Trump’s pick for energy secretary rejects linking climate change and wildfires

Oil executive Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Energy Department, has argued that climate change has not fueled more frequent and severe wildfires - a claim at odds with the scientific consensus.

Wright’s arguments drew scrutiny from Senate Democrats during his confirmation hearing Wednesday, as deadly wildfires continue to ravage the Los Angeles area, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 25 people.

In a 2021 appearance on the PetroNerds podcast, Wright criticized mainstream media outlets for drawing a connection between wildfires and warming. Wildfires are “a major thing in the news now,” he said. “‘It’s climate change. It’s climate change.’ … The short answer: It is not.”

Wright, head of the fracking company Liberty Energy, has also disputed this connection in more recent LinkedIn posts, according to a review of his comments conducted by the environmental group Evergreen Action and shared with The Washington Post.

In the summer of 2023, as smoke from Canadian wildfires engulfed the East Coast, Wright wrote on LinkedIn that “the hype over wildfires is just hype to justify” harmful climate policies. He linked to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist and author who contends that experts have overstated the negative impacts of climate change.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) slammed Wright’s comment about “hype” in a tense exchange during the confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“The climate crisis and its deadly effects is very real to my neighbors and my constituents,” Padilla said. “It’s pretty disappointing to come across some social media posts of yours. … Do you still believe that wildfires are just hype?”

Wright responded that he was watching the wildfires in the Los Angeles area “with great sorrow and fear.” After the Democrat pressed him further, he added, “I stand by my past comments.”

“So you believe it’s hype,” Padilla said. “Tell that to the families of the more than two dozen lost in these fires and counting because the urban rescue teams are still going property to property with cadaver dogs.”

Yet Republicans, who have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, remain confident they can confirm Wright to helm the Energy Department, which oversees the nation’s energy policy but not wildfire response efforts. Nominees for Cabinet positions can be confirmed by a simple majority vote, skirting the 60-vote threshold for most legislation.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana), another member of the energy panel, said in an interview Tuesday that he was “125 percent” supportive of Wright’s nomination, predicting he would easily win confirmation. Several other Republicans on the committee praised Wright’s qualifications and background as a scientist during the confirmation hearing Wednesday.

Wright kicked off the hearing by promising he would be an unapologetic champion for Trump’s plans to unleash fossil fuel production, saying, “I will work tirelessly to pursue his bold agenda.” Shortly into his opening remarks, a climate protester disrupted the proceedings. Another climate protester interrupted again shortly into questioning.

The frequency and magnitude of extreme wildfires around the globe have doubled in the past two decades because of climate change, according to a study published last year in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Rising temperatures have ushered in an era of hotter and drier weather, lending the right conditions for wildfires to erupt, the researchers found.

A study released last week in the journal Nature Reviews also found that climate change is contributing to “weather whiplash” - periods of torrential rain followed by dry, tinderbox-like conditions - in the Los Angeles area. Experts say this trend set the stage for the Los Angeles blazes, along with other key factors such as urban sprawl and a resistance to clearing vegetation around homes.

In the opinion piece that Wright cited on LinkedIn, Lomborg noted that the total acreage burned globally by wildfires has been declining since 2001. This shows that “climate change hasn’t set the world on fire,” Lomborg concluded.

Several climate scientists told The Post that this argument is misleading because it focuses on total acreage rather than certain regions where climate change has fueled more frequent and destructive blazes.

“Acreage does not tell the whole truth,” Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said in an email. “Places are burning today that never burned in the past. … Climate change has fundamentally altered the nature of wildfire.”

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said Lomborg averaged “irrelevant” decreases in the burning of savanna and grasslands with “far more relevant” increases in the burning of forests in parts of the United States and Australia.

“He cites irrelevant statistics to obscure the well-established trend toward more extensive and more intense wildfires in dry subtropical regions of Australia and the U.S.,” Mann said in an email.

“Human-caused climate change is the primary factor in the more widespread, damaging and deadly wildfires we have seen in the western U.S. in recent decades,” he added.

A spokeswoman for Liberty Energy referred questions about the scientists’ criticisms to Meg Bloomgren, who is volunteering for the Trump transition team and shepherding Wright through his confirmation process.

“Chris Wright has spent his career focused on energy solutions to better human lives, including studying and determining that climate change is real and a problem we must solve together with relentless U.S. innovation and technology solutions,” Bloomgren said in a statement. “As a lifelong entrepreneur, Chris looks forward to advancing President Trump’s energy agenda and positioning America to lead the world in innovation once confirmed.”

In an email, Lomborg pushed back on the climate scientists’ criticisms and said he stood by his claims.

“It is quite astonishing to claim that it is misleading to look at the total acreage burned by wildfires,” Lomborg said. “This is one of the most obvious, common-sense and long-term measurements available, and the focus of many studies.”

Wright has also argued that climate change is not a crisis and that a warmer Earth has reduced deaths from cold weather. Last year, he reposted another LinkedIn post that asserted: “Cold is way more deadly than heat. … Now obviously burning to death in a fire is pretty grim but that is not what is happening like the climate zealots would like you to believe.”

To justify these claims, Wright has cited studies showing that the rise in deaths from hot weather in recent decades was offset by the drop in deaths from cold weather. But the authors of these studies previously told The Post that Wright had misconstrued their work.

While the authors wrote that there could be a near-term decline in temperature-related deaths, they said it is misleading to attribute the drop in cold-weather deaths entirely to global warming while overlooking factors such as better clothing, better heating and car travel. Subsequent research also has shown that climate change could substantially increase the number of temperature-related deaths in the long term, they said.

Democrats on the Energy Committee sought Tuesday afternoon to delay Wright’s confirmation hearing, saying the fracking executive had not provided key paperwork, including a financial disclosure report and an ethics agreement. But Energy Committee Chairman Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Tuesday evening that he had obtained the documents and that the hearing would proceed as planned.

“The committee has received Chris Wright’s paperwork and is prepared to move forward without further unnecessary holdups,” Lee said in a statement. “Mr. Wright has been fully transparent and cooperative throughout this process, working closely with the Office of Government Ethics and fully complying with its recommendations. … The time for needless delays is over.”

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Evan Halper contributed to this report.