When Donald Trump blames Canada for the smoke produced by wildfires

 

When Donald Trump blames Canada for the smoke produced by wildfires, his rhetoric consists of denying or minimizing human-caused global warming, its seriousness, and the need to rapidly reduce fossil-fuel use. His most recent statements, however, now go so far as to portray climate science itself as a deception.

1. His main statements

On September 23, 2025, before the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump described climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He also claimed that the carbon footprint was a “hoax” invented by people with malicious intentions. He advised governments to abandon what he calls the “green scam,” arguing that climate policies would lead their economies to failure.

His administration systematically uses expressions such as:

“Green New Scam”;

“the religion of climate change”;

“Green New Deal fantasies”;

“beautiful clean coal”;

“American energy dominance.”

Trump’s EPA even described the revision of climate regulations as “driving a dagger through the heart of the climate-change religion.”

This position is incompatible with the scientific consensus: the accumulation of CO₂, methane, and other greenhouse gases reduces the amount of infrared radiation escaping into space, thereby increasing the planet’s average temperature.

2. Measures taken since his return to power

Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement

On January 20, 2025, Trump ordered the United States to withdraw once again from the Paris Agreement. He also revoked the United States International Climate Finance Plan and called for an end to financial commitments related to international climate policies.

This reduces:

American diplomatic objectives for lowering emissions;

funding intended to help poorer countries adapt to climate change;

international pressure on major polluting industries.

Elimination of the legal foundation for greenhouse-gas regulations

The most radical measure was taken on February 12, 2026, when the EPA rescinded the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the scientific and legal determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.

This decision removes the EPA’s principal legal basis for regulating CO₂ emissions from automobiles and engines under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act. At the same time, the administration eliminated federal greenhouse-gas standards applying to model-year 2012 through 2027 vehicles and later models.

This is much more than a simple relaxation of regulations: it is an attempt to legally disarm a significant part of federal climate policy.

Rollback of vehicle standards

The administration has eliminated, or begun the process of eliminating:

CO₂ limits for automobiles;

standards applying to light-, medium-, and heavy-duty trucks;

several measures intended to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles;

certain energy-efficiency requirements portrayed as restrictions on “consumer choice.”

However, eliminating a CO₂ standard does not automatically eliminate every regulation concerning fine particles, nitrogen oxides, or carbon monoxide. Greenhouse gases and toxic air pollutants are legally and scientifically distinct, though partially overlapping, categories.

Dismantling power-plant regulations

In June 2025, the EPA proposed repealing all federal greenhouse-gas standards applying to coal- and gas-fired power plants. It also proposed weakening the 2024 requirements concerning mercury and toxic substances, arguing that these regulations could lead to the closure of coal-fired plants.

The administration also used emergency orders to prevent several coal-fired plants from closing. The Department of Energy claims that it kept more than 17 gigawatts of coal-fired generating capacity in operation in 2025.

Closure or cancellation of clean-energy programs

The Department of Energy announced several rounds of cancellations:

24 clean-energy demonstration projects, representing more than US$3.7 billion, in May 2025;

321 grants involving 223 projects, worth approximately US$7.56 billion, in the fall of 2025;

the return to the Treasury of more than US$13 billion in uncommitted funds from programs associated with the Inflation Reduction Act and the Biden administration’s climate policies.

The cancelled projects did not all deal exclusively with solar or wind energy. Some involved industrial decarbonization, hydrogen, carbon capture, electrical grids, and various technological demonstrations. The administration maintains that they were economically inadequate; its opponents view the cancellations as an ideologically motivated liquidation of climate investments.

Restrictions on wind energy and priority given to fossil fuels

The presidential order on “American energy” accelerated oil, gas, and mining permits while ordering a review of policies supporting electric vehicles, wind power, and various low-emission technologies.

The overall policy is therefore consistent:

produce more oil, gas, and coal, reduce environmental constraints, and treat the immediate cost of energy as a greater priority than the future cost of climate disruption.

3. How much pollution comes from the United States?

The word pollution covers several different realities. A distinction must be made between emissions that contribute to climate change and pollutants that directly degrade the air people breathe.

Annual CO₂ emissions

The United States currently produces approximately 4.9 billion tonnes of fossil-fuel CO₂ per year. With worldwide fossil-fuel emissions approaching 38 billion tonnes, the American share represents approximately 13 per cent of the global total. The United States therefore remains the world’s second-largest national annual emitter, behind China, even though its population represents only about 4 per cent of the world’s population.

This means that the average American produces several times more CO₂ than the average person living in many countries in Africa, South Asia, or Latin America.

Historical responsibility

Since the beginning of industrialization, the United States has emitted the largest cumulative quantity of CO₂ from fossil fuels and industry of any country: nearly one quarter of historical global emissions.

This figure is important because CO₂ remains in the climate system for a long time. Global warming therefore depends not only on emissions produced during the current year, but also on the accumulation created over previous decades.

Conventional air pollution

The domestic American record is more nuanced. Thanks to the Clean Air Act, vehicle standards, and industrial controls, the combined emissions of six major categories of pollutants—particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, and lead—declined by approximately 79 per cent between 1970 and 2024.

This represents a genuine environmental achievement. However, it does not mean that the climate problem has been solved:

conventional pollutants can disappear relatively quickly once their emissions are reduced;

CO₂ accumulates and acts on a global scale;

a coal-fired power plant can be equipped to reduce certain particles or sulphur emissions while continuing to release enormous quantities of CO₂;

wildfires, extreme heat, and ozone can also cause air quality to deteriorate once again.

4. The fundamental contradiction

Since 1970, the United States has demonstrated that it is possible to drastically reduce several pollutants while continuing to develop the economy. The EPA itself reports that emissions of common air pollutants have fallen by nearly four fifths during that period.

Trump nevertheless uses the cost of regulations as an argument for abolishing climate rules. His position is based primarily on three political convictions:

fossil-fuel resources constitute a strategic American advantage;

any climate restriction would weaken industry and increase prices;

climate projections are exaggerated or ideologically biased.

The problem is that he focuses almost exclusively on the visible and immediate cost of regulation, without accounting with equal rigour for deferred costs: heat waves, illnesses, droughts, wildfires, floods, insurance costs, damaged infrastructure, and agricultural losses. Between 1980 and 2024, the United States recorded 403 weather- or climate-related disasters that each caused at least one billion dollars in damage. The average rose from nine events per year over the entire period to twenty-three per year between 2020 and 2024.

In summary, Trump is no longer merely challenging certain methods of combating global warming. His second term is seeking to dismantle the legal, administrative, financial, and diplomatic foundations of American climate policy, even though the United States remains one of the world’s largest annual emitters and the leading historical contributor to the CO₂ accumulated in the atmosphere.