Climate change is the acceptable price of modernity. That, in a nutshell, is the conclusion that Energy Secretary Chris Wright reaches in his recent essay in The Economist, a composition representing the studied fatalism increasingly found in the debate on energy transition. Wright’s argument rests on dubious analysis and gambles with not just our safety but also the leadership the Trump administration claims to be advancing.
We know the inconvenient truth that burning fossil fuels, while transformational for civilization, also carries a growing and likely catastrophic cost. Back when the inconvenient documentary that took this knowledge mainstream came out, fossil-fuel lobbyists tended to simply deny or muddy the scientific consensus. Such efforts have become less tenable, so an alternative narrative has arisen, pitched as pragmatism, whereby the incumbent energy system is basically immovable and we should all get over it and build seawalls.