A few Spritzler facts to put this into some perspective.
China and India are the world's two largest polluters and drive this discussion...not the US. Their energy demands are growing.
No amount of wind and solar is going to even modestly modify global temps. Also BTW, Cars only represent about 13% of global energy use.
The widespread application of nuclear and fracking can move the dial (partly by reducing the dependence on coal...the worst polluter).
Research to find better energy sources is critical as is developing better battery tech for future EV cars and hybrids.
Finally, Wright's points about "warming" helping global agriculture have some validity. That doesn't mean we want to promote the planet getting hotter.
Trump’s Energy Secretary Pick Preaches the Benefits of Climate Change
Fracking CEO Chris Wright points to positive changes produced by global warming, in contrast with what some oil giants say
By Benoît Morenne, WSJ
Dec. 8, 2024 5:30 am ET
Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, says that climate change poses only a modest threat to humanity. The biggest U.S. oil companies disagree.
A fracking executive, Wright acknowledges that burning fossil fuels is contributing to rising temperatures. But he also says climate change makes the planet greener by increasing plant growth, boosts agricultural productivity and likely reduces the number of temperature-related deaths annually.
“It’s probably almost as many positive changes as there are negative changes,” he told conservative media nonprofit PragerU last year, referring to climate change. “Is it a crisis, is it the world’s greatest challenge, or a big threat to the next generation? No.”
Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax but hasn’t articulated his views in detail. The selection of Wright is one of the clearest indicators yet that the next administration is likely to push back on widely accepted scientific findings about climate change.
Many oil-and-gas executives have lauded Wright’s nomination as they expect he will give their industry a boost. Still, Wright’s climate pronouncements highlight the chasm between the Trump administration and the country’s biggest oil companies on a crucial issue.
Occidental Petroleum Chief Executive Vicki Hollub this year called climate change “the greatest crisis our world has ever faced.” Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said in a Wall Street Journal interview last month that Trump shouldn’t pull the U.S. from the Paris climate pact.
Wright has said “there is no climate crisis,” and that the Paris agreement empowers “political actors with antifossil-fuel agendas.”
A Trump-Vance transition official said Wright “intends to deliver on President Trump’s pledge to unleash affordable and reliable American energy to power homes, businesses, cars and factories, and secure energy independence.”
Climate Science, or ‘Unproven Theories’
Many in the fossil-fuels industry denied for decades that burning hydrocarbons heated the planet, and companies such as Exxon played down the severity of climate change. In recent years, however, some of these firms have changed their rhetoric. They have committed billions of dollars to low-carbon ventures and set goals to be carbon-neutral across their own operations by 2050.
But smaller, private drillers such as Continental Resources, founded by billionaire Harold Hamm, have set no emissions-reduction goals. Hamm, a Trump adviser who encouraged him to select Wright, has described climate science as “unproven theories.”
Wright, if confirmed by the Senate, will be tasked with safeguarding the country’s nuclear arsenal and directing federal research on energy technologies. The Energy Department also approves exports of liquefied natural gas, and Wright is almost certain to speed up permits for new terminals.
President Biden during his term made the DOE a linchpin of his strategy to combat climate change, pouring billions of dollars into the deployment of green energy. Wright has been critical of subsidies to wind and solar energy, favoring instead the development of geothermal and nuclear energy.
His brand of climate skepticism will likely find strong support in the Trump administration.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, has called climate science a “religion.” Vivek Ramaswamy, who alongside Elon Musk will seek to cut the federal budget, has pushed back against environmental, social and corporate-governance efforts and said, “The climate change agenda is a hoax.”
Climate deniers and skeptics also surrounded Trump in his first term. Since then, the world has seen a number of extreme weather events, which many scientists say are fueled in part by rising temperatures. Wealthy countries including the U.S. recently agreed to triple the financing they provide for climate-change projects in the developing world to at least $300 billion a year by 2035.
‘A little bit warmer isn’t a threat’
From his CEO perch at oil-field services company Liberty Energy, Wright has said fighting climate change is less important than allowing the world’s poorest to improve their lives by burning oil and gas. The benefits of cheap and reliable energy, he argues, more than outweigh the costs of climate change.
“A little bit warmer isn’t a threat. If we were 5, 7, 8, 10 degrees [Celsius] warmer, that would be meaningful changes to the planet,” he said in the PragerU interview.
Scientists see a 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature increase over several decades as creating potentially irreversible changes for the planet, with profound implications for health, food security and water management. Earth’s average temperature is expected to pass the mark this calendar year.
Wright, a self-described nerd who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has engaged with climate-change data in a way that few energy CEOs have. He has taken to Fox News to promote his views on fossil fuels and become a regular on the conservative speaking circuit.
“A general approach in our industry has been to, you know, lay low, and too often, I think, say what people want to hear,” he said in a Wall Street Journal interview last year.
Wright has engaged with and promoted controversial climate thinkers. They include Steven Koonin, a physicist who served at DOE under President Obama, and who says that the impact of mankind on climate change is too uncertain to warrant radical climate action; and Alex Epstein, a philosopher pushing for using more fossil fuels.
Flipping ESG on its head
In an interview, Epstein credited Wright with laying out the effects of producing hydrocarbons—and highlighting that they are “overwhelmingly positive” for humanity.
“Chris really was one of the people who flipped ESG on its head,” he said.
Wright wrote a 180-page corporate paper that delves into the history of energy and climate change. The erudite report relies on figures drawn from the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change’s reports as well as from fossil-fuel consultants, among other sources.
The CEO argues there are positive changes associated with climate change.
Wright cites the fact that the Earth is getting greener as more carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere, boosting plants’ photosynthesis. Climate scientists say lusher vegetation has helped mitigate climate change by cooling the land, but that the cooling effect is limited compared with the rate of global warming.
More available carbon dioxide has led to more productive crops, according to Wright. Scientists argue the long-term impact of global warming on agriculture will be mixed, with some farmers benefiting from longer, warmer growing seasons. But new weather patterns could upend today’s key food-producing regions.
Wright also argues that global warming probably reduces modestly the number of annual deaths related to extreme temperatures. Recent estimates from health researchers suggest otherwise. They say that in coming decades, the rise in extreme heat-related deaths will outweigh the decline in extreme cold-related deaths.
Climate change, Wright said at an oil-and-gas conference earlier this year, “should be treated honestly and evaluated as trade-offs, not as a religion or a cult, which unfortunately it’s become.”
Write to Benoît Morenne at benoit.morenne@wsj.com
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