The videos first started appearing a dozen years ago. Pickup truck drivers, mostly young men, would modify their diesel engines and then record themselves deliberately spreading air pollution.
It was called “rolling coal,” and the idea was to spew dark clouds of exhaust at bicyclists, Prius and Tesla drivers and other cars as a protest of environmentalism.
The trend appears to have peaked in 2014, thanks to new state laws and crackdowns on people selling vehicle modification kits and, presumably, finding better things to do with their time. But the impulse behind it lives on, even as the risks of climate change become ever more serious.
The most recent example? Project 2025, a set of conservative proposals from the Heritage Foundation that outlines step-by-step plans to remake the federal government in a second Donald Trump administration, including dismantling nearly everything the federal government is doing to fight climate change, making it dramatically harder to conduct basic scientific research on it and actively promoting more oil and gas use.
Trump has tried to distance himself from the proposals, despite the fact that some of his top former advisers spearheaded it. But it’s in line with his thinking. As The Washington Post reported, he told a gathering of top oil executives this year that he would reverse dozens of environmental regulations and stop new ones if they raised $1 billion to help him return to the White House.
His campaign, meantime, targeted environmental regulations such as electric vehicle mandates in its Agenda 47, a scattershot series of videos outlining its plans for a second term. And at rallies, Trump frequently criticizes electric cars, claiming in one bizarre aside that buying one made his friend gain weight because he would eat at restaurants while it charged. Trump has also gone off on weird tangents about the risks of electric batteries on boats.
In his first “rolling coal” term, Trump rolled back or loosened nearly 100 rules and regulations on pollution, many of which set the U.S. further behind in the effort to stop the worst effects of climate change, according to a tally by The New York Times. But that record would be dwarfed by the damage that the Project 2025 proposals could do if he followed through on them, even as Monday was the hottest day ever measured by humans, according to a European Union science agency.
The 922-page document drips with disdain for what it calls “climate alarmism” that it argues is being used as propaganda for “ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations.” But its most damaging proposal looks like it would launch what amounts to a propaganda effort against climate science.
The first step is something called Schedule F, which would reclassify thousands of government workers, making it easier for the president to hire and fire them. Even if Trump were to fire only some of those workers, the shift toward politicization of lower-level government jobs would mean an exodus of experienced scientists. Those who remained might become more cautious about their research decisions to avoid trouble.
The second step is to create a job that appears to basically be an anti-climate change czar. Project 2025 proposes creating a position of “science adviser” and six senior political appointees who would be charged with “overseeing and reforming” research at the Environmental Protection Agency, emphasizing that these political overseers should be hired for their “management, oversight and execution skills,” rather than scientific expertise.
Imagine something like the final scene of an episode of “The Apprentice,” only with Trump hauling climate scientists into the boardroom to dramatically fire them.
Imagine something like the final scene of an episode of “The Apprentice,” only with Trump hauling climate scientists into the boardroom to dramatically fire them. That may be exciting for the oil and gas industry and some of Trump’s supporters but not for the two-thirds of Americans in a recent Pew Research Center survey who said they support the country’s taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050.
(If you want to understand the depth of disdain here, the section on the EPA was written by Mandy Gunasekara. The Drilled newsletter points out she’s in the famous 2015 photo of her then-boss, the late Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., holding up a snowball in the Senate as an attempt to disprove climate change.) The report goes further, proposing dramatically downsizing the National Weather Service and leaving weather forecasting to private companies. That could hamper its ability to issue public warnings about floods, hurricanes and other dangers, just as we are seeing more intense and frequent extreme-weather events due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases. As Trump said in an impromptu aside in his convention speech, “we will drill, baby, drill.” That’s not all. Other sections of Project 2025 propose ending subsidies for wind and solar power; cutting research into wind, solar and battery technology needed to help transition away from fossil fuels; ending federal mandates and subsidies for electric vehicles; and expanding drilling for oil and natural gas on federal lands. As Trump said in his convention speech, “we will drill, baby, drill.” The efforts would not be limited to the U.S., either. A section on foreign aid proposes rolling back efforts to help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels, arguing that they are “unachievable.” But then it goes further, arguing that the U.S. should spend taxpayer dollars persuading these countries to burn more oil and gas. The U.S. Agency for International Development, the proposal says, “should cease its war on fossil fuels in the developing world and support the responsible management of oil and gas reserves as the quickest way to end wrenching poverty.” Taken together, these proposals would not just make it harder to fight climate change but actively make it worse. A second Trump administration would be rolling coal on the entire planet.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline. 
