Project 2025 Policies Would Destroy US Climate Progress & Kill Thousands from Air Pollution

Project 2025, the far-right policy blueprint for a second Trump term, will reverse climate progress to cause billions of tonnes of extra emissions and pollution-related deaths.

If Donald Trump takes the White House again in this year’s election and enacts the climate policies of Project 2025, it would cause billions of tonnes of additional pollution, reversing the US’s progress on the environment, green energy, employment, and public health.

Produced by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a right-wing blueprint for a possible second Trump administration with contributions from 140 people who worked in the first one. The former president has tried to disavow the initiative, but make no mistake, this is a policy document written for him, by people he used to employ and is still friends with.

Trump has been running on a platform of “drill, baby, drill”, and has criticised President Joe Biden for not allowing oil drilling in the Arctic wilderness of Alaska. Fossil fuels are the leading cause of planet-heating emissions, and scientific consensus states that we need to phase out the use of coal, oil and gas – not double down on them.

The Republican also rolled back over 100 climate policies during his tenure, and notably withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, an international pledge to keep global post-industrial temperature rises down to 1.5°C by reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

Project 2025, which runs over 900 pages, recommends a further eradication of climate protections, including new oil and gas drilling projects, a repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act (or IRA, a hallmark of the Biden-Harris administration), and the elimination of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to replace the National Weather Service with private companies.

The Heritage Foundation, meanwhile, suggests a second Trump administration should “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere”.

This would have catastrophic, irreversible consequences for US infrastructure, homes, economy and health, a report by non-partisan think tank Energy Innovation has found.

Second Trump term would reverse recent US climate progress

A raft of legislations signed by Biden have put the US “within striking distance” of its Paris-aligned climate goal, also called nationally determined contribution (NDC).

The IRA, for example, is the country’s largest public investment in climate action, having so far poured $361B in green energy, electric vehicles and battery deployment. Combined with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act, these have helped create more than 330,000 new jobs since August 2022, generating more than $500B in new private investment as well.

These laws, alongside the finalised rules from the Environmental Protection Agency, have doubled the pace of annual emissions cuts this decade. Before the IRA, the US was on track to emit over 4.8 billion tonnes of emissions in 2030, about 26% below 2005 levels.

But Biden’s action on climate change means this will drop to 4.1 billion tonnes at the end of the decade, 37% lower than 2005 and, crucially, about halfway to the NDC commitment of a 50-52% reduction by this time.

However, if Trump adopts the policy recommendations of Project 2025, all this progress would be wiped out. Under that scenario, US emissions would rise to 4.9 billion tonnes in 2030, more than rolling back the reductions achieved by the aforementioned policies in the last few years.

Under what Energy Innovation calls a Continued Climate Leadership scenario – essentially, the policies needed to reach NDC goals – emissions would be halved by 2030 (reaching 3.2 billion tonnes) and the US would reach net zero by 2050. The Project 2025 scenario would mean emissions reach 4.7 billion tonnes by mid-century, putting America’s climate targets out of reach.

Project 2025 would increase energy prices and premature deaths

The data indicates that a second Trump administration could possibly take US emissions more than 1.7 billion tonnes above the NDC target in 2030, an 18% rise.

This would have disastrous repercussions for multiple tenets of the US economy. While the Continued Climate Leadership scenario would create 2.2 million jobs and lead to an annual GDP growth of $450B in 2030, Project 2025 policies would cause a loss of 1.7 million jobs and decrease yearly GDP by $320B in the same period.

Meanwhile, policies adhering to the NDC commitment bring down collective household energy costs by $110B in 2050, a Trump government’s approach would see energy bills swell by $24B by mid-century.

And when it comes to health, the Continued Climate Leadership scenario would prevent 20,600 early deaths from pollution, 623,600 annual asthma attacks, and 11,800 hospitalisations in 2050. In the same period, Project 2025’s recommendations would cause an additional 4,800 premature deaths, 148,000 asthma attacks per year, and 2,820 extra hospitalisations.

“Future policy changes could build upon America’s success to date, further cutting emissions, adding millions of jobs to the economy, and improving public health,” the report said.

“Or they could undo this progress, jeopardizing US climate targets, adding billions in energy costs to American households, costing the US economy millions of jobs and billions in GDP, and increasing pollution-driven early deaths.”

In the current US Congress, 45% of Republicans are climate change deniers, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. Vance has called the IRA a “green energy scam” despite his fellow party members in Congress writing to Johnson last week in a plea to continue the funding, which has mostly gone to red states.

Trump’s running mate has also written the foreword to the upcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. It is telling that its publishing has been delayed until after the election. If Trump knows nothing about it, why has it suddenly been pushed back to after Americans cast their ballots?

Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has been endorsed by many climate activists – although she has backtracked on her anti-fracking stance. In a speech in Arizona last week, a state home to some of the most lethal US heatwaves in recent memory, she acknowledged Trump’s status as a climate denier: “You know this crisis is real. He calls it a hoax.”