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March 25, 2025 02:09 PM UTC

The Real Chris Wright Just Stood Up

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  • by: Colorado Pols
Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the Denver-based oil and gas executive now in charge of President Donald Trump’s “Drill Baby Drill” agenda to surpass the record levels of oil and gas produced during the Biden administration, promised in his confirmation hearing to be an “all of the above” kind of guy, paying lip service to the reality of human-caused climate change and “evolving our energy system” as a solution for climate change. This concession from a nominee who was otherwise known as an “evangelist” for fossil fuel production resulted in seven Senate Democrats, including both of Colorado’s U.S. Senators, voting in favor of Wright’s confirmation.

But since then, as ProPublica reports in their new story The Doublespeak of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Colorado’s highest-ranking official in the Trump administration has backslid on his admittedly vague commitments during his confirmation hearing to promote “all of the above” energy sources:

“It is a global issue. It is a real issue. It’s a challenging issue. And the solution to climate change is to evolve our energy system,” he told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “I am for improving all energy technologies that can better human lives and reduce emissions.”

Since his confirmation as the secretary of energy on Feb. 3, though, Wright has outlined an anti-climate agenda. Speaking to conservative audiences, he is charismatic, animated and far more zealous. Wright dismissed the transition to renewable energy as nonexistent in a Feb. 18 speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, a gathering associated with the podcast host Jordan Peterson, and called global efforts to boost the use of renewables, which he said drive up the price of energy, “lunacy.”

“The world simply runs on hydrocarbons,” he told the group, “and for most of their uses, we don’t have replacements.” [Pols emphasis]

The story goes on to contrast numerous statements made by Wright during his confirmation hearing with what appear to be wholesale abandonment of the switch to renewables as official policy since Wright took over as Energy Secretary. But perhaps even more fundamental and troubling in the long term, Wright seems to hold the view that human-caused climate change will either not be as bad as the benefits of expanding fossil fuel consumption, and humanity might even benefit as the planet heats up:

As Wright’s views have become more public, it suggests that he and the rest of Trump’s cabinet will embrace the premise of climate change but downplay its threat, even building a case that it is a benefit to society. The White House is seeking to reverse the legal definition of carbon dioxide as a climate pollutant and undo scores of rules addressing the economic costs of the extreme warming it causes. “Recently I’ve been called a climate denier or climate skeptic,” Wright told attendees at CERAWeek. “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,” he continued. Global life expectancy has soared. Poverty has sharply declined. Modern medicine and telecommunications and airplanes have all resulted. And in the process, “We have indeed raised global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50%.”

It’s a complete abandonment of what Wright said in the confirmation hearing, we’re not sure we’ve ever seen such a rapid betrayal of aisle-crossing votes as what Energy Secretary Chris Wright has managed in just weeks on the job. We feel pretty confident if Wright had told the Senate that climate change was just a “side effect” of human progress to be ignored in favor of ever greater levels of fossil fuel production, he would have received fewer Democratic votes.

Like Colorado learned with Neil Gorsuch, local isn’t always better.

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One thought on “The Real Chris Wright Just Stood Up”

  1. Except the change in global power capacity by source over the last 20 years shows a massive increase in renewables and a mostly flat line/decrease for non-renewables.  Chris Wright lives in the flat line because he profits immensely from it, whilst raping the land

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