The US Senate, yesterday confirmed Chris Wright, a fracking executive, as Donald Trump’s energy secretary.
The vote was 59-38.
Wright, 60, who is the CEO of Liberty Energy since 2011 has said he will step down from the company once confirmed. He wrote in a Liberty report last year that he believes human-caused climate change is real, but that its hazards are “distant and uncertain”. He has also said that top-down governmental policies to curb it are destined to fail.
However, Wright has called climate change activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.
“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either,” Wright said in a video posted to his LinkedIn profile in 2023.
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Wright recently faced criticism from California senators when, shortly after the Palisades and Eaton fires devastated Los Angeles, he disputed the ties between climate change and more recent or severe wildfires, the Washington Post reported.
During Wright’s US Senate confirmation hearing, California senator Alex Padilla accused Wright of downplaying the real and deadly effects of wildfires. When the senator asked whether Wright stood by those comments in light of the catastrophic blazes in his home state, Wright responded that he believed that climate change was a global phenomenon and that he stood by his past comments.
Scientific studies contradict Wright’s claims. Climate change has, in fact, contributed to the increased frequency and severity of wildfires, including those in Los Angeles.
Wright, who does not have any political experience, has written extensively on the need for more fossil fuel production to lift people out of poverty.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
