Vice President Kamala Harris reversed her position on fracking when she became her party’s presidential candidate this summer, and it is not just because the energy industry employs so many people in Pennsylvania, although that was an additional incentive. It is because voters simply no longer buy the Democratic Party’s climate fearmongering. They do not reject the truth of manmade warming, but they rightly reject the Left’s constant and constantly eroding climate alarmism, and they believe other matters are far more important. They voted accordingly, and now President-elect Donald Trump’s presumptive energy secretary nominee, Chris Wright, is set to bring much-needed perspective to the matter.
According to Gallup, of the 22 matters offered to voters as being the most important in influencing their vote, climate change came second to last, followed only by transgender rights. Similarly, of the 10 matters tracked by the Pew Research Center, climate change came dead last. Whatever else voters are upset about, warmer winters and other climate phenomena are not bothering them.
Democrats are trying to undermine Wright’s nomination by portraying his stance on climate change as dangerously false. The opposite is true. Wright’s views are not only supported by the scientific record but also represent a welcome change of perspective from Washington’s discredited orthodoxy.
Wright does not deny that climate change is occurring. In a report to his company, Liberty Energy, this year, he wrote, “Climate change is a real and global challenge that we should and can address.”
However, Wright continued, “Representing it as the most urgent threat to humanity today displaces concerns about more pressing threats … Climate change is a global challenge but is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life. While the focus on climate change is understandable, the movement fails to address the critical and inevitable tradeoffs involved.”
Nowhere have the costs of a myopic focus on cutting carbon emissions been more evident than in the energy policies of President Joe Biden’s administration. From unrealistic and misguided mandates for electric vehicles, which have cost jobs in the automotive industry, to closing public lands to fossil fuel production to costly subsidies for green energy, Biden has consistently prioritized his fanciful emissions goals over jobs and costs to the public.
That will all end with Wright in the Energy Department.
Activists target Wright for some of his specific claims, including that climate change makes the planet greener, boosts agricultural productivity, and reduces the number of temperature-related deaths. Unfortunately for the activists, Wright is right on all counts. None of those claims are plausibly controversial. That data are replete on all these points.
With more carbon dioxide (otherwise known as plant food) in the atmosphere, it is easier for plants to grow, and the Earth is getting greener as a result. These new plants do not consume enough carbon in the atmosphere to reverse or stop climate change, but Wright did not say that, only that they have a beneficial and mitigating effect.
Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and warmer temperatures in many regions mean farmers in many parts of the world produce more food in longer growing seasons. Warmer temperatures change what crops are most profitable for farmers in some areas, but that is not a crisis that demands a halt to economic growth.
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Finally, it is a simple fact that far more people die from extreme cold around the world every year than from extreme heat. As the planet warms, fewer people die from being too cold.
The Earth’s climate has changed in both directions since humanity conquered all seven continents. We are the dominant species on this planet because we adapt to our circumstances. Viewing climate change as a challenge to be met with ingenuity, not a crisis to be ended through deprivation, will be a welcome change in Washington.