“I’m the only candidate on stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this — the climate change agenda is a hoax … And so the reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change … This isn’t that complicated guys, unlock American energy, drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear ”  Vivek Ramaswamy, GOP debate, 23 August 2023  Translation:  Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

I wasn’t pleased with any of the candidates’ answers regarding climate change on Wednesday night, but Ramaswamy’s comments blew my mind.  If ever I wanted to smack somebody upside the head …

But folks, if ANY Republican gets into the White House in 2025, the environment will be doomed, for there is an overall Republican plan by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that directs most GOP policy, to destroy the environment.  Why?  Oh come on … you don’t need me to tell you why.  One simple answer:

The Heritage Foundation has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.  Need I say more?

The document by the Heritage Foundation is called Project 2025 and is a scary literal blueprint for every aspect of governing in the first 180 days when/if a Republican takes control of the White House in 2025.  The 920-page document outlines everything including economics, limited government, free markets and free trade, tax cuts, reduced government spending, privatization, and the reduction of government run welfare programs in favor of private-sector nonprofits.  I plan to cover more about Project 2025 in the coming months, but for now I’m only talking about how the plan would deal with climate change and the future of life on the planet.

According to an article last month in The Guardian …

The guide’s chapter on the US Department of Energy proposes eliminating three agency offices that are crucial for the energy transition, and also calls to slash funding to the agency’s grid deployment office in an effort to stymie renewable energy deployment, E&E News reported this week.

The plan, which would hugely expand gas infrastructure, was authored by Bernard McNamee, a former official at the agency. McNamee was also a Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior adviser to the Republican senator Ted Cruz.

Another chapter focuses on gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and moving it away from its focus on the climate crisis. It proposes cutting the agency’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, while shrinking it as a whole by terminating new hires in “low-value programs”, E&E News reported. The proposal was written Mandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump.

The guide also features a chapter on the Department of the Interior written by William Perry Pendley, who controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations.

None of the candidates at the debate earlier this week would commit to following through on climate regulations to attempt to get greenhouse gas emissions under control or to any other major climate regulations.  I suspect that each of the eight have read the Heritage document and signed on to it wholeheartedly.  And we already know what the elephant who wasn’t in the room thinks.  Our lives, the lives of our children and grandchildren, of the future of the world, matter not one whit to these arseholes … the only thing that matters is that almighty dollar/pound/yen/euro.

This isn’t only about the U.S., people … every single person on Planet Earth has a stake in how the U.S. handles environmental issues, for what any one country does affects EVERY person in EVERY country.  Republicans are still living back in the day when we thought we were autonomous, and they still reject globalism, but to do so is utterly ignorant.  Step outside about 2:00 p.m. and tell me that climate change isn’t real, that it isn’t killing us!  Tell it to the people living in Maui, or Southern California.

Anyone who votes for a Republican next year will have the blood of our future generations on their hands, in my book.