Global Failure: Trump's United Nations Speech
September 28, 2025
by William P. Meyers

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Earth need a Global Government and Global EPA

Donald Trump's address to the United Nations on September 23, 2025 was certainly covered by the news. For most nations it simply confirmed that the United States of America is temporarily being led by a demented or insane person. Here I want to use the speech to illuminate certain of the world's problems. I will also suggest possible solutions.

Trump criticized the United Nations for failing to stop wars. But the wars it failed to stop were often wars of aggression by the United States. The Korean War, which should have remained a civil war decided by the Koreans themselves. The Vietnam War. The Afghan War. The Iraq War. I agree we need a stronger global government to end wars between nations. But Trump's undercutting the UN does not help (and in fairness, past U.S. presidents have not helped either). I will come back to this issue with a remark on the founding of the UN and its structure.

On immigration Trump said: "Not only is the U.N. not solving the problems it should. Too often, it's actually creating new problems for us to solve. The best example is the number one political issue of our time: the crisis of uncontrolled migration." The number one issue? Really? An important one, perhaps, but why do so many people want to migrate? Sometimes political oppression. More often lack of economic opportunity caused by the global economic structure. Increasingly the desperate need to migrate is due to global warming, resulting in failing crops, intolerable heat, drought, floods and storms.

Donald likes burning fossil fuel. His rich father gave him an expensive gas guzzling car when he was 16, in 1952, and he has never looked back. "We are getting rid of the falsely named renewables. By the way, they are a joke. They don't work. They're too expensive. They are not strong enough to fire up the plants that you need to make your country great. The wind doesn't blow, those big windmills are so pathetic and so bad, so expensive to operate, and they have to be rebuilt all the time, they start to rust and rot. Most expensive energy ever conceived, and it's actually energy. You are supposed to make money with energy, not lose money, you lose money the governments have to subsidize, you cannot put them out without massive subsidies."

Trump has a long history, documented for instance in Lucky Loser by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, of saying he is great and his opinions are great, even when they are not factual. So he rants on and on against climate science, including saying "Climate change, no matter what happens, you are involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people." It is a "global warming hoax.". People who disagree with him are stupid. End of argument. Were you born to a father worth one billion dollars? Did you inherit his company? No? Then you are stupid.

Towards the end of the speech Trump lauds nationalism. "Our ancestors gave everything for homelands that they defended with pride, with sweat, with blood, with life, and with death. Now the righteous task of protecting the nations." Yet it is nationalism, and nationalist leaders, who have caused almost every war in history.

The reality is what happens in the United States does not stay in the United States. There are other examples, but to be brief I will use carbon dioxide. When fossil fuel is burned in the U.S. the resulting carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere. Since the industrial revolution the level of carbon dioxide has in the atmosphere has risen above its baseline level, at first gradually, then more rapidly as the human population expanded and fossil fuel use became more common. In the 1900 the U.S. was the biggest national contributor to greenhouse gases. True, more recently China has become the largest single contributor, but it is still behind the U.S. in emissions per person.

And so the earth is warming, and more quickly now than a few decades ago. The polar ice is melting, sea level is rising, droughts and heat waves expanding, storms packing more destructive energy.

The United Nations has tried to slow global warming. But it does not have the power to do that. Everything is done be voluntary agreements. In addition the permanent Security Council members [United States, France, Britain, Russia and China] can veto anything. That is no way to run a global civilization. Because no matter what Trump says, we are a global civilization, not a collection of savage nations.

How did we get here, with a Keystone Cops international government? The United states was the main driver creating the United Nations, and it was always meant to be this way, more or less. There were precedents, then in December 1941, while Germany and allies still seemed likely to win World War II, President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had the Declaration of the United Nations drafted. The USSR (Russia), under Stalin, was in on it too. Other allied states signed the Declaration, then a meeting was held in March 1945 to set up the actual organization. By then it was clear Germany and Japan would be defeated. With 50 nations in tow, it became official in October 1945.

For America the point was always to make it the supreme global power, largely replacing both the British and French empires. It was supposed to keep the peace and allow for democracy, though the communist version of democracy was quite different from the capitalist version.

Wars went on, in fact the UN created new conflicts. It created the state of Israel within the former British colony of Palestine. That went well.

So if we, the people of earth, like democracy, why does France with a population around 69 million, get veto power, when several nations with far larger populations don't get that power?

Why do the billions of people who are already badly affected by global warming have to obey the United States, the primary past contributor to global warming?

I have argued we need a Global Environmental Protection Agency (GEPA) with real power to rapidly reduce fossil fuel use. To have real power it would need to be able to punish nations like Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other nations that continue to promote the use of fossil fuel.

That would be a big step. We should let history be our guide. 13 weak states, English colonies in North America, came together in 1776 and were able to defeat the world's most powerful nation, Great Britain. The nations that care about the Earth, its people and all its life, need to come together to form an international government that can enforce true peace, regulations to protect the environment, and a fair economic system. It would not need to micromanage. As in the United States (and most nations) powers are divided between localities, states, and the national government, only appropriate powers would be given to the international government.

Whatever else you think of Donald Trump, he has always dreamed big, even if his dreams are mainly commercial or self-promoting. The rest of us need to dream big. Because if we fail to gain control of those fossil fuel companies and their allies, we are all cooked.