Wright, a former oil man, did not deny the existence of climate change, but said its effects had been exaggerated.
“[T]oday your chance of dying from [an] extreme weather event is the lowest we have in recorded history, and 20 percent of kids record nightmares about climate change,” Wright said at a press conference on Friday, without citing the source of these statistics.
“So we have got people very afraid of something that’s a real issue, but we overhyped it,” he said.
He urged countries to stop subsidizing renewable energy because it was having little impact on emissions, but was costly for industry.
In the U.K. earlier in the week he told the BBC artificial intelligence would help solve climate change by cracking the problem of harnessing nuclear fusion to generate electricity in a decade or so.
The EU has among the most stringent stringent climate rules in the world, but is under pressure to wind these back, both internally and from other countries like the U.S.
European industry is struggling with high energy costs and intense competition from China, and business groups and politicians from the center to the far right have argued green rules add additional costs that industry cannot afford.
EU lawmakers are currently reviewing a proposal to slash rules requiring companies to report on their impacts on the environment, and member countries are struggling to reach an agreement on the EU’s 2040 emissions target.
