Trump sends fracking CEO to Europe to sell climate denial—and gas

Imagine if Donald Trump had nominated a Purdue Pharma executive to lead the FDA, and that executive took a multi-day, taxpayer-funded international trip to tell world leaders that the opioid epidemic not a big deal and the best way to make citizens healthier is actually to buy more Oxycontin.

A similar, non-hypothetical example of institutional corruption is playing out this week. Chris Wright, the massively wealthy former fracking executive who leads the DOE, is currently on a multi-day, taxpayer-funded trip to Europe to tell world leaders that the climate crisis is not really a big deal, and that the best way to protect their citizens is actually to buy more American gas.

Given the falsehoods Wright has been spreading, and the conflict of interest Wright has in spreading them, I’m surprised this hasn’t been a bigger story. It’s a staggering example of state-sponsored disinformation and regulatory capture by Big Oil.

But more than that, it’s a transparent example of a super rich guy trying to con the world into buying more of the thing that made him super rich, so he can become even richer once he leaves office.

A fracking executive peddles climate denial in Europe

This week, Wright attended the GasTech 2025 Strategic Conference in Milan, one of the world’s largest gatherings of fossil fuel industry executives and government energy ministers. He also attended a briefing at the European Union headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, and an annual conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on Friday.

At all three stops, Wright denounced U.S. and EU efforts to transition away from fossil fuels, and encouraged the EU to increase exports of American liquified methane gas, or LNG.

In an interview previewing his core messages for the trip, Wright said Europe’s planned transition away from fossil fuels is useless because climate change isn’t that big a deal. “Climate change, for impacting the quality of your life, is not incredibly important,” he told the Council of Foreign Relations in a fireside chat on Friday. “In fact, if it wasn't in the news and the media, you wouldn't know it.”

Wright repeated those claims in Europe on Thursday, and said climate change could actually be a good thing because a “warmer, wetter world is more conducive to