With the U.S. Senate holding confirmation hearings for several of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees on Wednesday, climate organizers were joined by progressive lawmakers outside the Capitol to speak out against one potential administration official in particular—who they warned poses "a threat to our democracy and our future."
The subject of the press conference, organized by the Sunrise Movement, was Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, whom Trump nominated to be secretary of energy.
"As fires level entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles, the last thing we need is to put an oil CEO in charge of energy policy," said the group, referring to deadly wildfires that have destroyed an estimated 12,300 buildings, including thousands of homes, in recent days.
The press conference was just the latest expression of outrage over Trump's selection of Wright, who contributed $400,000 to Trump's campaign in what Sunrise said was an effort "to buy the energy secretary role."
The Sierra Club called Wright the "personification of 'conflict of interest,'" noting that he has spent decades denying the connection between his company's work and the climate emergency while "getting rich from polluting, dangerous fracking for methane gas."
"Wright made it clear that, if confirmed, he'd hinder clean energy investment and promote fossil fuels like LNG exports, further enriching himself and his fellow oil and gas CEOs while we continue to pay the price with more pollution and higher energy costs," said Mahyar Sorour, director of Beyond Fossil Fuels policy for Sierra Club. "As Americans from coast to coast are living with the catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis, the last thing we need is a climate-denying fossil fuel executive at the helm of our nation's energy policy."
In 2021, Wright said on a podcast that planetary heating "is not" fueling wildfires—a claim directly at odds with scientists' warning that the changing climate, driven by fossil fuel extraction, is increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires in Western states as well as areas that have historically faced far less destructive fire seasons.
He doubled down on the claim in 2023 as smoke from intense wildfires in Canada drifted across the U.S. East Coast, writing in a post on LinkedIn that "the hype over wildfires is just hype to justify" Democratic climate policies, and last year he told the House Financial Services Committee that "it is popular today to suggest that somehow in the next 10 or 30 years we are going to 'transition' fully away from fossil fuels. This cannot and will not happen."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday shared a video Wright posted to LinkedIn last year, in which he asserted, "We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or floods despite endless fear mongering of the media, politicians and activists."
"What on Earth is this man talking about?" asked Schumer. "Is he such an idealogue that he doesn't see the truth of the world around him?"
Should he be confirmed to lead the Department of Energy (DOE), said Allie Rosenbluth, United States program manager at Oil Change International (OCI), on Monday, Wright would "do his best to put a rapid end to President [Joe] Biden's pause on new authorizations for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports." The move would raise the price of electricity, increasing prices for U.S. households by 30%, according to a recent analysis by Public Citizen, and would increase greenhouse gas emissions.
"While these actions will face stiff legal challenges and public outrage, if allowed to go forward, they will harm public health and safety for the sake of fossil fuel industry profits," said Rosenbluth. "According to the International Energy Agency, any new fossil fuel development is incompatible with meeting our climate goals and protecting our communities from devastating climate disasters like the Los Angeles fires."
Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs of the League of Conservation Voters, said Trump's nomination of Wright is a signal that the Republican president-elect "is following through on the $1 billion offer he made to Big Oil at a dinner this spring," when he urged executives to donate to his campaign in return for rolled back climate regulations once Trump is in office.
"It is not surprising, but still appalling that Trump's pick for secretary of energy is a climate-denying Big Oil executive," said Sittenfeld.
Accountable.US called on senators weighing Wright's nomination to consider several facts about his career in the fracking industry before voting to confirm him as energy secretary, including: