The Conservative Plan to Dismantle US Climate Policy
Well-funded Republicans have recently released a published action plan to roll back many federal programs within the United States, should the GOP win the 2024 election. Their first target: the EPA.
An alliance of rightwing groups convened by the Heritage Foundation, with ties to Charles Koch, have produced an extensive presidential proposal meant to guide the first 180 days of a Republican presidency in 2025. The transition guide is nearly 1,000-pages and “represents the work of more than 350 leading conservatives and outlines a vision of conservative success at each federal agency during the next administration.”
The proposal contains a plethora of recommendations meant to dismantle all sectors of the federal government, and has a special focus on deconstructing current environmental policy. The goal: to reinforce the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hobble the ongoing energy transition to cleaner fuels.
Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, issued the following statement following the release of the report: “Heritage is convening the conservative movement behind the policies to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state and restore self-governance to the American people.”
Roberts continues:
“Fortunately, this situation is changing. The conservative movement increasingly knows what time it is in America. More and more of our politicians are willing to use the government to achieve our vision, because the neutrality of “keeping the government out of it” will lose every time to the left’s vast power. The calls for a “new Church Committee” represent a momentous shift in energy; while conservatives used to lament liberal Sen. Frank Church’s original project as a kooky leftist attack against “The Brave Men And Women of Our Intelligence Community,” we’re now the ones agitating for Congress to go after the three-letter agencies.
This new vigor of the right can be found at Project 2025. Organized by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 has brought together 45 (and counting) right-of-center organizations that are ready to get into the business of restoring this country through the combination of the right policies and well-trained people. The Project’s foundation is built on four interconnected pillars, [that include a policy book, personnel database, academy, and playbook.]”
The conservative proposal contains a chapter on the US Department of Energy that proposes eliminating three essential agency offices that are critical for completing a clean energy transition. The energy arm of the plan would also block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials.
The proposal would also expand gas infrastructure, and was authored by Bernard McNamee, a former Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. McNamee previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior advisor to the Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). According to E&E Climatewire News, “if enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the transition to clean energy and shift agencies toward nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it.”
Another chapter on the newly released Conservative plan focuses on gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and moving it away from its focus on the climate crisis. It proposes cutting the agency’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, while terminating new hires in “low-value programs.”
The proposal to roll back climate change protections was written Mandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump. During her tenure, she pushed President Trump to exit the Paris Climate Agreement and to roll back environmental regulations. The guide also features a chapter on the Department of the Interior, written by William Perry Pendley, who controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations.
This year has seen record-breaking heat and the globe is hotter than it has ever been. Sea surface temperatures and open waters are running as high as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) above normal, the warmest in more than 170 years. Last month was the warmest May since 1850 for the Atlantic Ocean around the United Kingdom, and that was before water temperatures soared in early June.
According to a recent study by Climate Central, a science nonprofit that has figured a way to calculate how much climate change has affected daily weather, more than 6.5 billion people, or 81% of the world’s population, sweated through at least one day where climate change had a significant effect on the average daily temperature. Human-caused global warming made July hotter for four out of five people on Earth, with more than 2 billion people feeling climate change-boosted warmth daily.
As of Tuesday, 1,160 fires are burning across Canada and nearly 30 million acres have burned so far, an area bigger than several individual US states. The area burned — the fourth-most of any season on record — is too large to rely on colder weather and precipitation to do the bulk of the work in extinguishing the blazes. The resulting smoke has forced air quality alerts, bringing unhealthy air across the northern tier of the United States from Montana to Vermont, affecting around 70 million US residents this summer.
Officials in Maui have confirmed that at least 36 people have died in wildfires this week, where crews continue to battle the Maui and Big Island fires, which have been fanned in part by strong winds from Hurricane Dora, a Category 4 storm. The small seaside town of Lahaina, that was once the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, has been completely decimated by the fires.
While this Conservative Republican Playbook has technically been prepared in anticipation of a Republican occupying the Oval Office in 2025, it will no doubt have strategies that will continue to be used among Conservative members of Congress, who remain loyal to lobbyists. One thing has been made abundantly clear from the dissemination of this latest scheme to tear apart the EPA, that involves the largest cuts to environmental protections the United States has ever seen — America can’t afford to waste any more time under Republican leadership in any arm of the federal government.
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter, is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and an analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
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These people are soulless, greedy scumbags. Again the political ads write themselves. Will the Democrats not get hoodwinked into so-called culture wars and actually run on the real issues; Abortion, Climate, Labor. We shall see but I’m not optimistic. Floridians can no longer afford hazard insurance, Arizona is becoming unlivable, California wildfires are starting earlier. If you see all this and still vote for oil soaked psychopaths cuz you hate trans people then you’re a complete moron beyond redemption. Let’s hope the democrats can actually manage to use the issues to their advantage for a change.
What the hell is wrong with these people--do they not live on the same planet as the rest of us????