As delegates arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in mid-July to formally nominate former President Donald Trump as their 2024 candidate, a right-wing policy think tank held an all-day event nearby. The Heritage Foundation, a major sponsor of the convention and a group that has influenced Republican presidential policy since the 1980s, has rallied its supporters to promote “Plan 2025,” a more than 900-page policy blueprint , aimed at fundamentally reorganizing the federal government.
Dozens of conservative groups contributed to Project 2025, which recommends changes that would touch every aspect of American life and transform federal agencies — from the Department of Defense to the Interior Department to the Federal Reserve. While the blueprint has attracted attention largely for its proposed attacks on human rights and personal freedoms, it would also undermine the country's broad network of environmental and climate policies and alter U.S. fossil fuel production, climate action and the future of environmental justice.
Under the direction of President Joe Biden, most of the federal government’s vast system of departments, agencies and committees have taken on the daunting task of integrating climate change into their operations and procedures. Two summers ago, Biden also signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate spending bill in U.S. history that has the potential to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 42% from 2005 levels.
“Plan 2025” attempts to offset much of the progress by cutting funding for government programs across the board, weakening federal oversight and decision-making capabilities, undoing legislation passed during Biden's first term, and cutting career staff. The policy changes it recommends — including executive orders that Trump could implement single-handedly, regulatory changes at federal agencies and legislation that would require congressional approval — would make it extremely difficult for the U.S. to meet the climate goals it committed to under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“This is really bad,” said David Willett, senior vice president of communications for the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group. “This is a real plan, developed by people who have served in government, on how to systematically take over, take away rights and freedoms, and dismantle government in the service of private enterprise.”
Trump has tried to distance himself from that blueprint. “Some of the things they are saying are absolutely ridiculous and terrible,” he wrote in a social media post last week.
However, at least 140 people who have worked in the Trump administration have contributed to Project 2025, and policy experts and environmental advocates worry that Project 2025 will play a role in shaping Republican policy if Trump is re-elected in November. exert influence. Some of the blueprint's recommendations are echoed in the official platform of the Republican National Convention, with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts saying he is “good friends” with Trump's new running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. . The Heritage Foundation’s previous roadmaps have successfully shaped the president’s agenda; 64% of the foundation’s policy recommendations in 2016 were implemented or considered a year into Trump’s term. The Heritage Foundation declined to comment for this story.
Broadly speaking, the Plan 2025 proposal seeks to reduce the size of the federal government and empower the states. The document calls for “unleashing all of America's energy resources” by lifting federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands, cutting federal investment in renewable energy technologies and easing environmental permitting restrictions and procedures for new fossil fuel projects such as power plants. . “What’s being designed here is a project that secures the fossil fuel agenda, literally and figuratively,” said Craig Siegel, vice president of Evergreen Action, a climate-oriented political advocacy group.
Within the Department of Energy, the office dedicated to clean energy research and implementation would be eliminated, and energy efficiency guidelines and requirements for home appliances would be repealed. The environmental oversight capabilities of the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency would be significantly limited or eliminated entirely, preventing the agencies from tracking methane emissions, managing environmental pollutants and chemicals, and conducting climate change research.
In addition to these major reforms, Project 2025 also advocates for the repeal of smaller, lesser-known federal programs and regulations to protect public health and environmental justice. It recommends eliminating hazardous findings — the legal mechanism that requires the EPA to curb emissions and air pollutants from vehicles and power plants, as well as other industries — under the Clean Air Act. It also recommends that governments reduce efforts to assess the social cost of carbon, or the damage caused by each additional ton of carbon emissions. It also seeks to prevent agencies from assessing the “co-benefits” or knock-on positive effects on health of their policies, such as better air quality.
“When you think about who will be most affected by pollution, whether it's traditional air, water and soil pollution or climate change, it's often low-income communities and communities of color,” said the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy group. organization’s climate and energy plans. “Weakening such protections will disproportionately impact these communities.”
Other proposals would wreak havoc on the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to climate disasters. The 2025 plan proposes eliminating NOAA and the National Weather Service and replacing them with private companies. The blueprint appears to leave the National Hurricane Center intact, saying the data it collects should be “presented neutrally and should not be adjusted to support either side of the climate debate.” But the National Hurricane Center gets most of its data from the National Weather Service, like most other private weather services, and eliminating public weather data could undermine Americans' chances of getting accurate weather forecasts. “This is ridiculous,” said Rob Moore, a policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. “This solution doesn't solve any problem, it's a solution in search of something.”
The document also advocates moving the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which coordinates federal disaster response efforts, from the department that has been part of the Department of Homeland Security for more than 20 years to the Interior or Defense Department. “All agencies within the Department of the Interior are federal land management agencies that own significant amounts of land and manage those resources on behalf of the federal government,” Moore said. “Why put FEMA there? I can't even understand why that's a starting point.
The blueprint proposes eliminating the National Flood Insurance Program and moving flood insurance to private insurance companies. This idea ignores the fact that the federal program was originally created because private insurers found it financially unfeasible to insure flood-prone homes across the country before climate change began wreaking havoc on insurance markets. OK.
While most of Plan 2025’s climate-related proposals have alarming implications, it also recommends a handful of policies that climate experts say are worth considering. Its authors call for shifting the costs of natural disasters from the federal government to states. Moore noted that it wasn't a bad conversation. “I think there are people within FEMA who feel the same way,” he said. The federal government currently covers at least 75% of the country's disaster recovery costs, paving the way for development and reconstruction in at-risk areas. “You're going to prevent states and local governments from making informed decisions about where to build homes and build homes because they know the federal government is going to pay for any mistakes they make,” Moore said.
Quillan Robinson, a senior adviser at ConservAmerica who has worked with Republicans in Washington, D.C., on emissions policy, was inspired by the author's call for an end to what they called “an unfair bias against the nuclear industry.” Deeply inspired. Nuclear power is a reliable, carbon-free energy source, but it has been plagued by safety and public health concerns and staunch opposition from some environmentalists. “We know this is a key technology for decarbonization,” Robinson said, noting growing bipartisan interest in energy among members of Congress.
An analysis by UK-based Carbon Brief found that a Trump presidency would lead to an additional 400 billion tonnes of US emissions by 2030 – as much as the EU and Japan combined.
Most importantly, Evergreen Action's Segall worries about the impact Project 2025 will have on federal workers. Much of how the administrative state operates is secured in the minds of career workers, who pass on their knowledge to the next set of federal workers. When this institutional knowledge is limited, as it was during the budget cuts and hostile administration of Trump’s first term, the government loses critical information that helps it function. He said the “dispersion” of personnel disrupted bottom-line operations and paralyzed the government.
While Plan 2025's proposals are radical, Siegel said its impact on civil servants will echo patterns that have been in place for decades. “This is a common theme in Republican administrations going back to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan,” he said. “What you do is undermine government, make it difficult for government to operate, and then you loudly declare that government can't do anything.”
This article was originally published by Grist as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism partnership to enhance coverage of climate stories.
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