Rantz: Here’s why conservative environmentalists are pumped with Trump picks on energy, interior

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and energy executive Chris Wright for his cabinet. Conservative environmentalists are excited.

“I’m extremely excited,” Chris Barnard, president of the American Conservation Coalition explained on “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH (I serve as an Evergreen Advisor to the ACC).

Burgum will lead the Department of Interior, which manages public lands and natural resources. Wright will head the Department of Energy. Both will also serve on the president’s new National Energy Council, which is tasked with prioritizing energy production by eschewing over-regulation.

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Why are conservative environmentalists excited about Doug Burgum in Interior role?

Conservative environmentalists are looking for a change of direction under the Trump administration. The president-elect is expected to focus on energy innovation, which embraces nuclear, fracking, and geothermal, while protecting and maintaining our public lands.

“There’s no one who really knows conservation and energy like Doug Burgum,” Barnard said. “He’s done a lot of work to help conserve lands up in North Dakota, and while he was running for president, he talked about the ways that we can unleash the energy industry, and doing so in an environmentally responsible way.”

Burgum has embraced carbon capture innovation, while also “properly managing our public lands while having solid energy production to make America energy secure and independent.” He also understands the importance of an “all-in” approach to energy production.

“The reality is that if America wants to have a strong, resilient grid that also helps us compete on the international stage and also ideally reduces emissions, you need all different sources of energy to be a part of that,” Barnard advised. “What the Left has done is they force us to try and pick winners and losers. They said, ‘No, we don’t like nuclear. We don’t like oil and gas. So we’re just going to do wind and solar.’ Well, it turns out that you can’t force that on people, and you end up with rolling blackouts or reliance on solar.”

Why is Chris Wright at Energy the right choice from Donald Trump?

While Burgum has escaped most media scrutiny, left-wing media outlets have attacked Chris Wright, an energy executive, as a “climate skeptic” who opposes green energy. Both claims are demonstrably false.

Wright does not subscribe to the brand of climate alarmism favored by the Radical Left. But he believes in climate change.

“The goalposts on this have been moved constantly, and the Left imposes these ridiculous litmus tests on people where now it’s not enough to just acknowledge something like climate change. If you care about it, you have to believe it’s a crisis. That millions of people are going to die. That we need to cut all fossil fuels immediately, or the world is going to end. That’s just simply rooted in idealism and emotionalism, not in any scientific reality,” Barnard noted.

He also doesn’t oppose green energy, and as an avid outdoorsman, he will favor policy that doesn’t harm the environment. Moreover, he has extensive background in clean energy, not just oil and gas.

“The big irony … the media hit pieces on Chris Wright talk about him being a climate denier. I think there’s this one headline that says ‘The Planet Weeps’ because he’s been nominated to be Secretary of Energy. The irony is that all the photos that they’re using in these hit pieces are photos of him speaking at the ACC summit last year in Salt Lake City, in which he says he cares about climate change, but he also cares about lifting people out of poverty and doing all these things in a rational way that balances protecting the environment while growing the economy while reducing energy poverty. Who would be against that?” Barnard asked.

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