This article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.
On July 22, 2024, people across the globe experienced the hottest day in recorded history. In the United States, deaths from heat exposure are increasing year after year as these extreme climate events become the norm. The science clearly tells us that we are in the critical decade to head off the worst impacts of climate change and that this can only be achieved if the world transitions away from fossil fuels. To meet the moment, countries are developing new emissions reductions targets and implementation plans by early next year in an effort to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Yet, influential far-right policy shops, such as the Heritage Foundation, would effectively abandon America’s critical leadership role in addressing the climate crisis. Project 2025, the group’s nearly 1,000-page policy manifesto for the next right-wing president, seeks to gut the country’s 250-year-old system of checks and balances in order to implement extreme policies that would increase global temperatures and undercut developing countries’ efforts to remain resilient in the face of climate impacts.
By advocating for a “whole-of-government unwinding” of U.S. climate policy, Project 2025 puts forward a vision that threatens global efforts to counter climate change effectively. Coupled with efforts to strip government civil service employees of labor protections so that they can more easily be replaced with political loyalists, Project 2025’s policy agenda would trade the federal government’s vast institutional knowledge and forward momentum on climate solutions for dangerous climate denialism and obstructionism. These policy proposals threaten America’s role as a leader in the global clean energy transition, supported by Inflation Reduction Act investments that have ignited job creation and economic growth in communities across the world.
If implemented, Project 2025’s policies would damage all aspects of U.S. international engagement, including climate cooperation among countries that are stepping up to the climate challenge, financing to help vulnerable communities around the world, national security measures to protect defense assets and geopolitical interests, and trade policies that center workers and job creation. These harmful proposals are united by a common theme: an abdication of global climate leadership to the benefit of big oil and gas companies.
Stepping back from the decision-making table
Project 2025 threatens collective, global action on climate change by advocating for the United States to step away from formal engagement in international forums where countries of the world collaborate on shared solutions to the hardest questions facing humanity. These multilateral institutions—which include development banks like the World Bank and intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations—are the main venue for nearly all nations of the world to collectively take on global challenges such as climate change. The scale and complexity of the climate crisis means that every country must do their part to protect the planet.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policies, however, seek to weaken these institutions and, in turn, impair the global response to climate change. They don’t just call on the next right-wing administration to withdraw from the Paris Agreement—the world’s landmark commitment to climate action—but propose to go even further by withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the platform for climate change negotiations, entirely. The United States has served as a party to the UNFCCC since its creation in 1992, when the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty under Republican President George H.W. Bush.
The establishment of the UNFCCC has given nations of the world a place to coordinate and hold each other accountable on climate action, prompting countries to step up and establish emissions reduction goals and strategies to decarbonize their economies to counter the climate crisis. Before the Paris Agreement was established in 2015, the world’s temperature was on track to rise 4 degrees Celsius, which would result in catastrophic impacts. But under the 2030 emissions reductions goals created as part of the Paris Agreement, the world’s projected temperature rise is now 2.5 to 2.9 degrees Celsius, with countries working to implement more ambitious goals and policies to further reduce that rise.
America’s absence from this vital forum would hinder the world’s ability to curb emissions, given its position as the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter and biggest oil and gas producer in history. Therefore, the goals of the Paris Agreement—to maintain a livable world—would be out of reach without ambitious mitigation efforts from the United States, inspired by its commitments to the world resulting from international climate negotiations. The withdrawal of the United States from the UNFCCC could also lead to other prominent emitters stepping back from their responsibility to reduce emissions, to the detriment of both America and the wider world.
The scale and complexity of the climate crisis means that every country must do their part to protect the planet.
Moreover, Project 2025’s plan to replace career civil servants in favor of politically aligned appointees would eliminate the deep wealth of institutional knowledge, subject matter expertise, and relationships the United States relies on to advance climate change solutions internationally. For example, the position of special presidential envoy for climate was created to lead diplomatic initiatives to address climate change. Yet as indicated by Project 2025’s call to reverse climate policies and scrub climate from government documents, this position would be terminated and its mandate unfulfilled. While in this role, Secretary John Kerry leveraged his many years of government service and relationship building to help secure a global commitment to transition away from fossil fuels—a historic outcome achieved at the UNFCCC annual climate negotiations in 2023. With this position eliminated, along with the entire office of subject matter experts who support these diplomatic engagements and negotiations, the United States would not only relinquish its role as an international climate leader but also leave less climate-ambitious nations, such as Russia or China, the opportunity to wield increased influence in international forums.
American absence from multilateral climate action would not stop there under Project 2025 proposals. The radical policy blueprint also advocates for the United States to withdraw from the World Bank, the world’s largest provider of climate finance in developing countries, and to end all financial contributions to the bank. As the World Bank’s largest shareholder, the United States has played an integral role in influencing and shaping its priorities. For example, the United States advanced the World Bank’s Evolution Roadmap, a series of reforms to better allow the institution to address modern crises, including climate change. Eliminating U.S. support would not only severely impair the World Bank’s ability to mobilize the financial assistance on which climate-vulnerable nations rely to prepare for the impacts of climate change and catalyze private sector investment in climate projects around the world; it would also be an insurmountable setback in the bank’s efforts to fulfill its mandate to reduce global poverty, eroding trust in the ability of the United States to follow through on its international commitments, climate-related or not.
Jeopardizing preparedness for climate impacts in developing nations
Project 2025 advocates for a rescission of all climate policies from its foreign aid programs and imposes conservative religious values—such as anti-abortion policies and traditional family structures—as prerequisites for countries receiving aid. Among these programs is the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), the U.S. government’s strategy to use all of its tools to support more than half a billion people around the world adapt to climate impacts. Eliminating funding for this initiative would halt the deployment of lifesaving extreme weather early-warning systems and disaster risk reduction resources to communities around the world.
PREPARE equips communities with data and resources integral to their safety and resilience. In 2019, Cyclone Idai struck Malawi with devastating force, resulting in roughly 1,500 deaths and more than 2,000 people missing. Implementing an extreme weather early-warning system, supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-NASA SERVIR partnership, proved crucial during subsequent cyclones in 2022. Thanks to timely alerts from this system, communities received advance notice, allowing them to evacuate and safeguard their homes. This early intervention prevented $40 million in losses and significantly reduced the risk to lives, showcasing the transformative impacts of these programs. Meanwhile, in Nepal, USAID’s climate-smart agriculture program has significantly transformed farming practices by introducing efficient irrigation systems, climate-resilient crop varieties, and innovative soil management techniques. These efforts have resulted in improved food security, better nutrition, and higher local incomes. The program has also fostered community growth and economic stability by equipping farmers with crucial skills and job opportunities.
However, Project 2025’s anti-climate policy proposals would end these climate resilience-building efforts, risking disruptions to productivity and food security. Eliminating this support would undermine economic stability, worsen food insecurity, and potentially increase migration and instability in communities that stand to lose nourishment and sources of income.
See also
Sacrificing security, diplomacy, and our future
Project 2025’s dangerous anti-climate rhetoric pervades its proposals and would compromise American national security for years to come. Military strength and diplomatic relationships are hard- and soft-power tools the United States uses to maintain America’s national security, and divorcing climate change from these tools would threaten America’s safety. Project 2025 specifically calls climate change a “non-defense matter,” contradicting the defense community’s established understanding of the inextricable connection between climate change and security.
Climate change is a threat multiplier that exacerbates existing geopolitical tensions, strains U.S. resources, and creates cross-border conflicts that undermine American security interests. The countries that are most vulnerable to climate-related risks are also least capable of addressing these problems. Their resulting instability may pose threats to U.S. security, increasing the likelihood of interstate conflict, disrupting global supply chains, and creating additional demands on U.S. economic, diplomatic, humanitarian, and military resources in the process. The National Intelligence Council, which provides information from the intelligence community to policymakers, predicts that the security risks from climate change will surge through 2040 and rates many of these risks as “high.” Climate-driven water scarcity has already sparked disputes, and these tensions can escalate into violent interstate conflicts, like over the Nile waters, or intrastate conflicts over access to scarce resources.
Climate change is a threat multiplier that exacerbates existing geopolitical tensions, strains U.S. resources, and creates cross-border conflicts that undermine American security interests.
In addition to weakening American security by ignoring how climate change drives threats, Project 2025’s plan for erasing climate from U.S. national security objectives would have profound diplomatic ramifications. For instance, collaboration on climate action is one of America’s few avenues of positive cooperation with China. In 2023, only weeks before the annual global climate change conference, the United States and China released the “Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis,” outlining areas of agreement on climate action. This announcement was made between the two nations during a time described as the “lowest moment” in their relationship in 50 years. The Sunnylands Statement helped to reset climate diplomacy relations with a competitor nation at a critical moment in their relationship and opened the door for progress at climate negotiations weeks later, which resulted in a global commitment to transition away from fossil fuels.
Yet Project 2025 calls for the United States to adopt a combative and impractical posture toward China, advocating against a policy strategy of “cooperat[ing] where we can.” This adversarial approach toward China on climate action threatens to stall the progress made on advancing global climate solutions, which cannot happen without the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters.
Trading a bad deal for a worse one
The “trade” section in Project 2025 is a case study in how conservatives are divided. There are two subsections that offer significantly different visions for the future of trade policy.
The first singularly focuses on China and doubles down on only the sledgehammer method of across-the-board trade barriers, with no consideration for the needed complementary investments to achieve effective industrial policy. The focus on China—while certainly a priority given Beijing’s numerous nonmarket trade practices—builds off the previous administration’s failed playbook, which resulted in declining investment in new U.S. manufacturing facilities. That approach used tariffs to reorient global trade flows without considering how the rest of the world would react or, importantly, how the United States could actually develop and lead in key industries of the future.
The second argument provides the traditional conservative take on trade policy, which advocates for a laissez-faire lowering of trade barriers without concern for supply chain resilience, labor, or environmental impacts. In fact, the essay specifically states: “Trade agreements since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have been increasingly burdened by trade-unrelated provisions involving labor, environmental, intellectual property, and other regulations.” Yet actual results show that tying negotiations to key issues such as labor rights, climate change solutions, and domestic production actually works, whether its movement on climate-aligned investments across Asia or the Rapid Response Mechanism in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
These dueling visions for trade have one thing in common: They lack the necessary industrial policy approach of the Biden-Harris administration, which has been successful at facilitating private sector investment in American manufacturing and fostering job creation across the country. As such, both visions would result in an American economy that is less resilient, less sustainable, and less fair for the American worker and consumer.
Read more
Conclusion
If enacted, the policies proposed in Project 2025 would seriously jeopardize the world’s ability to avoid the worst impacts of climate change associated with breaching the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature rise limit set out in the Paris Agreement. Instead of promoting an isolated, anti-science vision for the United States, the next administration should build on the climate wins of the Biden-Harris administration—restoring U.S.-China climate diplomacy, helping secure a global commitment to transition away from fossil fuels, and, generally, advancing ambitious international climate policies that build climate diplomacy and trust with partners and allies. This should include developing a cross-government plan to meet climate finance commitments and striving for a trade policy that supports domestic industry against unfair trade practices while integrating standards and preferences tied to climate action, labor rights, and human rights.
To truly protect American interests, preserve the planet, and secure our future, the United States must embrace climate leadership rather than walk away from it.
The United States is an integral part of the global climate solution; we must rise to meet the moment—for the American worker and to meet our historic responsibilities—instead of turning our back on the world. To truly protect American interests, preserve the planet, and secure our future, the United States must embrace climate leadership rather than walk away from it.