Project 2025 would reverse progress on climate change 

By Chris Hildreth 

Project 2025, the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, is a plan for a sprawling, multifaceted effort to reshape the United States. If implemented, it will fundamentally change the country. Its plan for climate change is nothing short of cataclysmic. 

Project 2025’s response to climate change as outlined in its Chapter 12, “Department of Energy and Related Commissions” would have catastrophic outcomes in the United States. It would shut down climate change research, encourage more fossil fuel extraction and repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark legislation that included the country’s largest investment in the reduction of greenhouse gases in history.  

In coastal communities like mine, Jacksonville, with many miles of river and ocean front, the changes mandated in Project 2025 would accelerate recent projections made by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Those projections state that by 2050, dozens of properties such as police, fire, educational, utility and health care facilities will be subjected to increased flooding due to sea level rise.  

What Project 2025 also proposes is to block the expansion of the alternative energy grid and “slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials.”  

Then, there is this, from page 364: “… (I)ncreased energy scarcity will allow government, either directly or through access to banks and Wall Street investors, to decide who is ‘worthy’ to receive funding for energy projects.”  

Deciding who is “worthy” of government investment is a time-worn practice in this country. Who would deny the Pacific Railway Act (1862) was beneficial to the development of the nation? The Rural Electrification Act (1936)? The Interstate Highway System Act (1956)?  All were taxpayer funded acts with enormous capital expenditures. Government spending, when it works, benefits the entire country.  

Government partnering with “banks and Wall Street investors,” is a tactic dating back to Alexander Hamilton, who championed the idea of the national government assuming the Revolutionary War debt of the various states. That had the effect of binding investors to the fate of the nation and relieving the states of the deb,t thereby allowing them to invest in projects that helped build the nation we have today. 

The Biden administration is doing just what the Washington administration did at the beginning of this country’s history. The motivation is no less grand, to physically preserve our nation’s future, which will enable the economic engines that power our way of life continue … sustainably. 

Climate change is a clear and present danger. About 97% of the scientists that study climate change believe human activity is the primary cause. The machinations of Project 2025 will only exacerbate the effects. A majority of the people across all ideologies in this country are as concerned.   

The aims described on the Heritage Foundation’s website outline what will be our future if the presumptive candidate for the Republican Party is elected. There is no hyperbole. It’s all there in black and white. Should this be the actual outcome, it may be the death knell for the planet.  

In this election I’m not voting for a candidate, I’m voting for what I want my country to be about. One side is striking fear into the hearts of those they can. The other is pleading for tolerance, acceptance and unity, working together to make this country better than it is now. It’s that simple. 

Chris Hildreth lives in Jacksonville. 

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