With the Way Project 2025 Views Climate Change, Life Is Literally Hopeless

July 22, 2024 was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth, according to data collected from NASA — which wasn’t exactly surprising, as Earth in general had its hottest summer ever. Unfortunately, these rising temperatures don’t seem to be anomalies. Instead, climate change has led to all kinds of scary weather headlines: massive floods, dangerous heat waves, shock snowstorms, powerful hurricanes, and sudden tornadoes have also had devastating effects all over the globe this year, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their paths.

But any forward momentum the world is making on combating climate change could come to a sudden halt — and even a dramatic reversal — if Project 2025, a disturbing political initiative by a conservative think tank, is enacted.

Here’s why the potential enactment of Project 2025 has so many people worried about the United States’ ability to not just prevent climate change, but even help people suffering from its effects.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is a (900-page!) document created by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which essentially lists dream policy measures for the next president of the United States.

Project 2025 takes aim at abortion rights, the LGBTQ+ community, public education, federal agencies, and climate change measures, among other alarming goals that could see many Americans losing their rights and the world becoming a more dangerous place, especially where the environment is concerned.

What Does Project 2025 Say About Climate Change?

Project 2025 wants to drastically alter, downsize, or cut back funding for several government agencies and programs that deal with weather and climate change, including:

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which “works to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts,” according to its website. Project 2025 hopes to downsize the department and have commercial businesses take over many of its services. Cutting back on this department would damage it and leave it unable to do its scope of necessary work, experts warn.
• The National Weather Service, which compiles weather data and handles forecasts for the country. Similarly, Project 2025 suggests having private businesses take over its duties or putting it behind a paywall. This could have negative consequences by keeping the information from lower-income people or local governments who need it most. Plus, private companies may have possible incentives to frame data in misleading ways or employ it for their own benefits. (Just look at the movie Twisters for an example! Kind of, anyway.)
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which leads the charge to help people when disasters strike in the United States. Project 2025 proposes cutting back on FEMA and having state or local governments shoulder significantly more responsibility to handle any emergencies. But these smaller governments may not be able to handle the costs of emergency management, financially crippling areas and forcing people to get subpar care. It could also lead to higher taxes for citizens if FEMA cuts happen.
• The National Flood Insurance Program. Project 2025 wants it entirely gone, with companies handling all flood insurance. Private insurance companies may raise prices and make flood insurance more difficult to obtain.
• The Department of Energy. If Project 2025 was put into place, its work devoted to clean energy research would end, as would its guidelines for household appliances’ energy efficiency, for example.
• The Environmental Protection Agency. Project 2025 suggests it loses many of its environmental oversight capabilities and weakens its powers in general to protect both the health of the people and the land in general.

Making these kinds of alterations to these programs would have negative effects on their ability to collect the data we need to understand and combat climate change — and it would also affect the government’s ability to help people impacted by the terrifying effects of climate change.

Oh, and that’s not all Project 2025 would do. It also aims to replace hundreds of longstanding federal employees with political appointees, who would lack the institutional knowledge needed to run these departments — and potentially come in with damaging or biased agendas.

Plus, it wants to remove measures for fossil fuels that were originally put in place to protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions, like getting rid of federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands, for example. Removing these fossil fuel protections may accelerate the effects of climate change, a scary thought considering the horrifying weather disasters people have seen in recent years.

It’s not just scary for Americans, though. Project 2025 also suggests measures that would hinder the entire world’s ability to slow down or reverse climate change, including:

• Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, which is a global commitment to climate action
• Leaving the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the United Nations’ space to discuss and coordinate climate change proposals and policies, including reducing carbon emissions

The United States is one of the largest and most powerful countries (and one of the top three countries emitting greenhouse gasses!). If it isn’t involved in these global conversations or participating at all in climate change policies to reduce its emissions, the world at large likely won’t be able to effectively reduce climate change effects. Yep, Project 2025’s reach could be that widespread and damaging.

If we want to keep the planet safe and healthy for future generations, we can’t go backward with Project 2025 proposals; we must actively fight the threat of rising global temperatures. Let’s hope Project 2025 is a possibility that doesn’t come to fruition.