Several attendees at the COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil, on Thursday vented their fury against President Donald Trump, who has challenged the claims of the climate movement, and did not attend the meeting or send any high-level representatives to his administration.
“Mr. Trump is against humanity. His absence here demonstrates that,” fumed radical leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
“The president of the United States at the latest United Nations General Assembly said the climate crisis does not exist. That is a lie,” claimed Chilean President Gabriel Boric.
Trump was very rough on the climate change movement in his remarks to the U.N. General Assembly in September 2025, calling it “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
“Climate change, no matter what happens, you’re involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country’s fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success,” he said.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer did not insult Trump by name, but he complained the “unity” and “consensus” on the climate issue is “gone.”
Also avoiding mention of Trump’s name, but obliquely slamming him, was Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who railed against “extremist forces that fabricate fake news and are condemning future generations to life on a planet altered forever by global warming.”
“President Trump told me he doesn’t believe in green energy. He will believe in it, because he’ll realize that we don’t have much of an alternative,” Lula told reporters this week.
The BBC awkwardly observed that the world’s biggest polluters, China and India, did not attend COP30 either, so blaming the lack of “consensus” solely on Trump was disingenuous. The nations of the “Global South,” which both China and India aspire to lead, have made it very clear that they will not compromise their industrial agendas or energy needs to satisfy the climate movement.
For that matter, Petro, Boric, Lula, Starmer, and the other grandees at the COP30 summit do not seem interested in making any personal sacrifices on the altar of climate change. As usual, the climate conferees racked up a staggering amount of fossil fuel-consuming air travel and burned hundreds of tons of carbon to attend their posh summit. Asked why they could not have used teleconferencing, as much of the world has been doing since the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, they mumbled something about “bad wi-fi.”
The COP30 summit added an extra helping of hypocritical absurdity by cutting down a literal rainforest to build a highway for the thousands of carbon-spewing vehicles driven by the summitters. Local acai berry farmers could only watch helplessly as their trees were bulldozed to make a road for the climate conference.
Trump administration officials punched back at COP30 on Friday, condemning the summit as wasteful and misguided.
“It’s essentially a hoax. It’s not an honest organization looking to better human lives,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
“Gatherings of global leaders and businesses should be about humans… not on the desire to scare children and grow government power. They’ve lost the plot,” he said.
Secretary Wright was in Athens, Greece, for talks about increasing U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe and Ukraine. He threatened to attend next year’s climate summit “just to try to deliver some common sense.”
“President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” said White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers.
