America’s Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, popped up on the BBC a couple of weeks ago to tell us not to worry our little British heads about climate change, because in five years’ time artificial intelligence will have cracked nuclear fusion. Yes, the power of the stars, harnessed by a few lines of Python code and some blokes in lab coats at the national labs. Eight to fifteen years, he reckons, and we’ll have it humming away on the grid like a Dyson Hoover.
Even the real enthusiasts for fusion, the ones who live and breathe magnetic confinement and neutron flux, will be spitting out their coffee. We’ve been “twenty years away” from fusion since the 1960s. The idea that AI will suddenly solve a problem that has eluded the best physicists for seventy years is about as credible as Trump solving algebra.
Of course, Wright’s real interest isn’t starlight in a bottle. He’s a fracking man. Made his money that way. And lo and behold, he’s urging the UK to lift its moratorium on fracking, promising blue-collar jobs and cheap energy as if Lancashire were the Permian Basin. The British Geological Survey has already said the reserves are limited, but when has geology ever got in the way of a good sales pitch?
Then we get the usual Trumpist refrain – renewables have had their subsidies for long enough, isn’t it time they stood on their own? He neglects to mention that fossil fuels have been mollycoddled with subsidies for over a century and still are. Without them, the oil patch would look like a desert even quicker. Wind and solar, meanwhile, are already cheaper than gas in many markets – which rather proves the point of subsidies.
And then the China bogeyman. Apparently Europe risks becoming dependent on Beijing because it buys Chinese solar panels. Perhaps if the US hadn’t gutted its own renewable industry, it might have had some panels to sell us. But no – better to blame the foreigners and demand more drilling. Reform UK will be nodding along like dashboard dogs.
The pièce de résistance is the Department of Energy’s climate report claiming sea levels aren’t rising, models are exaggerated, and extra CO₂ is just “plant food.” Eighty-five scientists have already rubbished it as cherry-picked nonsense, but Wright doubles down, accusing everyone else of cherry-picking. It’s the classic trick: sow doubt, delay action, keep the fossil cash flowing.
Fusion as the shiny distraction, fracking as the payday, renewables as the whipping boy, China as the bogeyman, and climate science as the “church.” All designed to stall and confuse while the oil burns. And he does it with a straight face, standing in Trump’s shadow.
It’s not an energy strategy. It’s theatre. The fusion bit is just the glitter thrown in the air so no one notices the oil stains on his hands.
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