Trump’s UN speech and Big Oil’s lies undermine our democracy
When Donald Trump stood before the United Nations and called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated,” he echoed a script the fossil fuel industry has rehearsed for decades. Lies and gaslighting have become more powerful tools than the world had anticipated. They erode trust in science, paralyse democratic debate, and protect profits while the planet burns.
From Exxon’s suppression of its own clean energy research to the psychological double binds that trap liberal societies, the cost of this fossil con is measured in melting glaciers, deadly heatwaves, rising seas – and the corrosion of democracy itself.
The ‘Great Fossil Con’ took off in 1989 when Exxon, BP, Shell and others formed the Global Climate Coalition to cast doubt on climate science and lobby against efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 36 years on, naming it, exposing it, and resisting it is the first step towards breaking its hold.
Below are some recent and relevant reflections on the topic.
Gaslighting democracy – a psychological perspective on the theatre of lies
By Steffi Bednarek
When Donald Trump stood before the United Nations and declared that climate change was “the biggest lie ever invented,” he was not only engaging in political theatre, but was also deploying a psychological strategy that reaches far deeper than policy or science. His lies are effective, even when the majority of people recognise them as false, because liberal democratic cultures are particularly vulnerable to the psychological dynamics that are employed by populist leaders.
Liberal societies hold a deep faith in human rationality and progress. Public life is built around a respect for evidence and the assumption that debate is a good-faith exchange of rational arguments in which reason will eventually prevail. Gaslighting does not play by those rules. When reason fails, a culture built on reason alone is left with few tools to respond.
If liberal societies are to resist manipulation, they must recognise that the response requires more than fact-checking.
This is not a problem to be solved but a stuckness in multiple double binds:
– If liberal societies allow lies to circulate unchecked, truth erodes. Gaslighting requires confrontation and boundary-setting, but the restrictions needed would undermine the very principles and values that democratic societies are built on.
– If we allow leaders who lie access to the usual platforms, we allow them to undermine our core values. If we withdraw access, we are left without the shared frameworks that make social life possible and thereby undermine our own values.
– Trump’s lies about climate change being a hoax respond to people’s need to feel safe and secure in ways that make us all unsafe. If we successfully expose his lies and argue that climate impact is real, everyone is left feeling unsafe and insecure
In his theory of double binds, Bateson argued that resolution of these unsolvable situations does not come from rationally weighing up one side or the other or from working within the parameters of the double bind but from shifting to a higher order of understanding.
A double bind cannot be worked out, it can only be transcended by recognising the paradox itself and stepping into a wider frame.
Instead of trying to “win” the bind, we first need to acknowledge it with full awareness. The key is recognising that double binds are not problems to be fixed but invitations to a shift in perspective. They reveal the limits of the logical mind and call for a wider, more systemic awareness. In other words, weird situations need the capacity to come up with weird and unfamiliar responses.
This is an extract from a longer article by Steffi Bednarek from Centre for Climate Psychology called ‘Gaslighting Democracy and the Double Bind of Truths’
“The president’s easily-debunked 10-minute climate tirade at the U.N. was so stupid and unoriginal, it was actually kind of funny.”
~ Emily Atkin, Heated
“Mostly, Trump just regurgitated the same, tired, easily-debunked talking points he and the oil industry have been repeating for twenty years. It was so unoriginal it was actually kind of funny—in a sad, pathetic way.”
“Trump HUMILIATED by the BBC as they brutally skewer every one of his lies on live TV!
The British Broadcasting Company, showing much more respect for the truth and for justice than our own bought-and-paid-for corporate news media, aired Donald Trump’s appalling speech at the UN but made sure to fact-check it every step of the way.
BBC’s North American editor Sarah Smith sat down with BBC Verify editor Nick Beek to break down Trump’s avalanche of lies:
“Nick, you’ve been going through some of the claims. Let’s start with London wants to go to Sharia law. This was the startling claim made by President Trump today. Part of his message that immigration is destroying European countries, including the UK. We know that for the best part of a decade, Trump has attacked Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. But this appears to be the first time the president has claimed that London wants to go to Sharia law. There was this myth on the internet about five years ago quickly and easily debunked that the legal system would be moving to Sharia law. So that was then.”
“Today, the mayor of London’s office said that these comments didn’t really dignify a response. They called them appalling and bigoted. And a government minister said for the record that Trump’s claim was false.”
Then they moved to climate change:
“What about climate change? The president said it was the greatest con job ever. Yeah, he did, Sophie. The thing is that decades of specialist research really torpedoes that argument. The vast majority of scientists and experts say that climate change caused by humans is real. And here’s a quote. This is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, made up of hundreds of leading scientists.
Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming.
They saved the BIGGEST lie — that Trump had “ended” SEVEN wars — for last:
“And finally, he also said he told world leaders that he has ended seven wars. Has he? No, he hasn’t, Sophie. That is not the case. Trump claimed that thousands of people were dying in each of these seven wars he talked about. But the reality is very different. Some of them were very quick skirmishes across borders. There was one that was a dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over water, over the construction of a dam on the River Nile. There was no fighting there. President Trump says he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. But the war in #Gaza continues as to the war in Ukraine, which, of course, Mr. Trump said he could end in just one day.”
Grimly, their discussion ended with remarks about how at one point in the past, the world laughed at him, but now everyone is too afraid to do so:
“Sarah, how did this address to the United Nations go down? Well, that’s really interesting because you could see how uneasy many of the world leaders listening to it were by the looks on their faces. But they haven’t come out and criticised him yet.”
“In fact, we’ve had the UN Secretary General repeating that they believe that America is essential to the work of the UnitedNations. Ursula von der Leyen from the European Union, for instance, has said she agrees with Donald Trump about Europe’s need to end its reliance on Russian oil. I mean, Donald Trump came here seven years ago and bragged about his achievements in office.”
“And the people listening to him actually laughed at him. It was a humiliating moment for him. But things have changed so much.”
“Nobody dares do that now. So even as they listen to him lecture them on how they should be running their own countries with these fixations on climate change and on immigration, he was still applauded at the end of it because everybody knows they have to treat Donald Trump much more carefully now.”
They HAVE to treat him more carefully because the entire world has seen just how unstable, irrational, and vengeful Donald Trump can be. Unlike Trump himself, these leaders largely care about the people they represent, and won’t risk economy-crippling tariffs, sanctions, or other punitive measures because Trump has an axe to grind.
But see how easy that was, Fox and NBC? We can’t ever allow his lies a moment to breathe.”
~ Savannah Considine on Facebook
→ National Observer – 28 September 2025:
Donald Trump’s carbon con
“If you thought climate change was off the political agenda, Donald Trump would like a word. A lot of words. Meandering words. Megalomanical words. Menacing words. Words tortured into the obverse of obvious truths. It’s a rare gift but, somehow, even after everything, he still finds words to shock the world.”
→ ABC News – 29 September 2025:
Donald Trump’s ‘climate hoax’ comments belong to a well-resourced playbook landing on Australia’s shores
“Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly was full of blatant falsehoods, attacking clean energy, proclaiming coal is clean and beautiful, and that predictions of global warming have been wrong.”
→ Mother Jones – Jan-Feb Issue 2025:
Trump Won’t Confront the Climate Crisis. He’ll Feast Off It.
“Floods, fires, financial collapse—our MAGA oligarchs can’t wait.”
Unpacking Trump’s UN speech
| From Reuters Sustainable Switch newsletter on 25 September 2025 By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital Lock me up and throw away the key as it looks like I’ve been writing about “the greatest con job” for years. At least that’s what United States President Donald Trump said during his address to the United Nations General Assembly, doubling down on his skepticism of global environmental initiatives and multilateral institutions. “It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” Trump told the General Assembly. “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong.” He added: “They were made by stupid people that have cost their country’s fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.” Here at Reuters, we delve into the facts. Let’s dissect those statements. ‘Greatest con job’ Scientists say climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. They point to rising temperatures, stronger storms, and melting ice as clear signs. Groups like the U.N. have warned that waiting too long to act could cause serious damage to the planet and people.In fact, just this week alone, countries across Asia have been battling against a Super Typhoon Ragasa from the Philippines to Taiwan and Hong Kong. There was also the finding that Switzerland’s 5.4 km-long Gries Glacier, a focal point for research, is retreating at an alarming pace as climate change accelerates an unprecedented ice melt across the country, the Swiss glacier monitoring service said. And according to research published in Nature Medicine this week, more than 62,700 people died in Europe from heat-related causes in 2024, with women and the elderly representing the largest part of the death toll. The summer of 2024 was the hottest on record in Europe, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. How about the predictions? It is unclear what U.N. predictions Trump was referring to, but in any case, the last global scientific consensus on climate change was released in 2021 through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Scientists say evidence shows global warming and its impacts have since been unfolding faster than expected. Earlier this year, scientists found that the world may already have hit 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7F) of warming above the average pre-industrial temperature – a critical threshold beyond which it is at risk of irreversible and extreme climate change, scientists say. It is also unclear who the ‘stupid people’ are that Trump was referring to. If it is the scientists at the IPCC, then it is worth noting that the institution is currently being led by British scientist Jim Skea, a professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College in London – a university that is often ranked in the top 10 worldwide and in the top two in the United Kingdom. Why does it matter? Trump’s rhetoric against science, knowledge, environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies pose a larger threat. He has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. climate pact whilst ramping up fossil fuel use and rolling back renewable energy initiatives. It has also created a culture of fear – or “greenhushing” – within the corporate space. That’s according to a study of 75 firms across the world conducted by Harvard University researchers Kelly Cooper and Neil Hawkins. Click here to read their full study on the Harvard Business Review. Kelly and Hawkins’ study found “a significant trend of greenhushing, a public posture of silence that further threatens the momentum of coalition collapse, and ultimately, the power of collective action,” they added. This is what happened to the mass exit of many firms from initiatives such as the Net Zero Banking Alliance and the Net Zero Insurance Alliance earlier this year. But some world leaders are pushing back. China led several countries in announcing new climate plans and offered a veiled rebuke of the U.S. president’s anti-climate speech while Brazil committed to reducing emissions by 59%-67% by 2035 and to stepping up efforts to combat deforestation. And U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres assured delegates that the world was making progress in the energy transition, even if it was slow. |
→ Many more historical facts and details about the history of ‘the greatest con job ever perpetrated’ on www.climatesafety.info/history
“It is tempting to think that this is just the rant of a narcissistic leader who no one has the courage to correct, but that is a misreading of the forces at play.“
~ Julianne Schultz
→ AAP – 30 September 2025:
Misinformation heats up climate debates on clean energy
“Children intimidated in the playground and ostracised families have been observed in communities splintering over the renewables rollout, with misinformation understood to be inflaming divides.”
→ Guardian Australia – 28 September 2025:
More than a narcissist’s rant, Trump’s UN address marked a disturbing turn towards a new world order
“Behind the US president’s speech lay the long-term logic of neoliberalism: winners and losers, racialism and a crude, exclusionary nationalism.”
→ Sydney Morning Herald – 27 September 2025:
Dark visions of a diving democracy
Letters. “It seems the US is heading for autocracy with a corrupt democratic facade.”
Fossil fuel industry tactics explained
From two very nimble legal minds, Aaron Regunberg and Zephyr Teachout, comes an interesting antitrust argument that could be employed against the fossil fuel industry:
“Antitrust laws protect open thriving markets and prevent collusive incumbent-protection schemes that slow down innovation and freeze technologies in place—the very crux of what oil corporations sought to do by working together to block renewable competitors from challenging their control of the energy market.
Internally, fossil fuel companies were explicit about the goal of suppressing competition. Consider a 1988 memo by a senior public affairs manager at Exxon. It acknowledged that greenhouse gases “cause disproportionate warming of the atmosphere,” that “the principal greenhouse gases are by-products of fossil fuel combustion,” and that “climate models predict a 1.5°C to 4.5°C global temperature increase, depending on the projected growth of fossil fuels.”
The memo then suggested that the industry act to cloud the public’s understanding of this scientific reality by “emphasiz[ing] the uncertainty in scientific conclusions” in order to undermine the “noneconomic development of nonfossil fuel resources.”
The industry also used capture-and-kill tactics to shut down the development of alternative energy technologies before they could challenge fossil fuels. Scientists at Exxon invented the lithium battery in the 1970s. The company began developing electric motors, too. But in the 1980s, Exxon shut down the lithium battery program and other related projects, shelving countless promising patents.
Ed Garvey, a geochemist at Exxon during the 1980s, concluded that the company’s goal was suppression of clean energy development. And it wasn’t just Exxon.
Stanford Ovshinsky, one of the principal inventors of solar energy and the founder of Energy Conversion Devices—which was once the largest producer of flexible solar panels in the world—said of his company’s interactions with Texaco Inc (now operated by Chevron Corp) that the industry wanted to “put you out of business, rather than building the business”.”
~ excerpt from Bill McKibben’s newsletter
What the fossil CEOs really think
It’s time to shift from dialogue to action
→ ABC News – 19 September 2025:
The climate conversation is stuck in a loop, but out in the world things are changing
“‘How to keep the lights on’ conversation totally ignores where we are already at. We can no longer pretend we can avoid paying for climate change by doing nothing.”