Climate activists are sounding the alarm about Project 2025’s plans to prevent the U.S. from meeting its climate change goals.
Project 2025, a conservative Republican plan for President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration, proposes restructuring the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and opening public lands to oil drilling.
The plan proposes rollbacks on many of President Joe Biden’s clean energy policies and “reinstate the Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda.”
While Trump denied involvement with Project 2025, over half of the 307 contributors to Project 2025 currently or used to work on Trump’s campaign, according to The New York Times.
Project 2025 and its climate proposals have been criticized by environmental groups like the Sierra Club, which condemned the plan in a statement earlier this year.
“Simply put, Project 2025 would be game over for climate progress,” Sierra Club spokesperson Melissa Williams said in a statement.
Project 2025 calls for reopening the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska for development and expanding oil drilling in the state.
“This will permit construction of a new 211-mile roadway on the south side of the Brooks Range, and open the area only to mining-related industrial uses,” Project 2025 reads.
More drilling would increase pollution and toxic waste, hurting the environment and posing risks to public health, Williams said in the statement.
“It would give corporate polluters the keys to our government, allowing them to rewrite our laws, bypass Congress and undermine the will of the people, and further poison our air and water as they profit,” Williams said in the statement.
The proposed privatization of the National Weather Service could hurt the organization’s ability to forecast extreme weather events, which could become more common as climate change continues, according to the Sierra Club’s statement.
The Sierra Club is not the only organization opposed to Project 2025. The Center for American Progress (CAP) also released a statement condemning the proposal, specifically citing its potential climate impacts.
“The dangerous policies outlined in Project 2025 would threaten our democracy, increase pollution and energy costs, further exacerbate the climate crisis, and make life harder for communities already struggling,” CAP spokesperson Courtney Federico said in the statement.
Other groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earth Justice and the House Committee on the Budget released individual statements condemning Project 2025’s potential negative climate impacts.
Trump pledged to leave the Paris Climate Agreement like he did his first term, according to reporting from The Washington Post. He also campaigned to open public lands to oil companies for drilling, which aligns with Project 2025 proposals.
During his campaign, Trump said he would roll back restrictions on power plant emissions.
Other potential roll-backs Trump may enforce in his second term include the Endangered Species Act, Biden’s environmental justice initiatives and ending climate disclosure rules for corporations.
Both Project 2025 proposals and Trump’s released environmental plans would prevent the U.S. from effectively combating climate change, Federico said in the statement.
“By advocating for a ’whole-of-government unwinding’ of U.S. climate policy, Project 2025 puts forward a vision that threatens global efforts to counter climate change effectively,” Federico said in the statement.
