Trump's energy secretary slams UN climate conference in Brazil, where US absence is glaring

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ATHENS, Greece (AP) — U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Friday condemned the COP30 environmental summit as harmful and misguided — defying the global scientific consensus and concern by governments worldwide on climate change.

“It’s essentially a hoax. It’s not an honest organization looking to better human lives,” 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 “just to try to deliver some common sense.”

Wright’s 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 for his absence from the United Nations-sponsored discussions on climate change running through Nov. 21. His remarks echoed the U.S. administration’s rejection of global climate agreements and Trump's prioritization of fossil fuels.

The U.S. will send no high-level officials to the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, the White House said Friday.

“President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.

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, Kimberly Guilfoyle.

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.

It was a stark contrast with the Brazilian city of Belem, where world leaders at COP30 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 António Guterres said a “moral failure” to act would trigger rising hunger, displacement, and environmental damage.

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

Latin American leaders attending COP30 in Belem took swipes at Trump for his stance on climate discussions.

“Today Mr. Trump is against humanity. His absence is proof of that,” Colombia's President Gustavo Petro said in his speech on Thursday. “What should we do then? Leave him alone. Oblivion is the biggest punishment.”

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva struck a more moderate tone regarding Trump’s absence, expressing hope that his U.S. counterpart would eventually change his mind.

“President Trump told me he doesn’t believe in green energy, Lula told reporters earlier this week. “He will believe in it, because he'll realize that we don’t have much of an alternative.”

Trump wasn’t the only one staying away; the summit was also notably absent of leaders from China and India. Together, these three nations are the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

Wright — a former fossil fuel executive who has been a leading voice against efforts to fight climate change — defended Washington’s stance, arguing that global gatherings should prioritize energy access, growth and technological advancement over what he described as fear-driven environmentalism.

“Gatherings of global leaders and businesses should be about humans … not on the desire to scare children and grow government power,” he told the AP in Athens. “They’ve lost the plot.”

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.

Trump has reversed Biden’s focus on slowing climate change to pursue what the Republican calls U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market. At the U.N. General Assembly in September, he called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

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

Trump created a National Energy Dominance Council 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, the EPA and other federal agencies have sought to revive coal, a reliable but polluting energy source that’s long been shrinking amid environmental regulations and competition from cheaper natural gas.

Meanwhile, Trump’s administration has blocked renewable energy sources such as offshore wind and canceled billions of dollars in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects across the country.

“Perhaps 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.

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Savarese reported from Belem. AP reporter Matthew Daly contributed from Washington.

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