‘Project 2025’ Would Be Disastrous for Our Nation and Our Climate

From Union of Concerned Scientsts

Key passages quoted below:

The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” is a dangerous and detailed guide to undermining our democracy and a broadside attack on our health and well-being, not to mention our economic prosperity. Among other things, it takes specific aim at the federal government’s ability to address the climate crisis and instead doubles down on actions to worsen it. Anyone sobered by the relentless rise in global average temperatures and the spate of devastating and costly extreme weather and climate disasters we’ve been experiencing, anyone who thinks policies to benefit the public should be informed by robust, independent science, should take this threat very, very seriously.

Project 2025 has four pillars: a policy agenda, a Presidential Personnel Database, a Presidential Administration Academy, and a (yet to be released) playbook for the first 180 days of the next Administration. For the purposes of this blogpost, I will focus on the policy agenda.

In a blatant effort to politicize climate science, Project 2025 states that ‘The President should also issue an executive order to reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research programs… The next President should critically analyze and, if required, refuse to accept any USGCRP assessment prepared under the Biden Administration. Downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research…’ And then it goes on to spread disinformation: ‘OAR is, however, the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism. The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.’

Here are the facts: The USGCRP is tasked by Congress (under the 1990 Global Change Research Act, passed under the Bush administration) to produce regular updates on the state of climate science via the National Climate Assessment (NCA), with the Fifth NCA being released last year. As my colleague Rachel Licker and former UCS-er Andrew Rosenberg point out in this blogpost, the NCA provides exactly the kind of information policymakers need, without being policy-prescriptive. The NCA is produced through the work of hundreds of scientists, relying on research done by thousands more. It is not a political document. Suggesting that a new President “critically analyze” the work of scientists or reject their work just because it was done under a different administration is a blatant attempt to politicize science and would leave us all worse off.

Unsurprisingly, Project 2025 also pushes for more fossil fuels, with statements like ‘Affirm an “all of the above” energy policy…’  and ‘Support repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).’ And in an appalling twist on reality, it includes a call to ‘Stop the war on oil and natural gas’—when in fact, it is big oil and gas corporations that are waging a war on our climate and health.

Read it directly:

Project 2025 | Presidential Transition Project

Presidential Transition Project The 2025 Presidential Transition Project paves the way for an effective conservative Administration based on four pillars.

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Read the full post at Union of Concerned Scientsts.