US Energy Secy At UK Conference Featuring Nigel Farage; Says Cold Deadlier Than Heat As All-Time Record Fall Across EU
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.
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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.
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https://www.desmog.com/2026/06/23/trumps-energy-secretary-says-cold-is-larger-killer-during-record-european-heatwave/