President Donald Trump’s Energy Secretary has downplayed the threat of rising temperatures at a fossil fuel industry-funded event in London, even as millions in the UK, France, Spain, and Italy endure a deadly record-breaking heatwave.
Chris Wright, a millionaire former oil and gas executive, appeared by video link at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference, a gathering of transatlantic right-wing activists.
As DeSmog revealed last week, ARC is funded by oil and gas investors and donors to President Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
In his remarks, Wright lauded energy from fossil fuels as good for the economy and society at large.
“Always more people die in the winter than die in summer,” Wright said, “because cold is a vastly larger killer than heat is,” citing the excess deaths across Europe due to high energy prices after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Wright also urged the UK to “change course” and embrace fossil fuels, and called climate change a “slow-moving phenomenon” that would be addressed by technology.
Experts have said for years that while technology can play a part in lowering CO2 levels in the atmosphere, it cannot replace ending the use of fossil fuels.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch are also on the speaker schedule for the three-day ARC conference. Both back scrapping the UK’s landmark Climate Change Act, and have called for new North Sea oil extraction.
The UK is currently seeing record-breaking temperatures as part of a heatwave across Europe. At least 15 people died last month in the UK in water-related incidents during hot weather, and the Met Office has issued an extreme heat warning for June, when temperatures could reach 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit).
Multiple news outlets are reporting that since Thursday, at least 40 people have drowned in France while seeking escape from the searing temperatures. The New York Times reported Tuesday that highs may reach 40 degrees Celsius this week (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Paris, and 43 degrees Celsius (around 109 degrees Fahrenheit) in central France.
Experts agree that heatwaves are made more likely by the climate crisis. Before joining Trump’s cabinet in 2025, Wright was CEO of fracking services company Liberty Energy.
According to its 2024 tax filing, Wright was also a director of the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), a trade group representing more than 300 companies in the oil and gas industry. WEA has historically lobbied against oil and gas industry restrictions.
The Trump administration is the most anti-climate and pro-fossil fuel government in recent U.S. history, spreading climate denial, blocking renewable energy, and boosting oil and gas extraction.
Oil and gas companies donated $25.8 million to Trump’s 2024 election campaign.
Chris Wright at ARC
After his ARC address, Wright was interviewed by Matt Ridley, a Tory peer and newspaper columnist who is also an advisor to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK climate denial think tank.
Ridley made reference to the UK heatwave, saying: “It’s hot in London today, Chris. I am speaking to you from a continent where air-conditioning is a sin against Gaia.”
He went on to ask Wright about the benefits of fracking in the UK. “Ten years ago, you and I tried to persuade the British government to embrace shale gas”, he said. “If we had succeeded, Britain could have been self-sufficient in gas now, couldn’t it?”
Wright replied that a “shale gas revolution” in the UK, where fracking is currently banned, could have led to an “industrial renaissance” that would have cut electricity bills and created jobs for “blue-collar workers”.
Ridley also asked whether the “battle for the commons” on climate change had been won in the United States. Wright replied: “ I will say we are winning. We haven’t won fully yet, but we’re winning by leaning in.”
He later added: “Understand climate change for what it is: a slow-moving phenomenon that ultimately will be addressed by better technologies.”
This reflects Wright’s long-standing views. In a video posted to LinkedIn in January 2023, Wright said, “There is no climate crisis”.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said it is “unequivocal” that human influence has caused “unprecedented” global warming, and that this is increasing the threat of floods, drought, and heatwaves.
Wright’s comment about hot weather echoed remarks earlier at the ARC event by Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish climate crisis denier. During his slide presentation, Lomborg said that “extreme heat almost everywhere on the planet is the smallest death issue […] remember many more die from extreme cold”. Wright and Lomborg are known to be friends.
Wright’s involvement with ARC goes back to its first conference in 2023, when he spoke at the group’s first conference in his capacity as an oil executive.
Wright also appeared by video link at ARC’s 2025 conference in London, this time as Trump’s energy chief, vowing to “get out of the way” of coal, oil and gas, and called the UK’s 2050 net zero target “a sinister goal” that would “impoverish” people.
ARC CEO Philippa Stroud, a Tory peer, and Wright confirmed this week that they talked on the phone about the ARC conference ahead of his cabinet nomination in 2025.
