump’s disdain for renewables. Or his disinterest in anyone who has already experienced a wildfire or flood.
By most measures, nothing Trump said last week made sense. But by another, it made all the sense in the world: Glorifying American oil is yet another way Trump is delivering his biggest donors a giant transfer of wealth.