Kevin D. Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which published a policy blueprint for the next Republican administration known as Project 2025, on Wednesday dismissed the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans were warming the planet.
At the New York Times Climate Forward event, he blasted the Biden administration’s climate policies and downplayed the consistent rise in average global temperatures that has triggered more severe drought, heat waves, floods and storms.
“It sounds like weather to me, a hot year,” Mr. Roberts said.
He also addressed Project 2025’s relationship with Mr. Trump, who has distanced himself from the policy blueprint. Thirty-one of the 38 authors of Project 2025 plan were top advisers to Mr. Trump during his first term, and many would most likely serve in prominent roles if he were to retake the White House in November.
But Mr. Roberts said the effort was “nonpartisan.”
The project, which has been a collaborative effort across the conservative ecosystem led by the Heritage Foundation, has become a lightning rod on the 2024 campaign trail. The group had spent months developing a 900-page plan to reshape the federal government. Among its many recommendations, the plan calls for replacing thousands of career scientists and other government employees with Trump loyalists.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTMr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, wrote the foreword for Mr. Roberts’s upcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.”
Mr. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025kawbet, although there is overlap between the plan and Mr. Trump’s plans for a second term, including getting rid of environmental regulations and shuttering the agencies that do climate research.