Climate is “nowhere near the world’s biggest problem,” and has some benefits worth considering when evaluating its cost, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Wright appeared on Fox Business on Wednesday and said that the narrative pushed by leftist environmentalists has significant flaws. Wright, who is a longtime critic of radical environmentalism, said that the backlash against fossil fuels inspired by overwrought claims about climate change is unwarranted.
“Everything in life has tradeoffs, but a warmer planet with CO2 is better for growing plants. The world has been getting greener for decades – 14% more greenery around the planet today than there was 40 years ago,” Wright said, before pointing out that “far more people die of the cold than die of the heat.”
“Everything has a tradeoff, but, yeah, there’s pluses to global warming as well as negatives. But the bottom line is it’s nowhere near the world’s biggest problem today, not even close,” he added.
President Donald Trump nominated Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy with a background working in the oil and gas and nuclear industries. Wright is in charge of implementing a key plank of Trump’s agenda, a return to American energy dominance through oil and gas production and other energy sources that “can lower the cost of energy, expand job opportunities, and have more stuff made in America,” as Wright said in the interview.
Wright has spoken much more harshly about certain policies crafted on the assumption that climate change is an existential threat. On Monday, the energy secretary spoke via videolink to a conference in London and called the push to get to net zero carbon emissions within the next few decades a “sinister goal.”
“Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal,” Wright said. “The aggressive pursuit of it – and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs.”
