It
On stage at the New York Times’ Climate Forward summit on Wednesday, Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts boldly declared that “the climate agenda is ending the American dream.”
It’s a sentiment that should strike any thinking person as absurd on its face: What could be more devastating to human life, let alone the American dream, than spikes in extreme weather and disasters like floods and wildfires, lethal heat levels and water and food shortages?
And yet the words of a man with incredible influence over conservative politicians are worth taking seriously.
Throughout the text of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s Cheesecake Factory-like menu of hopes for the next conservative president, the idea of climate change is repeatedly denigrated as “anti-human”: the ideology of “environmental extremists” eager to sacrifice the American way of life “to the god of nature.” In practice, the recommendations in its text would worsen many of the environmental rollbacks of former president Trump, whose modus operandi was to plug his ears and sing, “Drill, baby, drill!” And the planet would be screwed, to say the least.
When I spoke to David Kieve, president of Environmental Defense Fund Action, he rightfully critiqued Project 2025 as “a grab bag and a wishlist written by polluters for their short-term economic benefit, to the detriment of all of the rest of us.” I thought he was exaggerating until I dug into the list of Project 2025's advisory board.
On the board are several major think tanks devoted to climate denial. There’s the Heartland Institute (most famous for helping Phillip Morris push the idea that cigarettes aren’t harmful) and the Institute for Energy Research, both offspring of the libertarian, oil billionaire-funded Cato Institute. Then there’s California’s own Pacific Research Institute, which recently sprang into a spirited defense of poor, defenseless “energy producers” being sued by state Attorney General Rob Bonta for deceiving the public over the recyclability of plastic. All these entities have been generously funded by oil and gas tycoons and companies like ExxonMobil.
So, what’s on Project 2025’s to-do list? Many of its plans aim to kneecap the government’s ability to do literally anything that has to do with climate change and energy efficiency, including gutting and privatizing research and regulatory agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service. The reliability of weather forecasts and emergency warnings — like, say, for encroaching wildfires or hurricanes — would decline drastically.
It would restrict government-funded climate research; withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement; reverse regulations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture, automobiles and industry; and axe the funding of green jobs in conservation, civil infrastructure and clean energy. Project 2025’s backers aim to dismantle restrictions on coal, oil and natural gas production and reduce fees and accountability for drilling operations on public lands. And perhaps most damaging for long-term government functionality is its plan to replace seasoned civil servants in NOAA and other agencies with political appointees who are “wholly in sync” with the regime’s agenda.
One particularly galling proposal is halting the Environmental Protection Agency’s progress on dealing with and researching PFAS, or “forever chemicals” from manufacturing. PFAS, found in drinking water, soil, fisheries and the human body, have been linked to cancer, developmental impairment and hormonal imbalances. The agency has recently been empowered to hold corporations accountable for PFAS contamination; but unfortunately, that violates Project 2025’s core principles of absolute corporate freedom and deregulation. So, ironically, while Project 2025 aims to roll back reproductive rights under the guise of increasing fertility and spreading pro-life family values, its authors seem to be fine with the proliferation of chemicals that, among many other things, reduce fertility.
Let’s assume conservatives are laser-focused on saving Americans money, and that’s why they advise caution on investing so much in climate initiatives. But how true is that?
San Francisco-based nonpartisan energy and environmental policy firm Energy Innovation gamed out the ramifications of Project 2025’s plan and found that its policies would lead to higher household energy costs, driven by increased reliance on petroleum and rising electricity prices. The analysis predicts an additional increase of $240 per household by 2030, and $150 by 2050 compared to following current policies. Overall, Project 2025’s environmental rollbacks would decrease GDP by $320 billion per year by 2030 and $150 billion per year by 2050.
The evidence is a direct rebuke to Heritage president Roberts’ assertion that climate investment will “end the American dream.” Though to be fair, if you define the dream as the freedom to pollute as much as you want to, he’s right. But the dream of opportunity — of a good life — requires a world with breathable air.
Fighting climate change necessitates an all-hands-on-deck approach like the Inflation Reduction Act of 2024, which invests billions in green industries and jobs. Yet the Heritage Foundation has gone full Red Scare on this initiative, calling it an anti-freedom, “centrally planned” Communist takeover of the economy.
It’s clear that the myriad of authors of Project 2025, which, again, will have an incredible amount of influence over the next conservative presidency, Trump or not, are willing to say and do anything — to burn this planet to the ground for the sake of protecting their funders.
No comments:
Post a Comment