WASHINGTON — President-Elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Energy got a warm reception Wednesday in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Sen. Lisa Murkowski lauded his enthusiasm for affordable, abundant energy.
“I love the fact that you’re a self-described energy geek,” she said at his confirmation hearing.
Chris Wright is the chief executive of Liberty Energy, an oilfield services company. He also calls himself “a science geek,” a tech nerd and an energy entrepreneur.
Like Murkowski, Wright promotes renewable energy while also supporting continued production of fossil fuel. She praised his acceptance of climate change.
“You have said before this committee, and in other places, that climate change is real. Is that correct?” she asked.
“Absolutely, Senator,” he said.
“And I heard you say this morning that the solution to climate change is how we evolve our energy system,” she said. “Is that a correct summation?
“Absolutely, Senator,” he said again.
“So, it’s about technology. We’re acknowledging it, ” she said, referring apparently to climate change. “We’re dealing with it. We’re living it. We’re feeling it.”
She said it was cold in Washington, D.C. that day, while temperatures in Alaska were too high.
“We’re seeing changes that are detrimental to our system,” she said. “Our thermostat is out of whack, and we want to have the Arctic temperatures up north. But one of the ways that we know we’re going to get there is through our technologies that will help us adapt, mitigate, and to really help prevent.”
Outside of the committee room, some Democratic senators weren’t taken with Wright’s all-of-the-above energy approach.
“What makes Mr. Wright so troubling, however, is that he is perfectly willing to admit that climate change is happening while rejecting that we should do anything about it,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. “He says calling climate change a crisis is pure fear-mongering.”
Wright said in a video posted on social media in 2023 that there is no climate crisis. He gained some internet fame in 2019 for another video in which he drank fracking fluid, to demonstrate its safety.
