Donald Trump announced the nomination of Christ Wright as Secretary of Energy. CEO of large companies in the sector, he is an outspoken climate skeptic who refutes the climate crisis.
In the middle of COP 29, Donald Trump is making a choice that goes in the opposite direction of the ecological transition in the energy sector. On Saturday, November 16, he named Christ Wright Secretary of Energy. This position is of particular importance as climate change is obvious and the United States is the second country that consumes the most energy in the world (behind China), with 15.3% of global energy consumption. primary energy in 2019, according to data from the International Energy Agency (OUCH). But here we are, Christ Wright does not believe in climate change, just like Donald Trump, he is an open climate skeptic.
“As Energy Secretary, Christ will be a key leader, driving innovation, reducing administrative barriers, and ushering in a new golden age of American prosperity and world peace,” the president-elect said in a press release. Chris Wright will also be a member of the brand new National Energy Council (NEC), the creation of which was announced Friday by the president-elect, and whose mission will be to “oversee the path to energy domination of the United States”.
CEO of several companies in the energy sector
Christ Wright has a distinguished background in the energy sector. With the companies he created and managed, he supported several energy production projects, each more polluting than the last. A graduate of MIT and UC Berkeley, he founded Pinnacle Technologies in 1992, which helped launch commercial shale gas production and mapped hydraulic fractures. These allow the extraction of this gas, which releases significant quantities of methane into the atmosphere. This greenhouse gas has a much more powerful warming power than carbon dioxide.
He then chaired Stroud Energy, which is a leading producer of shale gas. Today, he is the CEO of Liberty Energy, which he created in 2011, specializing in hydraulic fracturing.
An assumed climate skeptic
For Christ Wright, “there is no climate crisis and we are not in the middle of an energy transition either,” he writes on his LinkedIn account. “The term carbon pollution is scandalous,” he also assures, believing that all life depends on carbon dioxide. He also believes that there is no “clean energy or dirty energy, all energy sources have both positive and negative impacts on the world.” As the Financial Times recalls, the businessman’s candidacy was supported by companies in the oil sector.
In his statement, Donald Trump congratulated his newly appointed friend: “Christ was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American shale revolution that fueled American energy independence and transformed global energy markets and geopolitics.” Enough to convince climate skeptics. A study from Yale University conducted in 2023 showed that 16% of Americans do not believe in climate change, which corresponds to approximately 49 million people. The consequences of this climate change are still being felt in several regions, including the United States, with increasingly strong hurricanes, like Milton recently, and fires that devastate cities and nature every year.