Is Climate Change a Con Job?

By Thuita Gatero, Managing Editor, Africa Digest News

At the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump stood before a hall of world leaders and declared climate change to be “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He said it with certainty, and the statement landed in a room filled with presidents, diplomats, and policymakers.

For many, it was outrageous. For others, refreshing. But let us not dismiss it too quickly. The claim deserves careful thought, not to agree or reject outright, but to ask: is there truth in it, or is it a dangerous denial of real risk?

Trump frames climate change as politics dressed in scientific language. His case rests on five pillars:

1. Fairness Between Nations:
   The Paris Accord, Trump argued, demanded far more from the United States than from rivals. China was exempted from major reductions until 2030. Russia’s targets were pegged to 1990, a baseline made easy by its post-Soviet industrial collapse. For the U.S., this meant a trillion-dollar burden while others coasted.
2. Consequences for Citizens:
   Europe, he claimed, paid dearly for its green ambitions. Electricity costs surged, air conditioning became rare, and the result was grim: while the U.S. records ~1,300 heat-related deaths annually, Europe suffers over 175,000. The lesson? Climate policy, not climate itself, is killing Europeans.
3. National Sovereignty:
   The U.S. possesses the world’s largest reserves of oil, gas, and coal. To abandon these in pursuit of global targets, Trump insisted, was economic suicide. “Clean, beautiful coal,” he said, was not a relic but a resource.
4. Consistency of Science:
   Predictions keep changing. In the 1970s, it was global cooling; by the 1980s, global warming; now, the umbrella term “climate change.” UN officials warned of catastrophe by 2000, or the disappearance of entire nations by 2010. Neither occurred. For Trump, shifting narratives signal exaggeration, or fraud.
5. Integrity of Leaders:
   Leaders like Barack Obama, who urged citizens to shrink their carbon footprint while flying private jets and Air Force One across oceans, symbolized hypocrisy. Ordinary people were asked to sacrifice while elites exempted themselves.

The syllogism, to Trump, is simple:

• Science should be impartial, consistent, and just.
• Climate policy is partial, inconsistent, and unjust.
• Therefore, it is not science but ideology, a scheme of wealth redistribution and control.

Jay Inslee, former governor of Washington and one of America’s strongest climate advocates, frames the argument in reverse. For him, the hoax is not climate science, but fossil fuel politics.

1. Costs and Benefits:
   Fossil fuels remain the most subsidized sector in the world. The IMF estimates $7 trillion in subsidies and implicit support in 2022, 7.1% of global GDP. If climate were truly a “con,” it is a strange one, for the money still flows not to renewables, but overwhelmingly to oil, gas, and coal.
2. Consequences for Citizens:
   In Washington, he saw towns destroyed by wildfires. In Texas, children were swept away in flash floods. Across polluted neighborhoods, children grow up assuming asthma is normal. To Inslee, ignoring these realities is not prudence but negligence.
3. Economic Direction:
   Markets are already moving. Coal, once 50% of U.S. electricity generation in 2005, stood at 19% in 2023 (EIA). Renewables (including hydro) now provide 21%. Over 90% of new global capacity in recent years came from renewables, often at lower cost than gas or coal. Cancelling projects already near completion, Inslee warned, is “economic sabotage.”
4. Where the Money Goes:
   The five largest oil majors, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies, earned over $200 billion in 2022, their highest ever. In the U.S. alone, oil and gas companies spent $125 million lobbying and over $80 million on campaigns, largely backing candidates opposing climate policy (OpenSecrets). For Inslee, the “scam” is a political machine defending profit, not science.
5. Health and Morality:
   The Lancet estimates 8 million premature deaths annually from fossil-fuel pollution, more than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. The American Lung Association places U.S. health costs at $820 billion each year. If climate denial has an ethos, Inslee suggests, it is one that normalizes preventable suffering.

His syllogism runs opposite Trump’s:

• Science revises but remains anchored in evidence.
• Fossil fuel politics distorts both evidence and policy.
• Therefore, the hoax is not science, but the politics defending the status quo.

The Evidence Both Ways

• Heat Deaths. ~1,300 per year; Europe ~175,000. Trump says climate policy kills. Inslee might argue it proves the danger of failing to adapt to a warming world.
• Carbon Emissions: Europe cut emissions by 37%. Globally, emissions rose 54%, largely from China. Trump says this makes Europe’s sacrifice meaningless. Inslee counters that it shows the difficulty of collective action, not the futility of it.
• Energy Prices: Europe’s bills are 4–5 times China’s. Trump calls this green punishment. Inslee points out solar and wind are now the cheapest new sources of power. Which is it, too much green too soon, or not enough green fast enough?
• Failed Predictions: Yes, timelines missed. Trump calls that fraud. Science calls it revision. Error, but not deceit.

Africa’s Perspective

Kenya’s President William Ruto, speaking at the UN, widened the lens. “We meet against a grim global backdrop,” he said, wars in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; pandemics; technological disruption; and climate disasters “growing fiercer by the day.”

For Africa, climate is not an abstraction. It is drought in the Horn, flooding in the Sahel, collapsing harvests across East Africa. Ruto did not call climate change a hoax, nor a panacea. He called it one element of a “profoundly different global context” that demands a re-imagining of the UN’s founding mission, peace, development, and human rights.

The Paradox

• If Trump is right, billions are wasted, economies distorted, and societies weakened by fiction.
• If Inslee is right, denying climate change is reckless, a betrayal of children who will inherit its consequences.
• If Ruto is right, the issue transcends America and Europe: climate is not theory but lived experience, already shaping national destinies.

Closing Thought

So, is climate change the greatest con job in history or the greatest moral test of our time?

Trump offers one narrative: a hoax that will bankrupt nations.
Inslee offers another: a truth that will define survival.
Ruto reminds us that climate cannot be reduced to debate, it is already remaking the world.

The responsibility does not rest with politicians alone. It rests with citizens, scholars, and leaders willing to confront the evidence without flinching, to weigh justice, prudence, power, truth, and ethos in equal measure.

The answer, then, may not lie in choosing Trump or Inslee, but in whether we as societies, can separate ideology from evidence, and fear from foresight.