Energy Secretary Delivers ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Speech at CPAC

Energy Secretary Chris Wright took the stage at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Wednesday to expound on President Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” philosophy.

Wright, a former energy executive and an enthusiastic advocate for natural gas, began his speech at the conference in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., by asserting that energy supply is what has made modern living standards possible.

“[Energy is] what controls the limits in what’s possible in our lives. Not just us, but everyone around the world,” he said. 

“We had 30-year global life expectancy at birth throughout all of human history, all the way up to less than 200 years ago. Today, it’s 73 years,” he added, contending that this was made possible partly by “the explosion in available energy.”

Wright proceeded to criticize the Biden administration’s burdensome regulations on energy exploration and on household appliances.

“Look at the last four years, what have we seen? Every possible new barrier implemented to make it harder to produce oil and gas,” said Wright.

“That doesn’t change the demand for oil and gas. You just make it harder to produce. What do you get? You get less supply and higher prices. We’ve seen a 30% rise in electricity prices just in the previous administration.”

Wright also poked fun at Biden administration regulations on household appliances, which he argued were pointless and only lead to a decreased quality of life.

“A whole bunch of regulations were rolled out to limit your ability to buy the appliances you want,” he said.

“Like, my clothes dryer works at half the power. In theory, this is saving energy. It just takes twice as long to dry our clothes. Like, these are just nonsensical things that have hurt people’s lives and driven prices up,” the energy secretary said.

Wright also mentioned the United States’ artificial intelligence arms race with China and asserted that America must open up energy exploration to power the industry.

“We need to lead and win the competition in AI. And the only way to do that is to have tremendous energy production that we can both grow our electricity production, which is what AI runs on, but stop the price rises,” he said.

Wright closed with a promise that Trump’s second term would be as pro-energy as the first, deregulating the sector to stimulate growth in the economy.

“Better opportunities for Americans, lower cost of living, more industries that want to invest and build things here in the United States. That is this president’s agenda,” he said.

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