California governor Gavin Newsom has said Donald Trump is an “invasive species” whose dismissal of the climate crisis is an “abomination”, in a fiery attack at the UN climate talks in Brazil – from which Trump and his administration have been completely absent.
Newsom is the most senior American politician at the Cop30 summit in Belém, after Trump took the unprecedented step of not sending a delegation to the talks. Newsom sought to fill the notable void of official US activity by lambasting the president for tearing up climate policies and pushing for burning more of the fossil fuels that have caused dangerous global heating.
On Tuesday, it emerged that Trump has drawn up plans to open up the coast of California for oil and gas drilling, a move that Newsom said would happen “over my dead body, full stop. He said he wants to open up the coast of California, but he doesn’t want oil-drilling rigs off the coast of Florida, not across the street from Mar-a-Lago. He’s silent on that. But it’s not going to happen. It’s dead on arrival.”
Accusing Trump of an assault upon the climate and on democracy, Newsom said of the president: “He’s an invasive species, he’s a wrecking-ball president. He’s trying to roll back progress of the last century. He’s trying to recreate the 19th century. He’s doubling down on stupid.”
Trump has called the climate crisis a “con job” and urged countries to remain wedded to coal, oil and gas, and even remove their climate policies if necessary in order to purchase more US fossil fuels.
The Republican president declined to send any representatives to Cop30, where countries are thrashing out new emissions-cutting targets and climate finance.
Newsom said Trump’s rolling back of climate policies and removing the US from the Paris climate agreement is “an abomination, it’s a disgrace” and added this would benefit China, which is dominating the world in the manufacture and deployment of clean energy such as solar and wind.
“You know who is cheering, who is singing his praises? President Xi of China,” Newsom said. “They are sitting back and dominating supply chains, because they understand the great opportunity of clean energy.”
Newsom, a Democrat who became governor of California in 2019, is heading an alternate US delegation at Cop30 that includes more than 100 elected officials who are stressing that subnational jurisdictions in the US are still committed to tackling the climate crisis.
Newsom is one of 24 governors who are part of the US Climate Alliance, a group of states that represents more than half of the US’s population and has stated support for climate action.
This motley group has not glossed over the jarring absence of the US government in Belém, however, and some other leading figures at the talks have expressed relief that the Trump administration wasn’t there.
Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations framework convention on climate change, said on Tuesday that the US’s absence from the talks “actually is a good thing”.
“Ciao, bambino,” was her response to the US’s departure from the Paris agreement.
At a press gaggle, Newsom said: “That’s a hell of a statement coming from the mother of the Paris agreement.” In light of the Trump administration’s behavior at an international maritime meeting last month, where officials menaced some foreign leaders and threatened tariffs on those who supported a carbon fee on shipping, US presence could be a threat, Newsom added.
Trump’s absence “creates opportunity” for local leaders to step into the fold on climate policy, Newsom said.
“What stands in the way becomes the way. This is an opportunity for us bottom up at the local level to assert ourselves,” he said. “He pulled away. That’s why I pulled up.”
Newsom is considered a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 2028 presidential race. While he said he wouldn’t be drawn on whether he would run, he stressed that Democrats needed to reframe the debate around the climate crisis, to focus on simple messages around cost of living and the problems American households are facing in getting insurance due to repeated climate-fueled disasters.
Joe Biden attempted to sell his climate policies as being a benefit for jobs and the economy, a pitch that failed to resonate with voters. Biden then dropped out of his struggling re-election campaign, with Kamala Harris losing to Trump.
“Climate change can seem abstract,” he said. “We need to talk in terms that people understand. It’s about people, places, lifestyles and traditions. If we put things in those terms, we can start winning people over.”
