The US Senate has confirmed Chris Wright, a fracking executive, to be President Donald Trump’s energy secretary.
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Wright, CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy since 2011, has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change. He says more fossil fuel production can lift people out of poverty around the globe and has promised to help Trump “unleash energy security and prosperity”.
The vote on Monday was 59-38, with seven Democrats and one independent, who caucuses with Democrats, crossing the aisle.
Wright, 60, has said he will step down from Liberty Energy once confirmed. He wrote in a Liberty report last year that he believes human-caused climate change is real, but that its hazards are “distant and uncertain”. He has also said that top-down governmental policies to curb it are destined to fail.
“President Trump shares my passion for energy,” Wright said at his confirmation hearing last month, promising that if confirmed, he would “work tirelessly to implement [Trump’s] bold agenda as an unabashed steward for all sources of affordable, reliable and secure American energy”.
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