{"id":555737,"date":"2025-11-07T19:51:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T19:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/555737\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T19:51:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T19:51:17","slug":"trumps-energy-secretary-slams-un-climate-conference-in-brazil-where-us-absence-is-glaring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/555737\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s energy secretary slams UN climate conference in Brazil, where US absence is glaring"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATHENS, Greece — U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright<\/a> on Friday condemned the COP30 environmental summit<\/a> as harmful and misguided \u2014 defying the global scientific consensus and concern by governments worldwide on climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s essentially a hoax. It\u2019s not an honest organization looking to better human lives,\u201d Wright told The Associated Press at the close of a two-day business conference in Athens. He added that he might attend next year’s summit \u201cjust to try to deliver some common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s comments came as world leaders gathering over 5,000 miles away, on the edge of the Amazon in Brazil, blasted U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> for his absence from the United Nations-sponsored discussions on climate change<\/a> running through Nov. 21. His remarks echoed the U.S. administration\u2019s rejection of global climate agreements and Trump’s prioritization of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

The U.S. will send no high-level officials to the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, the White House said Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump will not jeopardize our country\u2019s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,\u201d Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Wright led a senior U.S. delegation to Athens for talks centered on boosting U.S. liquefied natural gas exports to eastern Europe and Ukraine. Among them were Interior secretary Doug Burgum, deputy secretaries and the new U.S. ambassador to Greece and close Trump ally<\/a>, Kimberly Guilfoyle.<\/p>\n

At the forum, top U.S. officials criticized European Union carbon reduction policies, arguing they undermine economic growth, democratic alliances, and global leadership in AI and energy innovation.<\/p>\n

It was a stark contrast with the Brazilian city of Belem, where world leaders at COP30<\/a> issued urgent warnings about the accelerating pace of global warming, driven in large part by emissions from burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. U.N. Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres<\/a> said a \u201cmoral failure\u201d to act would trigger rising hunger, displacement, and environmental damage.<\/p>\n

Backed by overwhelming scientific consensus, the U.N. reaffirmed that climate change is already underway, requiring urgent global action to prevent irreversible harm.<\/p>\n

Latin American leaders attending COP30 in Belem took swipes at Trump for his stance on climate discussions.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday Mr. Trump is against humanity. His absence is proof of that,\u201d Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro<\/a> said in his speech on Thursday. \u201cWhat should we do then? Leave him alone. Oblivion is the biggest punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva<\/a> struck a more moderate tone regarding Trump\u2019s absence, expressing hope that his U.S. counterpart would eventually change his mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump told me he doesn\u2019t believe in green energy, Lula told reporters earlier this week. \u201cHe will believe in it, because he’ll realize that we don\u2019t have much of an alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump wasn\u2019t the only one staying away; the summit was also notably absent of leaders from China and India. Together, these three nations are the world\u2019s largest emitters of greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

Wright \u2014 a former fossil fuel executive who has been a leading voice against efforts to fight climate change \u2014 defended Washington\u2019s stance, arguing that global gatherings should prioritize energy access, growth and technological advancement over what he described as fear-driven environmentalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cGatherings of global leaders and businesses should be about humans \u2026 not on the desire to scare children and grow government power,\u201d he told the AP in Athens. \u201cThey\u2019ve lost the plot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Belem talks opened as the U.N. weather agency announced that 2025 was on track to be the second or third warmest year ever recorded. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which hit a record high last year, continued to rise in 2025, as did ocean heat and sea levels, the World Meteorological Organization reported Thursday.<\/p>\n

Trump has reversed Biden\u2019s focus on slowing climate change to pursue what the Republican calls U.S. \u201cenergy dominance\u201d in the global market. At the U.N. General Assembly in September, he called climate change<\/a> \u201cthe greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the start of his second term, Trump again withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate agreement,<\/a> while the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a series of actions to roll back landmark regulations.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump created a National Energy Dominance Council<\/a> and directed it to move quickly to drive up already record-high U.S. energy production, particularly fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas, and remove regulatory barriers. Under executive orders,<\/a> the EPA and other federal agencies have sought to revive coal, a reliable but polluting energy source that\u2019s long been shrinking amid environmental regulations and competition from cheaper natural gas.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s administration has blocked renewable energy sources such as offshore wind<\/a> and canceled billions of dollars in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps in no other time in history have leaders in Washington been more determined to pull the United States backwards in the fight against the climate crisis,” Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Friday in a statement.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Savarese reported from Belem. AP reporter Matthew Daly contributed from Washington.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATHENS, Greece — U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Friday condemned the COP30 environmental summit as harmful and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[177597,3907,8616,2311,26934,4179,70494,285,5442,49,978,659,10673,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-555737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-177597","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-climate-and-environment","11":"tag-climate-change","12":"tag-energy-industry","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-government-regulations","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-renewable-energy","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa","20":"tag-washington-news","21":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115510161141805631","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}