By Benoît Morenne | The Wall Street Journal
Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, says that climate change poses only a modest threat to humanity. The biggest U.S. oil companies disagree.
A fracking executive, Wright acknowledges that burning fossil fuels is contributing to rising temperatures. But he also says climate change makes the planet greener by increasing plant growth, boosts agricultural productivity and likely reduces the number of temperature-related deaths annually.
“It’s probably almost as many positive changes as there are negative changes,” he told conservative media nonprofit PragerU last year, referring to climate change. “Is it a crisis, is it the world’s greatest challenge, or a big threat to the next generation? No.”