Editors at National Review Online analyze President-elect Donald Trump’s approach to filling top jobs dealing with energy issues.
Joe Biden had a whole-of-government approach for green energy. Donald Trump is assembling a whole-of-government approach for energy. The omission of that one word makes a big difference.
Trump will appoint Chris Wright to be secretary of energy. Wright is the CEO of fracking firm Liberty Energy. He has said, “There is no climate crisis and we are not in the midst of an energy transition either.” Stuff like that comes as a shock to the media and the global environmental movement who can’t stop writing and advocating about those two things, but he’s correct on both counts. Climate change may pose challenges, but they are manageable challenges. And, a true energy transition is a long way off: Currently, green energy is more of an addition to global supply than anything else. It will be a relief to have leadership tethered to reality rather than alarmism and central-planning schemes praised as “ambitious” by our moral superiors.
Excepting the pandemic anomaly of 2020, U.S. carbon emissions per capita last year were the lowest they have been since 1939. They were highest in 1973 and have been in steep decline for the past 20 years. This follows a similar pattern in other wealthy countries where continued economic growth — not the “degrowth” some environmentalists want — has coincided with a reduction in per capita emissions.
Total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions peaked in 2005. They have declined as fracking has become widespread and the population has continued to increase. Wright will be attacked as anti-environment, yet by making natural gas more plentiful as a replacement for coal in electricity generation, fracking has helped the environment more than every road-blocking protest and project-blocking lawsuit from the green movement combined.
