There’s a special circle of hell for leaders who burn the future for applause in the present, and Donald Trump is building condos there. This week, in front of the United Nations General Assembly, the president declared climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” It wasn’t a slip, a flub, or a throwaway line. It was the centerpiece of an hour-long sermon on why humanity should abandon any hope of survival and just drill, baby, drill until the seas swallow Miami and the forests collapse into ash.

As if to prove the point, Trump’s Energy Department simultaneously announced plans to claw back $13 billion in unspent climate funds. That money was meant for wind, solar, and electric vehicles — the building blocks of a livable future. Now it’s going into the same void as Trump’s conscience. Officials called it a “return” of “wasteful” Green New Deal cash, the kind of Orwellian phrasing that makes “war is peace” sound subtle.

In Trump’s America, climate denial isn’t fringe anymore. It’s state policy. And the rest of the world just got a front-row seat to the demolition derby.

The UN as Open Mic Night

Trump strutted into the UN like it was his personal comedy club and immediately delivered the headliner: climate change is fake, invented by “stupid people with evil intentions.” The planet is boiling, and the president of the United States is calling it a hoax. The absurdity would be funny if it weren’t lethal.

He didn’t just deny the science. He mocked it. He sneered at “carbon footprints” as “nonsense.” He claimed climate predictions were all wrong. He said clean energy was a scam designed to make countries poor. To the diplomats listening, many of whom represent nations literally being swallowed by rising seas, it was like watching an arsonist explain why fire doesn’t exist while lighting another match.

Trump wasn’t addressing the UN; he was addressing his base back home. This wasn’t diplomacy. It was a Fox News monologue broadcast from the world’s biggest stage.

$13 Billion, Straight Into the Furnace

The timing couldn’t have been clearer. On the same day Trump dismissed climate change as a con, the Energy Department proudly announced it would “return” $13 billion in unspent funds earmarked for clean energy. That money could have built wind farms, solar arrays, EV charging stations. It could have moved the country a fraction closer to survival. Instead, it’s gone — canceled because Trump wants to erase every trace of his predecessor’s climate legacy.

The department didn’t even say what the money will be used for now. Roads? Guns? Subsidies for oil CEOs’ third yachts? Your guess is as good as theirs. The only guarantee is that it won’t be spent slowing climate collapse. In Trump’s America, clean energy money isn’t “unobligated.” It’s “unauthorized,” because the only authority that matters is ExxonMobil’s balance sheet.

The Theology of Denial

Trump’s climate rant isn’t just policy — it’s theology. To him, fossil fuels are sacred. Drilling is a patriotic act. Pipelines are veins pumping freedom into the economy. Windmills? They’re satanic bird blenders. Solar panels? Toys for hippies. Electric cars? Communist golf carts.

By framing climate change as a “con job,” Trump isn’t arguing science. He’s waging holy war against the very idea that humans can alter the planet. In his cosmology, God made oil, coal, and gas for Americans to burn, and anyone who says otherwise is part of a globalist cabal. That’s why he brands climate scientists as villains with “evil intentions.” They’re not researchers; they’re heretics. And heretics must be burned — preferably with gasoline.

The Cost of the Con

The real con isn’t climate change. It’s climate denial. The fossil fuel industry has spent decades funding think tanks, fake experts, and political stooges to sow doubt about the science. Trump is their masterpiece: a president who parrots their talking points so faithfully he might as well have Chevron tattooed on his forehead.

The cost of this con is already visible. Record heat waves. Cities drowning. Wildfires turning towns into cinders. Crops failing. Insurance companies fleeing entire regions. Every year, the bill climbs higher. But instead of investing in solutions, Trump just shredded $13 billion that could have helped build resilience. That’s not policy. That’s vandalism.

The Green New Scam

The administration’s press release called the scrapped projects part of the “wasteful Green New Scam.” That’s the level of discourse now: juvenile nicknames in official documents. Forget serious policy debate. Forget evidence. The government of the United States is issuing statements that sound like they were written by a YouTube comment section.

It’s branding over reality, slogans over science. And it works, because slogans are easy. “Green New Scam” fits on a bumper sticker. ““Anthropogenically accelerated atmospheric carbon saturation precipitates cascading biospheric destabilization resulting in thermodynamic disequilibrium and irreversible planetary habitability degradation across multiple interdependent ecological subsystems” does not. Trump understands that politics is marketing, and if the planet burns along the way, so be it.

Who Benefits?

It’s not hard to follow the money. Fossil fuel executives love Trump. He gutted environmental regulations, opened up drilling leases, and turned the EPA into a parody of itself. Now he’s scrapping billions in clean energy funds, handing oil companies an even bigger monopoly over the future.

Every dollar stolen from clean energy is a dollar gifted to fossil fuels. Every project canceled is another year of dependence on coal and oil. Trump calls climate change a con because acknowledging it would threaten the empire of donors who keep him afloat. He’s not protecting the American people. He’s protecting quarterly profits.

The World Is Watching

For the rest of the world, Trump’s UN speech was a neon sign flashing: don’t count on America. Europe is building wind farms. China is subsidizing EVs. Africa is leapfrogging into solar. The United States? Our president just told the planet that the whole thing is a hoax and pocketed $13 billion meant to help.

The damage isn’t just environmental. It’s diplomatic. America looks like a clown car, careening into the future while mocking the adults trying to steer. Trump has turned us from leader to laggard, from innovator to saboteur. The world doesn’t fear American leadership anymore. It pities us.

Trump’s war on the environment isn’t just deranged. It’s suicidal. He’s declared open season on the climate, shredded billions in clean energy, and told the planet’s most vulnerable nations to shove it. He’s turned denial into doctrine, ignorance into policy, and destruction into strategy.

Climate change is not a con. But pretending it is might be the greatest con job in history — one that will leave entire generations poorer, sicker, and hungrier while oil executives laugh all the way to the bank. Trump isn’t fighting a scam. He is the scam: a fossil-fueled prophet of doom selling our future for campaign cash.

When the history of this era is written, Trump’s words at the UN will read like a suicide note: We knew. We mocked. We burned it all anyway.