Why I Helped Organize the Department of Energy’s Climate Report

Climate policy is too important to be decided without rigorous debate

Walking into the secretary’s office at the Department of Energy (DOE) headquarters in March of this year, I felt uneasy. I had offered to help the team with whatever they might need, and my friend and colleague Alex Fitzsimmons arranged for me to meet with Secretary Chris Wright. Candidly, after a rough tour of duty in 2016–2018, which included leading a high-profile study of the US electric grid, I was reluctant to rejoin the fray.

By the end of the meeting, however, I was on board with the idea of supporting the DOE again (although it felt a bit like the plot of a bad action movie—you know, where the Special Forces just can’t let Arnold Schwarzenegger retire). This was a new DOE featuring a new leader with a fiery passion for the truth. We bonded over the clarity and force of the writings of 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat, whose last words were twice repeating the phrase “the truth.” We talked about being called to public service. I learned that the secretary was friends with the late Rose and Milton Friedman (yes, the Nobel Prize–winning economist) when they all lived in San Francisco.

The trite advice to never meet the people you look up to does not apply to Chris Wright—I only admired him more as I got to know him. Our meeting started at 4:00 p.m. that day. By 4:30, I was ready to sign up for whatever mission he had in mind. In the weeks since then, I’ve noticed he has the same effect on others. It’s an unteachable gift that few of us have but anyone can recognize. I call it the Chris Wright effect—he puts your sense of self-determination on steroids. And he had a plan that included me.

Calling All Truth Seekers

We all know there is little room for debate on the issue of climate change. On the political left, questioning the climate crisis has become an Orwellian thoughtcrime. Although the political right may allow more dissent, many on the right think human-induced climate change is a joke. That’s what makes climate change a difficult policy arena for people who think independently. For example, I believe human activity is causing observable climate change, but it’s not a crisis. Unfortunately, that statement makes partisans on both sides clutch their pearls.

Even though I gripe about both sides of the political aisle, it’s really not a fair fight in terms of influence on climate policy. The political right might have a slight edge on popular social media platforms like X or cable outlets like Fox News, but the halls of academia and government are dominated by the left. To professors and bureaucrats, the question seems to be whether complete decarbonization should happen today or tomorrow, not whether it’s good policy to begin with. As a libertarian, I have to admit I find myself identifying more with the political right because of the left’s dogmatic control over the climate change debate.

A decade or more ago, the term “denier” was reserved for use as a spicy pejorative for people who reject basic physics. More recently, anyone who questions the wisdom of aggressive greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies (such as “net zero by 2050”) is subject to the same awful label. As one example, the Center for American Progress labels a member of Congress a denier if he or she has “claimed that the science around climate change is not settled.”

But it’s clearly not settled. For those of us who can see that with our own eyes, we face the choice of rejecting what we know to be true or wearing the denier label. And because we cannot reject what we know to be true, we are reluctantly left with the latter.

Enter the Experts

The secretary’s plan was simple. We would reorient the debate about climate science and climate policy by confronting the gatekeepers head-on. The DOE was to publish a report that would reinforce areas of wide agreement among climate scientists, such as the observable fact that carbon dioxide is a GHG that is warming the planet. However, in the immortal words of Al Gore, the report would also shed light on some inconvenient truths that cut against the prevailing narrative that climate change is an existential threat.

Among those truths: US historical data do not support claims of increased frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts.

My job was to coordinate the effort without injecting my own bias. Secretary Wright listed the top scientists he wanted to lead the effort, all of whom hold PhDs and have published on climate science for decades: John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer (bios here). This group of five authors would come to be known as the DOE’s Climate Working Group (CWG).

As the secretary would later write in the foreword of the 150-page report: “I didn’t select these authors because we always agree—far from it. In fact, they may not always agree with each other. But I chose them for their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate. I exerted no control over their conclusions.”

Here’s a thought experiment: What if we took a group of top scientists we know to be tenacious truth seekers and gave them the microphone for a moment after they had been shouted down for years? What would they say?

I witnessed the CWG authors hitting a prolific stride when they were freed from the shackles of climate cancel culture. For anyone who questions whether the CWG could produce a 150-page report in two months, I understand the disbelief. It seems impossible, yet I saw it firsthand—the five authors left behind any egos and produced chapter after chapter of repressed truth. It flowed out of them like catharsis. It was finally okay to write what they knew to be true, and they let it rip.

Science Requires Skeptics

The truth about climate science—let alone climate policy—is far more nuanced than the summaries for policymakers (produced by previous government efforts) would have you believe. Notably, a consensus approach tends to omit the nuance that comes with dissent. Judith Curry countered the mainstream consensus approach in a quote to the Washington Post: “Any scientist that isn’t skeptical isn’t doing their job…Science is a process, and the ‘mainstream’ attempt to enforce a faux consensus to support political objectives is antithetical to science.” Amen.

We should thank the CWG authors for courageously standing up to the climate gatekeepers. To me, they are as honorable as whistleblowers who witness fraud at the highest ranks and refuse to go along quietly. As Kimberley Strassel wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “The country is witnessing the rise—finally—of a scientifically armed and debate-ready climate right.” I would argue that we are now hearing from a vocal climate center.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright deserves a medal for standing firm while the rest of the world was losing its mind over carbon dioxide. When companies across the globe were producing glossy reports detailing how they were minimizing their carbon footprint, Wright was writing a book about how his company was bettering human lives. That’s the kind of leadership we need. Serving as liaison for the CWG report was the least I could do. And I thank my team at the Cato Institute for allowing me to say yes to Secretary Wright—they saw the value of this effort and have supported me at every turn.

Where Do We Go from Here?

The CWG report was cited extensively in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) recent rulemaking, which proposes to rescind the finding that GHGs are pollutants that harm public health and welfare (the “endangerment finding”). There is a long road ahead for the administration’s policy change, including court challenges to the EPA’s rulemaking and, no doubt, many challenges in the court of public opinion on climate science and climate policy. For the DOE’s part, there will be a final version of the CWG report that will incorporate public comments (please submit them here).

Regarding the broader impact of reversing the endangerment finding, I will give the last word to Secretary Wright: “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, America is returning to free and open dialogue around climate and energy policy—driving the focus back to following the data. [The July 29] announcement is a monumental step toward returning to common-sense policies that expand access to affordable, reliable, secure energy and improve quality of life for all Americans.”