The overlooked climate plans of Project 2025

A new series hitting your inboxes soon.

It’s often said that Republicans have no plan for climate change. This is not accurate. Republicans have a massive and well-developed agenda for global heating, and it boils down to three words: “Let it rip.”

The Republican climate agenda is summarized nicely in Project 2025, the notorious 900-page policy plan developed for Donald Trump by the conservative Heritage Foundation. It proposes gutting the Environmental Protection Agency and its climate regulations; re-opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling; defunding the nationwide transition to renewable energy; and eliminating environmental justice initiatives. In addition, political appointees serving under Trump “will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere”—because as we know, ignoring a problem helps fix it. Overall, Project 2025 is a veritable smorgasbord of “burn it all down”—and it aligns squarely with Trump’s own actions and pledges.

In fact, because Project 2025’s climate ideology is so similar to Trump’s, we at first didn’t find the document surprising enough to cover deeply. Here at HEATED, we figure our job is to fill gaps in climate coverage—and climate media has been doing a really great job covering Project 2025. (See Grist, Atmos, E&E News, Yale Climate Connections, The Guardian, and The Hill.)

But being the lovable nerd she is, Arielle started to read through the massive document to make sure we didn’t miss anything—and she found a number of not just novel, but weird climate policies that we don’t think have gotten the attention they deserve. And she found reasons to believe that Trump, despite his public disavowal of Project 2025, would be likely to implement these policies if elected.

So over the next couple weeks, HEATED will be be publishing a multi-part series on some of the overlooked climate plans of Project 2025. It’ll start rolling out next week, so make sure you’re subscribed to get it.

As we publish the stories in this series, we’ll update this announcement newsletter with links and descriptions, so readers can eventually see all the stories in one place.

Our hope is that this series will help shine a light on the dire ecological stakes of the 2024 election—if this chart didn’t do it already.

Source: Carbon Brief analysis of modelling in Bistline et al. (2023) and Rhodium Group (Taking stock 2023).

Again, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it. And share it with your friends to make sure they’re subscribed too.

Stories published in our series:

• MAGA’s dumbest environmental proposal
  To stop forest fires from burning out of control, Project 2025 has a simple solution: cut down more of the forest, and sell it to corporations. But seven ecologists and fire management experts tell HEATED this is extremely short-sighted—and almost sure to make wildfires worse.
  

• MAGA’s scariest environmental proposal
  The blueprint for Trump’s second term envisions deregulating ubiquitous and carcinogenic “forever” chemicals—a proposal that advocates say “will result in large numbers of Americans getting cancer and other devastating illnesses.”
  

• MAGA’s weirdest environmental proposal
  Republicans have begun championing a new and novel environmental cause. It’s not the air; it’s not the water; it’s not the climate crisis. It’s refrigerators. Apparently they’re getting way too efficient.
  

• How bad could Trump be for renewables?

  A previously unreported study predicts a massive decrease in solar, wind, and battery development if Trump adopts just one proposal in Project 2025. If that happens, researchers say it could add 1.8 billion metric tons of emissions the atmosphere—making it impossible to meet the world’s climate goals.