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US President Donald Trump made it clear during the presidential campaign that his administration planned a “drill, baby, drill approach to energy. He said he would reduce regulations and cancel policies to fight climate change put in place by the Biden administration.
A week after he was elected, Trump announced he wanted fracking executive Chris Wright as his Secretary of Energy. The long-time climate denier who dismisses renewable energy as expensive and unreliable seemed to be everyone’s favorite, especially among those in the fossil fuel industry. It was smooth sailing for Wright through his confirmation hearing.
Episode four of The Takeover looks at the man who could make or break the world’s climate change goals.
Listen here
Wright’s views are at odds with the Paris Agreement and accepted science which strives to hold the earth’s temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Wright has no such ambitions.
“There is no climate crisis, and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either. Humans and all complex life on earth is simply impossible without carbon dioxide,” said Wright in a video posted on his LinkedIn page.
After his confirmation in February, Wright was in big demand. He spoke to the ARC conference in London, then the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington and the CERAWeek oil and gas conference in Houston.
“Recently, I have been called a climate denier or climate skeptic. This is simply wrong. I am a climate realist. The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon. That is a side effect of building the modern world,” said Wright.
Lifting the world’s citizens out of poverty requires trade-offs, he said, while failing to spell them out. But he was clear energy regulations would be the first to go so that the U.S. could once again become the world’s energy superpower.
Listen here to Episode four of The Takeover, Drill Baby Drill.
You can also listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon or wherever you get your podcasts.
Comments
This looks to be a valuable contribution National Observer is making to create a wider understanding of the dots connecting the alt right to the oil and gas industry....and a denialism in the face of both science and extreme weather events on the ground.........
If we let these luddites win, the future and those we love who will inherit it...isn't going to be much fun. The Great Mother doesn't give a rap about our fantasies of endless fossil fueled growth on a finite planet.
She serves all life forms......not just the dreams of lives top predator.