Project 2025's approach to environmental issues is pretty straightforward: deny climate science, dismantle the EPA, clear a path that prioritizes corporate profits, and let the world burn.
Derek and Julian unpack the details on the chilling chapter from Project 2025's 920-page manifesto that outlines their plans for the Environmental Protection Agency. According to their own statements, a Trump presidency would set these and other disastrous plans in motion from day one.
Show Notes
Conspirituality 187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy
Project 2025's Disdain for Public Education
The GOP Thinks Food Stamps Are the Real Problem
The GOP Takeover of Media
The Plan to Dismantle Health Care
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
All right, Julian, we are back looking at individual chapters of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's 920-ish page master plan for instituting authoritarian rule in America, sprinkled with some Christian nationalism, of course.
Now, we've recorded one main feed episode.
We just dropped a brief on Saturday about it, and we've done four bonus episodes on the project.
So instead of explaining the scope of the project, I'll refer listeners to those episodes on background on what Heritage has produced, and I'll link to all of them in the show notes.
But this week, we're looking at the Heritage plan for the Environmental Protection Agency.
It was written by Mandy Gunasekara, who served as Chief of Staff for the EPA during the last Trump administration.
Mandy is also a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment.
And just to kind of frame her work, she recently wrote an article for their website that was entitled, As Demands for EVs Plummets, Biden's Green Fantasy is Pummeling U.S.
Auto Dealers.
All right, we'll have to comment on this.
I mean, These people are world-class gaslighters.
They always pick such misleading and dishonest names for everything.
It's the opposite of what you think.
So the Heritage Foundation Center for Energy, Climate and Environment makes it sound like it's a serious science-based think tank, right?
That's seeking innovative and out-of-the-box real solutions for the real problems we have.
But it's not.
It's a cutthroat disinformation and propaganda operation that exists only to create doubt about the science so that the world can burn while their patrons get richer.
How dare you?
You do not think these are serious people who care about climate change.
Well, in fact, Mandy worked as a senior fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is a conservative think tank focused on instituting school voucher programs.
Of course.
Which, as we've detailed in the past, is really just a way of funneling taxpayer dollars into private religious schools.
The foundation dabbles in climate change denialism.
They aim to Explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels.
We've heard that a few times in the past.
Kill me now.
Kill me now.
And you might be surprised to learn that oil companies pump millions of dollars into that foundation.
Wow.
Now, Mandy also worked as a visiting fellow for the Independent Women's Forum, got another name for you there, which is actually an anti-feminist organization that was founded to support Clarence Thomas against allegations of sexual harassment in 1992.
Yes, because women will be more independent the more power Clarence Thomas has.
The Forum is a contributing organization to Project 2025 as well, and it operates in three countries, the United States, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Yeah, places that are very well known for women's rights.
Now, you might not know her name, but you definitely know at least some of her impact because Mandy was the chief architect behind withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Accord while serving under Trump.
And when SCOTUS recently overturned Chevron, which basically defangs the federal government from regulating environmental policies, among other things, she told the New York Times, Overturning Chevron was a shared goal of the conservative movement and the Trump administration.
It was expressed constantly.
It creates a massive opportunity for these regulations to be challenged, and it could galvanize additional momentum toward reigning in the administrative state writ large if the administration changes in November.
Thank you for that.
Okay, so let's see what Mandy writes about in Project 2025.
It begins with basic conservative drivel about supporting states and local governments and their environmental efforts, which is the sort of hands-off mentality that the right loves to pretend to care about.
She says something about transparency and open source science, which is rich, given her track record in climate change denialism.
She attacks Biden and then Obama, because of course she does.
She actually tries to put the Flint water crisis on Obama's shoulders because he was being proactive about renewable energy at the time, which totally makes sense.
Then the right's small government approach is introduced.
You've been listening to a Conspirituality bonus episode sample.
To continue listening, please head over to patreon.com slash conspirituality, where you can access all of our main feed episodes ad free, as well as four years of bonus content that we've been producing.
You can also subscribe to our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
