Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, November 20th.

Today on Forbes, Fracker Chris Wright, Trump's energy pick, isn't a climate denier.

He's a pragmatist.

Over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate Chris Wright, CEO

of Liberty Energy, as the next secretary of

the U.S. Department of Energy.

Wright has been denigrated as a, quote, climate denier.

He insists he's anything but.

The self-described nerd with a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT did graduate

work at UC Berkeley before embarking on a 30-year journey

as a successful entrepreneur. He has stated publicly for years his belief that carbon dioxide

is a greenhouse gas that is no doubt making the atmosphere warmer than it otherwise would be.

Where he diverges from conventional thinking is on what to do about it.

To write, who is 59 years old, using less energy is not an option because humans have proven that we thrive with more.

On a video chat he shared last year, he said, quote,

"...any negative impact of climate change has been overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing

energy consumption. Since World War II, human carbon dioxide emissions have surged, but right

reasons that during that same period, we've also enjoyed far less disease, refrigeration, air

travel, Wi-Fi, air conditioning, all enabled by fossil fuels.

Ten days before he was nominated to be the energy secretary, he told Forbes, quote,

to make the world a better place to solve the global problems, you need more reliable,

affordable, secure energy. You have to have a successful, wealthy society to do that.

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