US President-elect Donald Trump nominated fracking magnate and climate change skeptic Chris Wright as energy secretary on Saturday, tasking him with “cutting red tape” which the new administration hopes will drive investment in fossil fuels.
“As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new ‘Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace,'” Trump said in a statement.
Wright is founder of Liberty Energy, which serves the energy companies that have massively increased US fossil fuel production in recent years by extracting oil and gas from shale fields in a process known as “fracking.”
In a LinkedIn post a year ago, Wright denied that there was a “climate crisis.”
“There is no climate crisis and we are not in the midst of an energy transition either,” he said, adding that “the term carbon pollution is outrageous” because all life depended on carbon dioxide.
“There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy, all energy sources have impacts on the world both positive and negative,” he added.
Trump called him “one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence, and transformed the Global Energy Markets and Geopolitics.”