Are you freaking kidding me?! The New York Times, the newspaper of record, is hosting a fancy event for Climate Week in New York City this year. Invited guests include the people you’d expect like White House senior climate advisor Ali Zaidi, and EPA Secretary Michael Regan. But they’ve also invited Project 2025 author, Heritage Foundation President, and professional climate denier Kevin Roberts.
It’s so crazy that Guardian climate reporter Dharna Noor who said “when i got this press release my eyes nearly popped out of my head.”
Click here to send an angry letter to the New York Times telling them to disinvite Roberts, and I’ll show up to deliver the message in person at climate week next Wednesday September 25 (click here if you want to join me).
The Times’ event “Climate Forward” is described as “A day of live journalism, dedicated to understanding our rapidly warming world.” But you don’t need rich and powerful climate deniers to help you understand anything – you only need them if you’re so dedicated to “both-sides” journalism that even your coverage of climate chaos has to include “the other side”
Kevin Roberts is the President of the Heritage Foundation. Heritage was founded in the 1970s, but came to prominence as a climate denial institution from 1997-2013 when they led the “Cooler Heads Coalition” that denied climate change was happening. They also promoted the illegal hacking for hire scheme that became known as “Climategate” where Exxon paid hackers to target scientists, researchers, and activists in a failed attempt to discredit the science of climate change, and demonize political action based on that science.
More recently, Heritage has been famous for leading the “delay is the new denial” movement of climate action obstructionism. That’s where deniers say that maybe climate change is real, but we shouldn’t act too fast or end our dependance on fossil fuels — even if scientists and leaders make it clear that’s exactly what we need to do. The tactics were called out at the highest levels by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Jamie Raskin at a recent hearing on the history of climate denial, delay, and disinformation.
And just in the last few weeks, Kevin Roberts himself has been claiming credit for Project 2025 – the notorious 900-page plan developed for Donald Trump to seize power and remake America in his own image. Climate journalist Emily Atkin summarized Project 2025 like this: