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VOLUNTEER

Project 2025 & Its Dangers to Our Planet

By Sofia Carrasco, Youth v. Oil Resolution Team Lead

Person holding up a protest sign that reads "Stand Up for Science"

Following the highs and lows of climate action in the United States can be daunting, and when some of the most extreme and anti-climate legislation comes along, it is easy to feel scared or hopeless. However, it’s a good idea to remain educated on these topics in order to ensure an effective vote. This remains highly prevalent when it comes to the document developed by the Heritage Fund: Project 2025. 

Much can be said about the social and economic ramifications of Project 2025, but even from a purely environmental perspective, it is a detrimental set of proposals for our planet and has consequences that can directly impact our Californian communities. Its primary strategy revolves around weakening the power of the federal government agencies that are best positioned to make informed decisions on our climate. This allows politicians and private companies to “critically analyze” even the most factual data rooted in science. Notably, it suggests eliminating three offices in the EPA — including Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights — and reducing the power of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

Historically, these have been invaluable agencies when it comes to the fight for a safer environment, with NOAA improving daily life through its severe storm warnings, coastal restoration, pollution settlements, and more (its National Weather Service is also responsible for many everyday weather forecasts). Project 2025 urges the president to “reshape” and “if required, refuse to accept” the research done by the US Global Change Research Program, including its National Climate Assessment, a preeminent report on climate impacts that informs crucial policy. If attacks on science-based government agencies sound familiar to you, it’s because we’ve already seen it in the recent Supreme Court Chevron ruling, which cut back on these agencies’ abilities to interpret the laws they administer. While no organization or agency should have too much power, Project 2025 would move crucial rulings on our future out of the hands of science and into the hands of policymakers who are not guaranteed to prioritize our health and safety. 

Project 2025 utilizes uninformed claims and targeted language in order to paint a misleading picture of the fossil fuel industry. It portrays awareness of the climate crisis as a form of fanaticism, framing denial and business as usual as the most reasonable options. Just recently, leaked training videos for appointees of the project revealed the intent to “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere” — and by simply looking at the Heritage Fund’s document, it is easy to believe how such a horrifying propaganda effort is afoot. Often called the “Magna Carta” of environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law in 1970 and continues to retain bipartisan support to this day. Yet Project 2025 once again pushes for the president to rewrite these regulations and, in particular, “ban the use of cumulative impact analysis” when analyzing multiple sources of pollution. In other words, analysis of vulnerable neighborhoods would remain surface level and it would not be required or encouraged to comprehensively examine what is burdening them. Surface level research means surface level solutions, and this is unacceptable when there remains hundreds of communities exposed to multiple types of pollutant harm (such as oil wells leaking methane into both the air and groundwater, as Youth v. Oil has become keenly aware of throughout our fight for drilling setbacks). 

Project 2025 takes advantage of clichéd and often vague language in order to make these outlandish proposals, such as its call to “affirm an ‘all of the above’ energy policy” and its phrasing which characterizes renewables as pandering to “special interests” (never mind that 69% of US adults believe in prioritizing alternative energy sources, according to Pew Research’s 2022 study). The document is unabashed with its misinformation, at one point even claiming that the “anti-fossil fuel agenda” has worsened global food insecurity and prices — when in reality climate change remains a top driver of poverty and high inflation can be attributed to many factors, including price gouging by Big Oil itself. Yet Project 2025 continuously places these corporations above the livelihoods of citizens, its immediate tax plan calling for $1.3 billion in cuts on five of the largest US oil companies.

As a member of an organization who understands the thrill of hard-fought climate and social justice wins, threats such as these frighten me to the core. Project 2025 is a deceptive 920-page document that seems to target every success in this movement, from the Inflation Reduction Act to risk transparency when it comes to the cost of carbon emissions. While it is unknown how many of these proposals could or would be feasibly implemented, they paint a dangerous and undemocratic picture of a nation that pays no mind to the present and future of its communities. But currently, this is a warning and not a reality — and if we can band together local and large to fight for climate justice, that’s all it has to be. At Youth4Climate, this can mean participating in our Vote For Climate campaign, or simply educating those around you about a path to a just future.

Read the blog on our Youth4Climate website.

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