Heritage Foundation president Dr. Kevin Roberts, right, in conversation with New York Times reporter David Gelles at the Climate Forward event.Sophie Park/Shutterstock/The New York Times
As he took a seat on stage at a climate conference in New York City on Wednesday, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts admitted that even he was surprised he had been invited to speak.
Heritage, after all, is the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, a controversial policy wish list to reshape the federal government, including gutting many environmental regulations. The event, “Climate Forward,” hosted by the New York Times, was dedicated to “understanding our rapidly warming world,” with speakers including EPA Administrator Michael Regan, conservationist Jane Goodall, and the President of Guyana, Mohamed Irfaan Ali.
“That sounds like weather to me, not climate,” Roberts said.
Roberts, who penned the forward to Project 2025, seemed an unlikely guest, but as he put it, “I’ll go anywhere to talk about how the climate agenda is ending the American Dream.” He seized the speaking opportunity to dismiss climate science and argue that it was the climate agenda—not climate change itself—that should most concern people.
At the start of the panel, moderator and Times reporter David Gelles promised the audience an “open, respectful dialogue.” Aside from the occasional hiss from the crowd (and one audience member who left early, holding a middle finger in the air in protest), it was.
Project 2025, Gelles began by reminding the audience, proposes drastically cutting funding for climate research, weakening bedrock laws like the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act, undoing key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, and more—all at a time when climate-fueled extreme heat, wildfires, and storms increasingly threaten people’s lives. “I’d like to start this conversation,” Gelles said, turning to Roberts, “by asking you not what you would undo, but what is your proactive proposal to deal with climate change?”
To Roberts, however, climate wasn’t the real issue. Progressive climate policies were. The Inflation Reduction Act, he said, was imposing the will of “elites” on the American people by forcing a transition to clean energy and electric vehicles. (“I’m very happy, by the way, in my diesel F-150,” Roberts later joked, “because I enjoy my high carbon lifestyle.”)
The energy transition, he argued, “has been so artificial, it has been so accelerated,” he said, “that [it] is actually harming people far more than any of the harms that you would cite from so-called climate change.” By “harms,” Robert seemed to mean that electrification has brought with it higher energy bills (the switch to renewables is one of many factors that can affect prices) and more frequent electricity shut-offs.
As for the harms of climate change? Roberts pointed to studies, including those by Heritage, that show a reduction in climate-related deaths in the last century. As Reuters notes, while disaster-related deaths have indeed decreased in the last 100 years, that’s in part because prediction tools and preparedness have gotten better. But in the meantime, the number of disasters—and the associated cost of them—has only continued to increase. By 2050, as the Times writes, climate change may be to blame for an estimated 14.5 million deaths.
When asked about Donald Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, despite the majority of its authors being former Trump appointees, Roberts said that the Trump campaign and Heritage were currently operating in separate “lanes.” “They exist in a political lane in a political season,” he said. “We exist in a policy lane and are waiting for the policy-making season.”
Later, Gelles again pushed Roberts to acknowledge the risk posed by climate change, noting that last year was the hottest in recorded history. “Is there any degree of warming that you think the United States or the world should stay below?” he asked. “Is there any level at which it becomes too dangerous?”
Roberts declined to give a direct answer, instead downplaying the science—again. “That sounds like weather to me, not climate,” he said. “A hot year.”
