"Get Away from the Green Scam or Your Country Will Fail" - Trump, the Climate Culture War, and Europe's Dignity

On Tuesday, Donald Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly and declared: "Get away from the green scam or your country will fail." This was far more than a statement on energy policy. It was the opening salvo of a cultural and geopolitical offensive - one aimed squarely at Europe and emblematic of the new era we are being thrust into, where climate policy is no longer just about emissions, but about power, identity, and global influence.

For Trump and his allies, decarbonization is portrayed as un-American - a project imposed by globalist elites that threatens jobs, freedom, and even traditional values. In this narrative, clean energy - except for nuclear - represents decline, weakness, and surrender, while coal, oil, and gas embody strength and sovereignty. This strategy has proven politically effective. By transforming a structural economic shift into a struggle over symbols, Trump mobilizes his base and blurs the line between defending American interests and defending the profits of fossil fuel incumbents.

This backlash against the transition, however, is fundamentally political rather than popular. In Europe for instance, most Europeans support renewable energy and electric vehicles, especially when these are tied to lower bills and local job creation.

Trump’s return to the global stage complicates this equation further. The US president actively seeks to redefine decarbonization as an ideological project opposed to national sovereignty. By framing climate action as "failing," Trump threatens to fracture the economic case of the energy transition, aiming to undermine joint industrial initiatives and sowing mistrust between allies on why they should act. His rhetoric offers a potent script for actors worldwide who wish to slow or reverse the transition.

Trump’s speech at the UN was not only a rejection of climate action, but a deliberate effort to reframe it as something foreign, elitist, and fundamentally "un-Western." It reflects a core Trumpian strategy: to pressure Europe into aligning more closely with U.S. interests by portraying decarbonization as both a path to decline and a form of submission to China. 

In this narrative, embracing clean energy is equated with surrendering economic sovereignty, while sticking with fossil fuels - US ones - becomes a symbol of strength and independence. The speech came just weeks after the U.S. secured a deeply asymmetrical - though politically inevitable- tariff deal with the EU. In this agreement, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen committed Europe to purchase $750 billion worth of U.S. energy, largely fossil fuels, over the next three years, despite having no real means to enforce this commitment. This sequence of events underscores how energy, climate, and trade are now fully entangled in a geopolitical struggle over influence and autonomy and how badly Europe is caught in between fires.

Meanwhile, caught between the US and Russia on Ukraine and fossil fuels, Europe is also squeezed by the Chinese question. China pursues its own dual strategy. It remains the world’s largest carbon emitter, expanding - or maintaining - coal and heavy industry to sustain economic growth, while simultaneously becoming the indispensable supplier of almost every clean technology needed for the transition: solar panels, batteries, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. 

What makes the culture war over climate so dramatic is that it risks not only slowing down the transition, but also warping its frame so that the change appears hostile to "ordinary people." When clean energy is portrayed as something costly, imposed, or un-American (or un-Western), the narrative becomes that the transition is a burden rather than an opportunity. That political framing can delay investment, undercut policies, create resistance to necessary regulation, and undermine social buy-in. 

The only remedy to this dramatic path is to show concretely that the transition is good for people - not just good for health or the planet, but good for incomes, jobs, local industries, regional prosperity, particularly in a fossil-fuel poor region like Europe. Clean tech must be not a sacrifice but a pathway to better material lives.

There are already concrete examples demonstrating that countries do not fail because of transitioning; in fact, industries relocate towards centres of clean-industrial opportunity. In Europe, cleantech investment and employment are rising: Germany has more than doubled its green jobs since 2019, including large expansions in solar and wind energy roles, even as other sectors contract. The UK’s net zero economy is expanding much faster than its overall economy - generating tens of thousands of jobs across renewables, energy storage, heat pumps, electric mobility, and tools for circular economy. 

There are also examples of clean-industrial relocation: U.S. cleantech firms are reportedly eyeing Europe as regulatory stability and funding improve, meaning Europe is becoming a magnet for firms that elsewhere face political or policy headwinds. Countries like Portugal are leveraging natural advantages - for example, low-cost green hydrogen potential and lithium resources - to build value chains. EU modelling suggests that expansion of green technologies generates hundreds of thousands of net new jobs, especially in manufacturing, construction, and services.