A questionable choice by one of the most respected newspapers in the country created backlash about its role in spreading climate misinformation.
What's happening?
The New Republic questioned why The New York Times invited Kevin Roberts to a one-day climate conference in September. Roberts is the head of The Heritage Foundation as well as a Project 2025 coordinator and has claimed climate action and environmentalism are merely vehicles to influence corporations and their investment strategies in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion plus environmental, social, and governance issues.
He has also written a book about the necessity of a violent "second American revolution" for the political right to install its ideologies throughout the country. It was to be released in September but was pushed to Nov. 12, perhaps to avoid further linking Project 2025 to Donald Trump's presidential candidacy so close to the election, as TNR speculated. Project 2025 would slash environmental regulations and eliminate or cripple climate agencies, among other governmental changes.
In the book, Roberts said ESG is "actually a system for punishing the lawful and empowering the unlawful. Effectively, it's anarcho-tyranny for business."
A Reddit thread that highlighted a Media Matters story about the Times' choice to use Roberts featured abject dismay among commenters, many of whom wrote that the Times was abandoning its responsibility in order to make more money by catering to an audience interested in unrestrained economic growth, at the expense of the environment.
Why is this important?
Roberts spoke at Climate Forward in September and dismissed proven science in addition to worries about how Project 2025 would install conservative loyalists in positions traditionally held by career scientists, as the Times reported. With the platform, Roberts spread lies about the impacts of the climate crisis, including that deaths caused by rising temperatures are falling when they are projected to rise to 14.5 million annually by 2050.
He said recent catastrophic natural disasters made worse by planetary warming were caused by "a hot year."
"Events like these are hardly the only way news outlets have undermined their credibility on climate topics in recent years," TNR stated.
Another issue with Roberts' speaking at this event — billed by the Times as "bringing together newsmakers who seek to influence climate and political policy for a day of rigorous, challenging interviews" — is that Project 2025 calls for the abandonment of clean energy development in favor of doubling down on dirty energy. ExxonMobil has been a major funder of the Heritage Foundation for many years.
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The United States and world at large is already being besieged by the consequences of the rising global temperature, which is driven by the burning of coal, gas, and oil. Green technology such as solar power promises to pull back that warming and its associated effects, which include more frequent and severe extreme weather, water and food insecurity, and negative health outcomes.
What are people saying?
"However rigorous the interview might be — might being the operative word — giving him the mic feels like a throwback to the days when cable news shows felt the need to 'balance' climate scientists with outright kooks who denied the climate was changing," TNR stated. "… It was awful then, and it's awful now."
There's nothing wrong with opposing viewpoints, and discussing them in an open forum with respect needs to happen more often. That also requires transparency and a commitment to base opinions in facts. Sharing values and moving to solutions is also essential to productivity, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe says.
"This is a weird guest choice," one Redditor wrote about Roberts.
Someone else joked: "The planet you live on counts for nothing! My wallet needing more stuffing is what's important here!"
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