How the U.S. Energy Secretary is Gaslighting the Climate Crisis

The Climate Historian

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How the U.S. Energy Secretary is Gaslighting the Climate Crisis

Diary: Thursday, 13 March 2025

The Climate Historian

Mar 13, 2025

Transcript

It looks like I’ll be spending quite a bit of time correcting the misleading claims of Chris Wright, the new U.S. Energy Secretary. Just recently, at CERAWeek— the world's leading energy conference—in Houston, Wright, a former fracking executive, promised what he described as a complete reversal, or "180-degree pivot," of U.S. climate and energy policies.

In his remarks, Wright dismissed President Biden's climate policies as “myopically focused on climate change, with people as simply collateral damage.” He attempted a moral justification for continued fossil fuel usage, arguing that aggressive emissions reductions could hinder global poverty alleviation efforts and that discouraging coal development in poorer nations was misguided advice.

Calling himself a "climate realist," Wright acknowledged human-induced global warming yet framed it as a necessary trade-off. He said: We have indeed raised global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50 percent in the process of more than doubling human life expectancy, lifting almost all of the world’s citizens out of grinding poverty... Everything in life involves trade-offs.” However, his selective realism omitted crucial mentions of extreme weather events, droughts, and the significant costs of climate adaptation.

Chris Wright's misunderstandings are nothing new. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I found it necessary to challenge his equally misleading claims during an interview on Fox on February 19th, 2025.

Let’s set the record straight.

False Dichotomy: Climate Action vs. Human Welfare

Secretary Wright's claim of climate policies as "“myopically focused on climate change, with people as simply collateral damage.” creates a false dichotomy that has no basis in science. The scientific evidence demonstrates precisely the opposite. The real harm comes not from transitioning to clean energy, but from unchecked fossil fuel dependence. Climate change already creates enormous collateral damage to human populations through extreme weather events, agricultural disruption, and displacement of communities. Pretending that continued fossil fuel reliance is a humanitarian act is, at best, wishful thinking—at worst, willful negligence.

Take nuclear energy as an example. Between 1971 and 2009, it prevented an estimated 1.8 million deaths by reducing air pollution from fossil fuels. This represents just one aspect of the human cost of fossil fuel dependence that the Secretary conveniently decided to ignore.

The Economic Reality: Who Really Suffers?

When Secretary Wright argues that "aggressively cutting emissions could hurt global efforts to alleviate poverty," he neglects to mention that climate impacts disproportionately affect impoverished communities who lack resources for adaptation. The world's poorest nations, which have contributed least to the climate crisis, face the most severe consequences. This represents a profound injustice that cannot be dismissed with vague references to development priorities. By the way, today about 613.760.000 live in extreme poverty, or 7.6% of the total world population.

The real economic question isn’t whether we can afford to transition away from fossil fuels, but whether we can afford not to. Policies such as a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend, advocated by climate scientists and economists alike—including James Hansen—offer solutions that transparently price carbon and fairly redistribute the proceeds to citizens. Initiatives like Delton Chen’s Global Carbon Reward (GCR) are designed to accelerate global mitigation efforts and safeguard communities and ecosystems.

The False Promise of Unlimited Fossil Expansion

Wright’s dismissal of global net-zero emissions is a fundamental misreading of climate science. We are already beyond safe greenhouse gas concentration levels. So, the Secretary's self-designation as a "climate realist" contradicts the actual reality of climate science. Genuine climate realism requires acknowledging the overwhelming evidence for the rapid transformation of energy systems. The continued burning of fossil fuels makes climate stabilisation impossible. Ignoring these realities isn’t realism—it’s reckless denial.

The Secretary's recommendation that developing nations expand coal resources represents dangerous thinking. Coal is not only the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel but also produces extensive air pollution that causes millions of premature deaths annually. Advising developing nations to build coal infrastructure effectively sentences their citizens to decades of health consequences and environmental instability.

The True Trade-offs of Climate Inaction

Secretary Wright stated, "Everything in life involves trade-offs," but conveniently ignored the most critical trade-offs of continued fossil fuel dependence and inaction. Ice melt and sea level rise could lead to multi-meter sea level rise affecting hundreds of millions of coastal residents. The geological record shows that the last time Earth’s temperature was 2–3°C warmer (3.5 million years ago), sea levels weren’t a few inches higher—they were 25 meters higher.

The Secretary's silence on extreme weather, drought, ecosystem collapse, and extreme heat that will make large parts of the world uninhabitable reveals the selective nature of his "realism." We have already delayed meaningful action for decades, with each year of inaction narrowing our options and increasing the eventual costs. So, the real moral question isn’t whether climate action is too costly—it’s whether we’re willing to accept the catastrophic costs of doing nothing.

But the Climate Historian a coffee

Notes