The Top Ten Most Terrifying Takeaways from the Climate Chapter of Project 2025

So what exactly is Project 2025: The Presidential Transition Project and how will it affect climate change? Well, if you were to read the nearly 900 page document beginning to end, it would unfold like the blueprint for a dystopian nightmare. Except instead of a work of fiction intended to warn us of just how bad things might get if we don’t take action now, this document is aspirational with a goal of promoting (imposing?) “traditional American values.” 

Let’s take a step back. The first Trump administration didn’t fully accomplish its goal of dismantling as many environmental protections as possible and preventing the transition to renewable energy and a green economy. This time, if Trump is re-elected, they want to be prepared with a plan in place so they don’t waste a day promoting their eco-unfriendly policies. Written by many who were part of Trump’s previous administration and would likely be re-upped if he gets another go as Commander-In-Chief, P25 includes a special 28-page chapter detailing how to prevent the US from being able to reduce its carbon footprint, promote renewable energy and protect ourselves and our environment from pollutants and toxins.  

The climate chapter doesn’t exactly deny climate change (although many of its authors are card-carrying climate deniers). Instead, it rejects the need for regulations to protect our air, water and land from increasing greenhouse gasses, pollution, and toxic chemicals. The P25 authors prefer suggestions to regulations, placing their faith in the all mighty wisdom of the free market to self-regulate. Isn’t that a little like putting a plate of freshly baked cookies in front of a hungry toddler and suggesting that instead of eating the cookies, he may want to consider making himself a nice kale salad?

There’s a lot of shocking climate catastrophe packed into these twenty-eight pages, but here are my ten top terrifying takeaways:

1. The Authors. Mandy Gunasekara, the self-proclaimed  “architect” of the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017 is credited as the main author. Other contributors include former Trump appointees, climate deniers and an adviser for several fossil fuel companies who has dismissed climate change mitigation as "progressive" policy. 

2. Scientists Out, Politicians In. P25 proposes altering the EPA leadership by adding a new “science advisor” and at least six new appointees charged with reforming the agency’s scientific research who are not scientists, rather prioritizing “managerial skills” rather than “personal scientific output.”

3. Dismantling NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). NOAA is referred to as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” NOAA’s stated mission is to “provide daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings, climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration, and the supporting of marine commerce” using “cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need when they need it.” I suppose if you deny climate change is real, then you don’t need to predict increasing frequency and size of hurricanes and wildfires, right? And without the data to measure increasing climate disasters, it’s easier to deny it’s really happening. 

4. Eliminating Enforcement. Closing the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. It’s great to have laws preventing harm to the environment, but if there’s no one to enforce them, it’s a big wink, wink to the polluters looking to avoid all that pesky legislation.

5. Drill, Baby, Drill (on federal lands). P25 declares that the federal government has an "obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources," saying it wants to unleash “all of America’s energy resources” by eliminating restrictions to drill on public lands and encouraging the development of new fossil-fuel-based energy projects. And when they say all of America’s energy resources, they’re just referring to those resources that pollute, warm and are non-renewable since they also plan to cut federal investments in renewable energy projects. 

6. Eliminate Critical Offices within the Energy Department. Specifically, P25 seeks to remove offices that have anything to do with climate technology, energy technology or renewable energy. So instead of understanding and responding to climate change, P25 proponents want to pretend it doesn’t exist. 

7. Replacing Career Civil Servants with Idealogues. Concerned that most EPA employees are “left leaning,” P25 has plans to fire “careerists” and replace them with party loyalists, claiming “Democratic administrations, however, are typically more successful because they require the cooperation of careerists, who generally lean heavily to the left.”

8. Requiring an Alignment of Policy with “Conservative Principles. The document urges a new administration to ensure that “any research conducted with taxpayer dollars serves the national interest in a concrete way in line with conservative principles.” Since those principles are neither defined nor have anything to do with environmentalism, one can assume any realignment would not be eco-friendly.

9. Eliminating Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards. By amending the 2009 scientific finding that greenhouse gas emissions pose a “danger to the health of humans and the environment,” the P25 authors seek to eliminate the harm standard used to allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Even though the body of science evidencing the damage from greenhouse gas emissions has grown exponentially and conclusively shows the damage to be much more serious than understood 16 years ago, asserting a new (false) finding would cripple the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. 

10. Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act. Touted as the most ambitious climate bill ever signed into law and which includes $370B for clean technology, P25 would repeal the IRA completely. 

Former President Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025. Should we believe him? In short, no. Back in 2022, Trump said the Heritage Foundation (P25’s sponsor) would, “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he pledged to, “drill, baby, drill,” and claimed, “They’ve spent trillions of dollars of things having to do with the Green New Scam. It’s a scam.” He also promised to eliminate money “spent on meaningless green new scam ideas, and I will end the electric vehicle mandate on Day 1.” Let’s also remember in April 2024, Trump invited oil executives to Mar-a-Lago and promised to reverse existing regulations and prohibit new regulations on oil and gas companies if they would pledge $1 billion to his campaign. 

Attacks on the environment and our future have never been more blatant or far-reaching. Project 25 is a blueprint for how to destroy our future by destroying our planet, our institutions, and our democracy.