In the opening minutes of his discussion with Roberts, Gelles outlined Project 2025’s regressive approach to climate change and the environment while framing that approach around the real-world consequences of a warming climate:

Gelles added, “These proposals, you are making them at a moment when we really are experiencing the effects of climate change.” As examples of the effects we are already experiencing, Gelles discussed the record number of people in the Phoenix area alone who perished due to extreme heat; how insurance companies are pulling out of parts of the country that repeatedly experience extreme weather; and the 28 billion-dollar natural disasters in this year alone that were worsened by climate change.

After listing many of the safeguards that Project 2025 would see repealed, Gelles pressed Roberts on the conservative movement's plan to address the climate crisis. In part, Roberts responded by suggesting that Project 2025 is intended as a “a corrective to the politicization of the federal government” when it comes to policies that address issues like climate change.

Gelles rightly questioned Roberts on the initiative’s goal by pointing out that Project 2025 “proposes replacing scientists with political appointees,” and asking Roberts, “How does that undo the politicization of the government?”

Roberts pointed to Heritage Foundation research to claim that there has been a “reduction in climate deaths — climate-related deaths — over the last century by 98%.” In reality, that reduction is reportedly attributable at least in part to improvements in forecasting by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency Project 2025 calls for dismantling. Meanwhile, as Reuters reported, “The number, intensity, and cost of climatic and meteorological hazards have all increased over the last hundred years,” despite the decrease in mortality.

Later in the conversation Roberts attempted to dismiss the scientific consensus on global warming, warning Gelles, “That unanimity of scientists you mentioned, be careful to not to be too abusive with that, because you know better than anybody, that there is a variety of perspectives on the extent of that.” Roberts suggested that climate science supported by the government is biased. In order to correct that supposed bias, he argued euphemistically, “What we’re trying to do with scientific research inside the government — we’re trying to streamline it,” noting: “Government doesn’t have a monopoly on scientific knowledge.” In reality (and as Gelles pointed out), Project 2025 proposes drastically scaling back climate research in the federal government while being “more deferential to industry science.”

This argument also underpins Project’s 2025’s plan to dismantle NOAA and the false claim that the agency alters temperature data and other research to push the so-called climate agenda.

Finally, Gelles asked Roberts directly whether there was a degree of warming that he believed the world should stay below:

In response, Roberts falsely suggested that the heat of the hottest year in recorded history was attributable merely to weather and not the climate. (In fact, as Gelles corrected, it's part of a more than century-long trend.) Roberts then claimed the actions necessary to respond to the climate crisis would be worse than living with the impacts of a warming world: “I think the prescriptions are worse than the disease.”

In fact, we can’t afford not to respond to the climate crisis. Experts have warned that the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of transitioning away from fossil fuels. In 2018, Trump attempted to bury a landmark scientific report produced by the federal government’s own scientists that, in part, described “in precise detail how the warming planet will wreak hundreds of billions of dollars of damage in coming decades” if left unchecked.

Gelles confronted Roberts about Project 2025’s plan to rollback regulations and cut personnel responsible for keeping our air and water clean, asking, “You just said that you care about clean air and clean water. How do those changes actually result in more clean air and water?”

In response, Roberts suggested that clean air and water can instead be achieved by the free market and private citizens who “want a beautiful environment,” while dismissing the fact that “the United States has some of the cleanest air and water in the world” because of the regulations that Heritage suggests are unnecessary. And there is still work to be done. According to the Environmental Performance Index, 15 countries have cleaner air than the U.S. and 25 have cleaner water. In the U.S., air pollution still causes 200,000 premature deaths each year.

The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were both signed into law under a Republican administration more than five decades ago at a time when air and water quality were rapidly deteriorating. In one stark example from before their passage, the Cuyahoga River, a tributary of the Ohio River, caught fire due to the saturation of private industrial pollution. Meanwhile, unchecked air pollution created dangerous smog:

Since its passage, the Clean Air Act has saved millions of lives and trillions of dollars in health care costs.

Roberts argued that the transition to clean energy, expedited by the Inflation Reduction Act, “is actually harming people far more than any of the harms that you would cite from so-called climate change.”

Roberts suggested that the IRA was causing “energy inflation,” resulting in high electric bills for Americans. He also rejected Gelles description of the IRA’s successes, including the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs and the return of manufacturing to the U.S., as evidenced by the policy’s support from Republicans whose districts have benefited from these new jobs. He claimed that once Americans understand the IRA, they oppose it:

In fact, the Inflation Reduction Act is lowering energy bills for millions of Americans who have taken advantage of its many clean energy and energy efficiency tax credits. Furthermore, polling by the climate change communication programs at Yale and George Mason Universities found that “most registered voters have not heard much about the Inflation Reduction Act,” but that “after reading a short description of the IRA, 74% of registered voters support it.” Project 2025 would dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act.

Gelles pointed out that while clean energy subsidies and tax incentives are a sticking point for Heritage, the libertarian think-tank has “defended tax subsidies for the oil and gas industry.”

Roberts claimed Heritage was not supporting the oil and gas industry but “defending good policy” in recognition that “even for all of you who want to accelerate this energy transition you have to have fossil fuels to do that.”

Notably, a long history of incentives and policies favoring fossil fuels over clean energy, as advocated by fossil fuel-funded think tanks like Heritage, has contributed to our nation’s continued dependence on fossil fuels.

Gelles also pressed Roberts on whether he thought “this administration has hampered the oil and gas industry in this country,” given that there are “record levels of production, exploration continues,” and “profits are at all-time highs.”

In response, Roberts falsely suggested that the U.S. was “totally energy independent” under Trump and now is instead “very dependent on some of the worst actors in the world.” This myth has been debunked multiple times over the past several years, most recently by MSNBC’s Steven Rattner in response to Trump making this same false assertion during the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this month. As Rattner pointed out, “The US became a net oil exporter under Biden, not Trump.”

Roberts claimed that the clean energy transition “benefits the Chinese Communist party,” which he believes to be the “greatest existential threat to the United States.”

Gelles affirmed that China is leading on production of renewables and suggested that it was all the more reason to support the acceleration of renewable energy production in the U.S.:

Roberts claimed that the only way to compete with China in the clean energy race would be through totalitarianism: “China’s imposition of people buying electric vehicles is the result of having a totalitarian regime. … This is where the Biden-Harris administration wants us to go.”

The claim that the Biden-Harris administration has implemented a federal mandate on electric vehicles, which Roberts seems to refer to, has been well-refuted. Even so, Roberts’ rhetorical shift deflects from the fact that U.S. clean energy development was set back by a Trump administration that elevated oil and gas development while rolling back climate and environmental policies. Economists say that eliminating the climate policies Roberts has railed against would actually benefit China “by jeopardizing hundreds of billions of dollars in manufacturing investments that have already been made in the United States and sending that work back to other countries, including China.”