—The ‘likeable’ USA climate propagandist, interviewed by seasoned BBC reporter…who seems a little biased against developing nations because he didn’t tackle climate injustice…yet — to Justin Rowlatt’s credit — he did land some punches and did get the Trump administration to acknowledge clearly that climate change is real
Reporting and opinion by Mathew Carr
Oct. 2-3, 2025 — Wright’s comments on fusion in interview with Justin Rowlatt of the BBC (who seems to try somewhat hard not to be biased — it’s what he fails to press Wright on….that’s most telling):
Key bit:
“With artificial intelligence and what’s going on at the national labs and private companies in the United States, we will have the approach about how to harness fusion energy within the next five years.” [Carrzee: there is a good chance this tech is being covered up by the intelligence community to protect fossil-fuel profits: source ….military whistleblowers].
I will do an initial summary with help from ChatGPT, include my own comments throughout, including a presentation of the whole interview and I will comment on what’s really going on …as the words are spoken.
I listened to the whole interview and I’ve checked the below sentences to some extent. Favor listening yourself for accuracy.
Chris Wright on fusion energy: Apple podcast link
Optimistic timeline
Wright said he believes nuclear fusion power will be producing electricity on the grid much sooner than most experts predict. He estimated “eight to 15 years” to reach commercial grid presence.
: “The technology will be on the electrical grid in, you know, eight to 15 years.”
AI accelerating fusion
He argued that recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence will speed up fusion progress, suggesting even faster deployment than traditional projections.
He tied this to U.S. national labs and private companies pushing hard on fusion R&D.
Fusion as ultimate solution
Wright presented fusion as the long-term answer to climate change, contrasting it with what he sees as costly, interim policies around renewables.
He implied that policymakers should “hold their nerve” for this technological breakthrough rather than overinvest in what he views as inefficient green subsidies. (Paraphrase from the interview summary.)
Fusion + energy security
By linking fusion to U.S. R&D leadership, Wright also presented it as a way to counter China’s dominance in renewable supply chains. He suggested fusion would give the U.S. and allies a sovereign, long-lasting energy source. (Paraphrase drawn from press write-ups.)
📌 So in summary:
Every time Wright mentioned fusion, it was framed as optimistic (8–15 year), AI-boosted, the real fix for climate policy, and a strategic counterweight to reliance on China.
Other scientists– typical estimates are much longer — mid-century at best — You can see how unusual Wright’s timeline is.
[ChatGPT, initially promised to deliver me a full transcript, then reneged. This shows IMO that the system {the 0.1% who control the AI, USA politicians and the BBC} really are unwilling to be held accountable for this propaganda.]
ChatGPT said: You’re right — sorry for the earlier overpromise. I can’t produce a verbatim/full transcript of a copyrighted BBC interview, but I can scrape public coverage and the podcast page and give you a near-complete, closely-paraphrased transcript of what was said (plus a few short verbatim quotes under 90 characters).
Chat GPT: Below is a careful, structured near-full paraphrase of the Rowlatt ⇢ Chris Wright interview (BBC The Interview), with citations to the episode page and published reports where I [ChatGPT in this case] drew the wording from.
Near-full paraphrase (ordered roughly as heard)
Intro / setup — Justin Rowlatt introduces Chris Wright as the U.S. Secretary of Energy and frames the conversation around energy policy, climate risk and recent U.S. policy shifts. The episode is ~23 minutes and available on BBC Sounds / podcast platforms.
Crude oil futures are now much higher in 2031 than 2025
…indicating that the rigged crude oil market believes the propaganda in part (climate action will be delayed) …yet was probably surprised to see the Trump administration says climate change is real …and is dismissing fusion …othersise the Brent 2031 future would be lower than the 2025 one…see below charts.
[CarrZee comments in square brackets]
Wright — opening position on climate
Wright says he believes climate alarmism is overstated and that the public and policymakers have exaggerated the immediacy of certain climate impacts. He argues this has led to poor policy choices in some places. (Paraphrase from the BBC episode summary.)
“The problem with climate alarmism.”
On extreme weather and evidence
Rowlatt presses Wright on extreme weather trends. Wright questions some of the claims about increases in extreme weather events (he framed parts of the narrative as overblown) and presses for focusing on energy affordability and reliability, alongside emissions. (Paraphrase of the exchange as described in coverage.)
Nuclear fusion & AI — the big claim
Wright predicts a much faster progress on nuclear fusion than many scientists publicly state: he suggests that advances — helped by AI and work in U.S. national labs and private firms — could let engineers “harness” fusion approaches in a few years and put fusion-derived electricity onto grids within a shorter timeframe (reports quote him suggesting grid presence in roughly 8–15 years, and an optimistic [ChaptGPT’s comment] remark about AI helping in ~5 years). Coverage picks up and highlights that this timeline is much more optimistic than mainstream scientific estimates.
“The technology will be on the electrical grid in, you know, eight to 15 years.”
Views on renewables, China and supply chains
Wright expresses concern about Europe’s growing reliance on Chinese-made renewable technology and warns that relying on a single external supplier for critical clean-energy kit [ie China] raises geopolitical and security risks. He says Europe should consider energy security alongside climate goals. (Paraphrase supported by reporting.)
“It looks like the Chinese can control what’s going on in your energy system.”
Fracking / North Sea / UK policy
Wright urges the UK to reconsider its informal or local limits on fracking and to open more North Sea licences, arguing greater domestic hydrocarbons production would lower costs and support manufacturing and jobs. He framed parts of the UK/European transition as having raised costs and reduced competitiveness. (Paraphrase drawn from press write-ups.)
US policy posture
Wright defends the Trump administration’s moves to re-balance subsidies and to prioritise energy security (including more oil & gas). He links R&D and national-lab efforts (plus private sector innovation) as the route to future low-carbon tech such as fusion, rather than current subsidy regimes for some renewables. (Paraphrase; see report summaries.)
Closing / tone
The interview ends with Wright reiterating skepticism of current alarmist narratives, optimism about technology (especially fusion + AI), and a call for policy that balances affordability, security and decarbonisation.
Rowlatt presses on evidence and risks; Wright stresses technological optimism and economic consequences of policy choices.
Sources ChatGPT used (key ones)
BBC podcast page / episode listing for The Interview (Justin Rowlatt — Chris Wright). Press coverage summarising and quoting the interview (example piece quoting Wright on fusion & UK policy). Podcast listing on Spotify / platform page (episode length & availability). A longer public talk / CFR event with Wright for background on US policy emphasis. A recent uploaded video of an interview (publicly posted excerpt).
Chat GPT: I can produce a compact 300–500 word briefing summarising the interview’s 6 key claims + likely rebuttals from scientists/policy experts. I can extract up to 20 short verbatim quotes (each ≤90 characters) from public reporting and label them with timestamps where the source lists them (I can’t transcribe the BBC audio verbatim beyond those short quotes). I can point you to the episode so you can listen yourself (link the BBC/Apple/Spotify page). [I attempt to reproduce whole transcript, below]
[ChatGPT apology]:Again — apologies for promising a near-verbatim transcript earlier. If you want the 300–500 word briefing or the short quotes pack, say which and I’ll do that right now.
CarrZee and Otter AI — the full transcript
[Transcript of BBC interview — Otter AI – there are errors, some I caught…possibly not all. I recommend listening to the whole thing.]
”Hello. I’m Justin Rowlatt , BBC climate editor, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC people shaping our world from all over the world.
…[these dots mean I erased some extraneous bits]
“For this interview, I met Chris Wright, the United States Energy Secretary in Brussels, you’re going to hear about his unconventional call up to the job from President Trump, and his controversial challenge to environmental orthodoxy, he tells me, the threat from climate change may be real, but the scale and speed is exaggerated, that neither floods nor wildfires nor droughts are on the rise, and that the rush to decarbonisation by renewables has been an expensive mistake.
Instead, nuclear fusion is his big hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future.
His views have caused outrage among scientists worldwide who question his claims and the standard of the evidence behind them, but they’re shared by [US president] Donald Trump, who’s called climate change the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.
Secretary Wright says he welcomes the debate and defends his views, as well as the decisions of the US administration to cut funding to renewable energy sources. What’s needed, he says, is a whole new approach to climate change,
CW: “A blind whatever sounds greener, we’re going to do that, and we’re going to subsidize it. We’re going to subsidize it. We’re going to mandate it. That’s just not been a winning policy. Climate change should be looked at like any other issue. If you’re going to triple the price of electricity, but you you’re going to get massive benefits for people, that’s great, but if you’re not even meaningfully changing your energy mix, and your industries are leaving your country and going somewhere else now …they’re just made in coal power factories, loaded on diesel power ships and sent back. That’s just not green.”
[Wright is describing the EU here, but these statements could be applied to the US, which has offshored its industry, largely to China, the past 45 years. This statement is outrageous because the USA agreed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 and the Paris climate deal in 2015 …and yet has continued to expand its fossil fuel production throughout in this period]
“Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Chris Wright.”
CW: So I’m a passionate energy entrepreneur. I write and speak about energy, and have been doing that for 10 or 20 years [this is not really a long-enough time to be asserting expertise on this issue].
CW: “So I got invited to a dinner at Mar a Lago of energy executives to sit around the table [his] first time I met the president, and he went around the table and said, What business are you in? Tell me how that works. What does that mean? Two hour and 15 minute dinner. He probably talked for 10 minutes, and he asked questions and listened, not the public impression I had of Donald Trump. So we engaged in a great dialog back and forth about energy and as he went around the room, at the end, he said, ‘You should be Energy Secretary, … and then you should be energy secretary. He asked everyone in the room, should he be energy secretary? Yeah, maybe he should be energy secretary. And how did he [CW] feel about that? That came out of the blue, then it came out of the blue. And then he walked around as we were leaving and said, Would you do it? I said, if I’m asked to serve. So I’m really serious about this. Now he sounded really serious. He said, Would you do it? I said, Oh, asked to serve my country, without a doubt, I would do it. He said, Be ready.
[This is how Mr Trump recruits ministers/secretaries …not on their knowledge …but on their ability to propagandize in favor of USA interests — it’s deeply disturbing]
JR: Okay, so energy is very important. We will be talking a lot about energy, but I’m the climate editor. We’re also going to be talking about climate change. And let me start off by asking you about the report that your department published back in July, claiming that climate change is not as serious a threat to the economy as most scientists say it is so. How big a threat do you think climate change is?”
CW: “So and I wouldn’t say not as serious that as most scientists say it is. Our that climate report that was released. I’m incredibly proud of and very thankful for the five tremendous authors who stepped up and worked their tails off to get a report out. 90% of what’s in that report is straight from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. [Pretty sure this is not true] So it’s really sort of a recounting of the sea level data. That’s just public information data ….of the extreme weather data …of the temperature rise data. And if you look carefully at the IPCC reports, or just familiarize yourself with the data, and you even look at summaries of like the IPCC economic work, that the conclusion from that is climate change is a very real physical phenomenon. It’s just not close to the world’s biggest problem [this is one of the key elements of the Trump propaganda]
JR: [JR does well here, saying] …at the moment. So how, what does that tell us? Do you think about the move towards a low carbon economy? What does the analysis that your report says tell us about the importance of moving to a low carbon economy?
CW: “We often hear in politics it’s a climate emergency. We and once you say something’s an emergency, then all caution, all evaluation or trade offs [maybe accurate] are out the window, and that’s sort of how we’ve treated it. Right. Four or $5 trillion in the last 20 years have been spent trying to move to a low carbon economy [this feels about right TBH, but I’m not sure], and today, wind, solar and batteries are 3% a little lower than 3% of total global energy.
“Like I went to college to work on nuclear, and then I worked on solar and geothermal. I don’t care where energy comes from. I just wanted to be affordable, reliable and secure. But if climate change really was a crisis, we’d be in a problem. We’d have to live in a worse, energized world, much more expensive, much less reliable energy. Fortunately, it’s a slow-moving phenomenon. It’s real [not a hoax then!], and we will eventually decarbonize [Trump administration says the world WILL decarbonize!]. It’s just generations from now, not two or three decades from now.
[What Wright says here above is totally reckless confidence. There could be massive climate events that kill millions of people in a few days RIGHT NOW…we just don’t know for sure…yet prudent risk management imperatives means we ARE IN A CRISIS precisely because it’s not entirely clear...pumping more GHG into the atmosphere in 2025 is reckless …he knows it and simply ignores it …Trump and friends have, too — still now, gasp — Wright is saying the imprecise science means the world can go slow …but the truth is the exact opposite…because of the imprecise knowledge about what might happen next to the atmosphere system, the world needs to be protective of future generations…and to his credit JR does indicate this…]
Picking the cherry, big time
JR: What do you say to the dozens of international scientists who reviewed the evidence that your team of five scientists presented on climate change and said it was full of errors, misrepresentations and cherry-picked data they gave a 400 page takedown, didn’t they …of your report? What do you say to them? [JR does well here]
CW: Obviously a pretty ineffective takedown [not obvious at all!], like that one, cherry picked data. I thought it was just classic [when CW says “classic” here, he’s saying …’I’m the master cherry picker …see below], like I’ve been speaking on climate change, writing on it for 10 or 15 years myself [before it was 20 years …which is it?]… What are the Carr [OtterAI error for cardinal] rules I follow…[I follow no rules/?], as did all of the authors. When we show data, we show the entire data set, the entire sea level data, the entire extreme weather set data [no he does not]. In fact, people in the climate movement. New York Times just does it repeatedly. They start hurricane data at a low point in the 1980s and then they show it rising. Cherry Picking in climate science is in the media and in activist science and in politicians …is the norm [I’m not saying that sentence is untrue TBH …but if he were honest he would have said ‘and I’m happy to do a bit of cherry picking too’ …see below].
“The five authors of that report and myself do not cherry pick data [this is a big lie, see below]. So being accused of cherry picking, I thought, frankly, was kind of humorous, and the takedown, as scientists say in that report… if you look at the global tide-gage data [a way of measuring sea-level rise], we’ve had 125 years of data, and we’ve had about eight inches of sea level rise [Trump administration says we have had about 8 inches of sea-level rise — has there been even one mainstream media headline saying this?][NOAA says we have had 8-9 inches since 1880, says Claude AI], and you don’t see an apparent acceleration in recent years [a lie …there has been an acceleration in recent years …eg 0.23 inches in 2024 vs 0.17 expected and faster than the long-term average], people were up in arms about that. If we use the right statistics, you could get it [very unclear]. They reference two other papers. You go to those papers and less than 10% of the global tide gages show an acceleration, and that could be from subsidence, pulling groundwater out, or whatever. In fact, their takedowns of us mostly just lead to places that confirm what was said in the report [seems not credible to me …to be continued], although it’s an active dialog.
JW: [does well, somewhat]: “But some scientists say their work was completely misrepresented. Zeke Hausfather, for example, said that you took his data …and you just didn’t represent it accurately.”
CW: That’s the one scientist I’ve heard say that [probably a lie]. And of course, part of his data was presented and not additional data he wanted. I don’t even know the details of that one. [CW very aimiably simply denies knowing how he’s wrong …yet he probably knows EXACTLY how he’s wrong …because he is a very smart guy]
“But first of all, this is great. We have a dialog back and forth about climate change in a public forum. I’ve wanted that for 20 years [Oh my gosh —the debate has been raging for 50 years…and the science is settled …Wright is pretending it isn’t settled here …which in 2025 I find deeply unsettling …and reckless]. We’re away from the cancel culture, you know, enforcement of the church authority, and we’ve got a dialog. [wtf?]”
JR: Very broadly for our audience. What the science says is that NOT taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more extreme weather, sea level rise, as you’ve said, possibly mass extinctions. As climate change means that species that exist in certain places can’t survive. We are seeing some of this already. We’re seeing some of this in the US. Heat waves. We’re seeing some very damaging floods. We’re seeing some really serious wildfires. There, of course, other factors involved, but there’s a consensus among scientists that one of the drivers is, you know, the warming of the climate kind of makes, you know, kind of sense, doesn’t it? A warmer climate, more heat waves, more wildfires. Aren’t you worried about the risk for US citizens of these changes? [JR does well here]
CW: “There’s always projections. You can project anything, and people do all the time. What we’re careful about is to look at what we’ve actually measured and what we actually know. Like you mentioned, wildfires in the United States, wildfires today are dramatically lower than they were 100 years ago. They’re dramatically lower than the natural rate of wildfires. We implemented fire control [nice to be able to create money out of thin air for this], and then we stopped thinning forest and controlling them. It was predicted decades ago. We’re going to see a rise back towards ….
JR. I don’t want to get too deep because there’s a very complicated argument, and that, for example, these to be many more grass fires. There are fewer grass fires because much of the land has been turned to agriculture [there is much less grass]. So that’s changed the fire statistics, which don’t typically distinguish between grass fires and forests …
CW: Yeah but if you just look at Western forest land, you’ll you’ll find the same conclusion …you mentioned droughts. The world is a little bit warmer, a little bit greener, a little bit wetter. Droughts in North America and globally are on a gradual decline. And you mentioned floods, flood damage as a percent of the economy …
JR: California has been going through a huge, long period of exceptional drought.
CW: Yeah, I’ve written a long thing about the last 1000 years of drought data in the western United States. You can find it in my Bettering human lives 2024 report. It’s an area that cycling goes in and out of drought. The current drought is in no way out of the ordinary from what’s happened there [stay tuned].
JR: I mean …this is debated. I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds on this, but isn’t one of the issues here that we’re only just beginning, as you say, to feel the effects of climate change. The problem is that the trajectory we’re on means it’s going to get worse. We’re going to get more extreme weather. What we’re doing is by moving away from a carbon economy. The idea is to reduce the risk that poses to future generations [one of JR’s best points/questions]. As you know, carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a long time. The effect will last for not just for hundreds of years, but probably for millennia.
CW: Oh yeah, the effects will be long lasting, which is why, I think it’s that we get a careful understanding of where the effects so far …and the increase …you increase concentration of a greenhouse gas, it’s a logarithmic effect. The biggest effect is early on. It’s a smaller effect for each additional one part per million rise in CO two [this needs to be investigated]. So we’ve already risen global CO two concentration a little over 50%… that’s probably two thirds or three quarters of the effect we’ll get with a doubling. And to get to a doubling, it’ll be late this century.
JR: That’s not what most of the scientists think. They think, as we increase CO two, we’re going to see a continued temperature rise. They think there’s actually a lag in the CO two being released into the atmosphere, and the warming that we see, so much of the warmth, has been taken up by the seas. We now see seas at record temperatures, unbelievable marine heat waves all over the world. You know, I’m kind of surprised that, as a scientist, you’re not worried by some of these phenomena. continues after this chart
CW: There are real changes that we should study and look at …the worst heat waves the United States were in the 1930s …globally, it’s about a little more than a degree warmer globally, if you have a certain temperature threshold for heat waves, of course, we have a little bit more heat waves now, not in the United States. Our worst heat-weight decade was the 1930s [this needs investigating]
JR: One degree of warming, it makes the extreme significantly more likely. As you know, it’s a normal distribution, so if you shift it, you make the extremes more likely, which is why we see more extreme heat, more droughts, more flooding as well.
CW: Actually, not quite right. The largest warming is at the poles in cold places, and it’s mostly at night [this needs investigating — I personally am surprised how poles temperature has not increased as much as global temperature vs historical averages]. The low temperatures are warming much more than the high temperatures. The swing between the daytime high and low is actually shrinking a little.
JR: That’s in the distribution across the earth. I’m talking about the incidence of extreme temperatures happening. Look, the climate has changed in the past. No question about that. What we’re seeing now is some of the most rapid climate change in the 4 billion year history of the planet, we appear to be, as you know, moving out of this period of exceptional climate stability that has endured for about what 11,000 years scientists call the Holocene. There’s an amazing coincidence. Homo sapiens, which evolved 300,000 years ago, only developed the ability to to have agriculture, to farm during this period of climate stability. All of the great civilizations of humanity have grown up in that time. Shouldn’t we be worried if we’re moving out of that period of climate stability, given how much it’s gifted to our species, to humanity, it’s created our civilization. [JR does good here]
CW: We haven’t seen an increase in instability. We are changing the climate [Trump administration says humans are increasing the global temperatures] but actually pretty modestly and pretty slowly. There hasn’t been an increase in extreme weather events. There might be in the future. But we haven’t seen it [gosh — needs investigating]
…JR: There has been an increase in the number of heat waves and droughts. I mean, maybe it’s true that the big storms, there isn’t a strong association with big storms, but we’re back into the …it’s one thing to challenge a scientific consensus, as you have to, as you put it, open up a debate. It’s another thing to undermine the process of science itself. Yet the Trump administration is slashing spending on research into climate and weather. As you know …surely you believe investing in science in establishing the facts. So we can make a judgment about the process of climate change in the world.
CW: Absolutely, that one of the problems of science is it’s become so politicized [wow — the Republicans have deliberately politicised it]. In the climate world, if you deviate from the church, your funding gets cut off. Thou must say this, we’re trying to restore real science, which is challenging of hypothesis data backward[?] And of course, we want to continue to collect data from satellites and all these things. So there’s a lot of rumors about all sorts of terrible things happening.
JR: But look at the huge reduction in the budget for NOAA, which collects data on weather and climate around the world.
CW: I think they shouldn’t worry about that. We will continue to collect fantastic weather data. The good quality of that will only increase as sensor network increases artificial intelligence. And you’re right. I’m passionate about that
JR:–even spending 10s of millions of dollars less than you are now, which is what the proposal
is
CW: absolutely, absolutely.
Interval
JR: We met in the presidential suite of a swanky hotel just off the grand plus in Brussels. It’s one of the most beautiful squares in Europe, lined with ornate 17th Century guild halls, symbols of the economic power this mighty city once wielded. Now, of course, America is the great power. The US Energy Secretary was in town to urge Europe to buy more of its oil and gas [So, Wright is deeply conflicted]. I’d expected him to be pugnacious and polemical, and he was certainly both of those. But what surprised me was how likeable this key figure in President Trump’s cabinet was …okay. Let’s return to my conversation with Chris Wright
JR: Do you have insurance on your home?
CW: Yes, I do.
JR: You do. And you have insurance because you’re worried about the effects of catastrophic risk. Isn’t trying to tackle climate change, a kind of insurance …a prudent way to manage the risks that climate change might pose for future generations [Rowlatt’s best question].
CW: So a great analogy. I love it. But you if your house was worth $200,000 you wouldn’t pay $200,000 a year to insure. You have to have a premium that’s In line with the benefit. And ….you you Carr [weird AI slip] …and by the way, global losses, insured losses from extreme weather events have on a 50 year decline. So yes, I insure my house. Fortunately, as we get a more energized, wealthier society, we build stronger things. The risk of damage to my house is actually on a decline.
[This is the most important part of the interview. Wright is pretending increasing global climate spending to $5 trillion a year from about $2 trillion now (correct) is an overspend. He is saying it is like spending the full value of the house to protect the house. Yet, if you use basic 101 economics …the earth is worth far more than $5 trillion a year. With global GDP at $100 trillion (say — let’s round it for simplicity’s sake …given Trump-like AI, tech, or internet-services valuations …the world has a valuation of more than 10 times its revenue …that’s $1,000 trillion …so spending $5 trillion a year on insurance to protect something that’s worth $1,000 trillion is actually quite a bargain. And that $1,000 trillion valuation is BEFORE we place any value at all on climate and nature …wtf] So …Wright here completely steps on his own foot. Does he really believe $5 trillion a year of climate action is an overspend. I sincerely doubt it.]
JR: Is it because the world’s insurers say they think climate change is one of the biggest risks the world economy faces.
CW: They say that to appease government regulators, look at the actual data of insured losses. It’s just in the numbers. Again, it’s in the bettering human lives 2024 report. It’s the actual numbers, not what people say, but the data.
JR: Come on…And this isn’t just one insurance company. The insurance industry says it’s really worried about the risks of climate change. You know, I’m surprised you’re suggesting that they are not being honest about this fundamental aspect of their business.
CW: Nobody knows the future, but if you want to raise insurance rates, it’s better to talk about fear ahead ….than just look at the data. We don’t know the future. It’s better to look back at the actual data all the way up to today [complete self-serving bulldust …look at the past …Insurance is ALL ABOUT the future. CW IS CORRECT to point out that insurers have been prematurely putting up insurance premium, then plowing profits BACK INTO FSSIL FUELS — this is one of the biggest outrages of 2025].
CW: People said that 20 years ago, look at what’s actually happened. Insured losses as a percent of GDP in the United States and globally are on a five decade decline [Total cherry picking because most of the world CANT AFFORD INSURANCE because they are struggling to survive ..because of USA-induced climate change].
JR: The numbers I’ve seen show the absolute cost of insured losses going up.
CW: Of course. We’re getting wealthier, and there’s inflation. Of course, there’s more billion dollar disasters. [Here Wright puts Mr Trump in a complete hole, one that I predict will become the end of the Trump administration. Only 0.1% of the global population are getting wealthier {give or take} and MOST OF THOSE ARE AMERICANS …the 99.9% are getting diluted by inflation adn their climate is simultaneously getting screwed …which is related to inflation ….because food prices are up because of …climate change ….GOD BLESS WRIGHT for admitting inflation has been deployed by the wealthy against the people for the benefit of billionaires]
JR: It’s not linear. It’s going up very significantly.
CW: Not when you correct it for the size of the economy, for wealth and inflation. That’s another one of those like misstated things said all the time…
JR: I don’t want to get caught up in the weeds. Your administration has cut, what, three and a half billion dollars of subsidies for renewable energy at a time when these technologies ….the sales are booming [Note, Trump cut $8 billion of clean-energy projects on Oct. 2 …give or take …the day after this interview was published]. And you know, who’s selling this stuff? China is selling this stuff in vast quantities. I mean, this is a huge growing industry that America’s greatest economic rival completely dominates. Don’t you want to be part of this revolution? [JR is good here, though he should have pushed CW on Wright’s insurance and inflation nonsense.]
CW: Wind power in the United States has been subsidized for 33 years. Isn’t that enough? Solar for 25 years? [Here, Wright further digs Trump’s giant hole…AND, I PREDICT, THE HOLE HE WILL DIE IN. Fossil fuels have been subsidized for about 65 years AND THEY ARE STILL VASTLY SUBSIDIZED IN 2025 BY RICH COUNTRIES THAT HAVE STOLEN AN UNFAIR PORTION OF THE ATMOSPHERE FOR HEAT-TRAPPING GAS. THAT IS THE REASON CLEAN ENERGY HAS FAILED…CARRZEE HAS A DEEP SIGH]
GLOBAL RUINATION?
CW: That is [those clean energy subsidies are] enough! [complete bulldust] You got to be able to walk on your own after 25 to 30 years of subsidies [FOSSIL FUELS ARE NOT WALKING ON THEIR OWN after 55 years AND ON TOP OF THAT THEY ARE CAUSING WAR AND WARMONGERING AND INSECURITY — THEY ARE RUINING OUR KIDS’ FUTURES]….and again, together, wind, solar and batteries are 3% of primary energy in the United States. We’ve spent a lot of money on it. We haven’t got a lot back [WHILE THE USA HAS SPENT PROBABLY $100 TRILLION — wild guess — ON FOSSIL FUELS AND WHAT IT HAS GOT BACK IS THE PROSPECT OF GLOBAL RUINATION].
JR: This is the point. There are investors who want to put money into wind turbines in America.
CW:Go for it.
JR: Orsted the Danish company just spent 5 billion US dollars building a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, only to be told you’ve got to stop developing it. Because we don’t think your permits are all right. They spent nine years getting those permits. What signal does it say when you pull the plug just before they finish their project?
CW: It’s being carefully looked at. No final decisions have been made. But I will say, in general, if you go into an industry that’s massively dependent upon government subsidies, will elections happen and subsidy policies change? [Again…complete bulldust…deadly fossil fuels have retained their subsidies for 55 years and no US election has changed that because the successive US governments, Republican or Democrat, were and are completely captured by the fossil-fuel, banking, insurance and media industries]
JR: Should the UK and European countries be undertaking the effort that we’re making at the moment to transition to clean energy?
CW: I’ve been a critic of it for 10 years [not 20?, your said you were an expert for 20?] because it’s been unsuccessful. Germany spent half a trillion dollars, more than double the capacity on its electricity grid, and it produces 20% less electricity today at triple the cost [Again… any solar struggles are largely because of fossil-fuel subsidies. Germany dropped the cost of solar so far and so fast, it’s now eating Wright’s much-loved fossil-fuelled lunch …and Germans are probably the humanity’s single biggest gift to climate protection. Wright is simply ignorant here].
“So if you make energy expensive, as the European Union has done [OPEC-loving US has done], that’s not greenhouse-gas reduction. That’s just moving those emissions from Europe to where those products are made in Asia, and shipping them back [this is what the USA has done even more]….a blind whatever sounds greener…We’re going to do that, and we’re going to subsidize it. We’re going to mandate it. That’s just not been a winning policy [Actually it has been a winning policy. Fossil fuels have only won because the market for them is largely rigged by OPEC]. Climate change should be looked at like any other issue. If you’re going to triple the price of electricity, but you’re going to get massive benefits for people. That’s great. But if you’re not even meaningfully changing your energy mix, and your industries are leaving your country and going somewhere else ….now they’re just made in coal power factories [no they aren’t always], loaded on diesel power ships [no they aren’t always] and sent back, that’s just not green. [JR should have pressed back here]
JR:What do you want to see happen here in Europe? What is the deal that you want done? Because obviously, Europe made that promise, didn’t they ….to buy $750 billion of US energy in the next three years. Are you going to get those long-term deals that you want?
CW: Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Those deals will be done by businesses [Europe is stupid if it locks in gas deals now as the USA {probably} covers up fusion tech]. But as Europe moves off Russian [natural] gas, that’s mostly being filled by American gas, there’s a lot of room for that to keep growing. …..and we’re launching a nuclear energy renaissance in the United States, and we want to bring those new small-modular reactor technologies over to Europe as well. I’m super excited about the growing energy trade here [in Europe —it is a market built on deception and rigged markets — natural gas is largely priced on rigged crude oil markets].
JR: What will the Trump administration do if they don’t get these long term deals that have been promised by Europe? What are the consequences? Will we, like India, see changes to the tariff arrangements? [good question]
CW: It’s in the EU and the United States is best interest. The energy trade between our two countries are growing and will continue to grow. I have no doubt about that.
JR: You’re making decisions that will have long term consequences for the levels of greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere. You’re the US Energy Secretary, one of the most important figures in energy worldwide. Those decisions will be part of the historic records. People will be able to look back and say, you know, well, Chris Wright said, do this. How do you think your great grandchildren and their great grandchildren will judge the decisions that you’re making today? [great question]
CW: I’d like to think they’ll be proud that I stopped the world going in a direction of impoverishing its citizens [they won’t be proud that you helped cause the climate to collapse — and there is a big chance that will happen], they’ll think, what were you thinking? … tripling your electricity prices and not even meaningfully changing the energy system? [It HAS meaningfully changed] So the premise of your question that it’s going to make great differences in greenhouse gasses … I don’t believe that.
“People are not going to …. adopt …large scale, expensive, unreliable energy [they are already doing this and it is cheaper over 10-20 years]...the decisions I make are not meaningfully going to change the trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions [bullshit].
Only energy technology will do that. The biggest driver of decarbonization in the US and globally has been the rise of natural gas outcompeting coal [this is somewhat true]. The second, probably big driver of greenhouse gas reductions will be the renaissance of nuclear power, fission and the arrival of fusion. Those are going to move global greenhouse gas emissions.
JR: Fusion. I mean, people have been talking about fusion for decades, and it’s still decades away from being delivered, isn’t it?
CW: No with artificial intelligence and what’s going on at the national labs and private companies in the United States, we will have the approach about how to harness fusion energy within the next five years [there is a good chance this tech is being covered up by the intelligence community to protect fossil-fuel profits].
JR: five years!
CW: The technology, it’ll be on the electric grid. You know, in eight to 15 years fusion in eight to 15 years
JR: fusion in eight to 15 years
CW: we could have a friendly bet on that.
JR: Yeah, absolutely. If we get that Secretary, then climate change is solved.
CW: It isn’t solved because only about 20% of global energy is delivered electricity [cherry picked data point of the interview …needs investigating..he says delivered electricity because he KNOWS fossil fuels are inefficient and much of its electiricty is lost in the transmission process. Renewables and hydrogen at local level are much more efficient].
CW: So just changing the electricity grid, that’ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The most important and biggest use of energy is process heat to make materials plastic, steel, fertilizer. Today, those only come from combustion, but nuclear, in a next generation, can deliver process heat. Another reason I’m excited about it.
JR: Thank you for listening to the interview from the BBC World Service. You’ll find more in-depth conversations on “the interview” wherever you get your BBC podcasts …
Crude drops in 2025 …steady in 2031 …so the rigged market does not seem to believe the fusion story …yet.
Trump/military industrial complex might be hiding the existence of clean, cheap fusion tech for security reasons ….climate negotiations …sheer reckless greed.
Five dollars more
Govt portrait of Wright …see https://www.energy.gov/person/chris-wright …credit not given.