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fossil fuel industry
Why Project 2025 Remains a Threat to Our Livable Future
We all want clean water, safe, affordable food, a healthy environment, and a bright future we can share with future generations. But Project 2025 threatens all of these.
Jul 31, 2024
Amidst a perpetually churning news cycle, you may have seen a chilling phrase break through the din: “Project 2025.”
It looms like a bogeyman in everything from TikTok comments to headlines in major news outlets. And it refers to a 900-page wishlist and roadmap for a potential conservative president’s first months in office. The document was crafted by former Trump administration officials working with the Heritage Foundation (a think tank with a history of climate denial and funded by right-wing billionaires).
So what exactly is in Project 2025 that makes it so startling?
“We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshaling our forces,” said Project 2025’s director. Paul Dans, who on Tuesday announced he would be stepping down in August from the project. But Dans' comment alone clues you in on the gravity of its contents and its intentions. It is nothing less than a plan to completely overhaul the federal government, stripping away its ability to defend families from threats to public health and the environment.
Its deregulatory agenda will put our water at risk of pollution and contamination for the sake of corporate profits, and its agricultural policies will pull a resilient, affordable food system further from reach. Its plan for our energy system would push our planet even more toward climate chaos.
Moreover, Project 2025 is as meticulous as it is dangerous, detailing exactly how a right-wing president could carry out its plans. And while it details a heinous agenda on a wide range of issues, we’re going to focus on food, water, and climate.
Here’s what you need to know about Project 2025’s threat to our livable future.
Project 2025 Would Pave the Way for More Corporate Pollution
One key tenet of Project 2025 is dismantling and disempowering federal agencies. Its goal is to shift agencies’ focus from protecting our health and environment to paving more pathways for unchecked corporate abuse.
Notably, the plan recommends gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On day one, it would downsize staff at a time when the agency is already severely understaffed and under-resourced. This has led to, for example, absurdly long reviews of chemicals that threaten our water, air, and health.
In other cases, the EPA has rubber-stamped potentially dangerous chemicals to speed up corporations’ path to profits. Project 2025 wants this trend to continue, as it advocates for speeding up reviews “to ensure the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers” — putting companies before public health.
It also aims to strip our waters of protections from polluters. Project 2025 would exclude much of our country’s wetlands and temporary waters from protection and narrow the kinds of water pollution regulated under the Clean Water Act. As communities across the country suffer pollution from factory farms and industrial plants, we need more water protections, not fewer.
Moreover, Project 2025 would have a new administration pause and revisit Biden’s recent Lead and Copper Rule Improvement and PFAS regulations, which are vital first steps in responding to our country’s lead-in-water and PFAS contamination crises. This would put the health of millions of people at continued risk.
It specifically targets a recent Biden rule that designates two PFAS as “hazardous substances” under CERCLA, jeopardizing efforts to force polluters to clean up their toxic mess. Project 2025 could allow corporations to get away with poisoning our water, and leave taxpayers to foot the bill.
Safe, Affordable, and Sustainable Food Is Under Attack
Project 2025 is expressly focused on deregulation and downsizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It views regulations as “a threat to farmers’ independence and food affordability” and advocates for removing “obstacles imposed on American farmers and individuals across the food supply chain.”
This completely ignores the essential role that regulations play in keeping our food safe and combating Big Ag’s takeover of our food system. Government programs are integral to supporting small and medium-sized farmers and building a food system that will be sustainable for generations of farmers to come.
But Project 2025 wants to cut these — from regulations on pesticide use and genetically modified food to conservation programs that help farmers manage their land sustainably.
It also brushes aside the role that our food system has in fostering a healthy environment, saying “environmental issues” are “ancillary” to agriculture. It would hamstring efforts to transform our food system to save our climate and environment while ensuring affordable, sustainable food for all.
Additionally, Project 2025 cruelly threatens to yank food access from poor and low-income families across the country. Notably, it calls for limiting access to SNAP benefits — formerly known as food stamps — which help feed more than 40 million people in the U.S. It also calls for restricting the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which specifically helps children and families. Cutting these programs will allow more people to go hungry.
Our food system is already in crisis, driven by agricultural corporations cutting corners, playing dirty, raising prices, and crowding out small farmers. The answer is not deregulation that invites Big Ag to get bigger at the expense of the rest of us. Yet that’s exactly what Project 2025 advocates for.
Project 2025 Puts a Livable Climate in Jeopardy
Finally, some of the most disturbing parts of Project 2025 are its fervent promises to let the fossil fuel industry run rampant on our health, climate, and environment.
We know that ending fossil fuel use and production is key to securing a livable climate and defending our health against pollution. Yet Project 2025 calls for a rapid expansion of drilling, fracking, and gas exports.
Its authors propose restoring coal mining on public lands and opening more of them to oil and gas leasing. They also recommend speeding up drilling permits, allowing fossil fuel corporations to more easily ravage our shared public lands for profit.
Notably, Project 2025 recommends clearing the way for the planet-wrecking liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry to balloon. Exporting even more LNG could lock in not only the U.S. into decades of more fossil fuels, but also the entire world.
At the same time, the authors of Project 2025 suggest dismantling several offices at the Department of Energy that are key to federal research, development, and deployment of renewable energy. They also push for stopping efforts to grow the country’s power grid to accommodate new solar and wind energy. Instead, they call for focusing on improving grid “reliability” by expanding fossil fuels and slowing clean energy.
This is a laughable idea. Research shows our grid does not need fossil fuels to be reliable; in fact, in disasters, fossil-fueled energy is more vulnerable to outages.
We know that renewables make our energy more affordable, more resilient, and less dangerous to our health, safety, and climate. Yet Project 2025 has no interest in ensuring these benefits. Instead, it’s fighting for the status quo of dirty energy and corporate power.
Project 2025 Proposes a Dark Future — But We Can Fight It Together
We all want clean water, safe, affordable food, a healthy environment, and a bright future we can share with future generations. But Project 2025 threatens all of these. At a time of so many intertwining crises, it promises to hamstring the federal government’s ability to protect people, sacrificing us for the sake of corporate profits.
But while Project 2025 represents some of the most poisonous paths our government could go down, we have the antidote. Food & Water Watch has shown again and again that when it comes to making meaningful change and fighting corporate power, the key to winning is two-fold: calling for bold action and organizing people power to fight for it.
By coming together, we can fight for the future we need and deserve. We can protect our food and our water, end fossil fuels, and win a livable future for everyone.
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It's Ridiculous Just How Good the Economic Case Is for a Rapid Clean Energy Transition
There are no valid economic arguments against rapidly shifting from burning polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.
Jun 23, 2024
There are no valid economic arguments against rapidly shifting from burning polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.
Working to resolve the climate crisis is a tremendous economic opportunity. Even normally conservative organizations such as the International Monetary Fund agree that the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Of course, the global consumer-based capitalist system encourages waste and destructive practices in the name of financial gain, so the necessary transformational change really requires a shift in economic paradigms. But even under the current system, or a similar one modified to remove the worst elements of greedy profiteering, the economic advantages of acting are clear.
It’s true that not adequately addressing the crisis is already causing untold misery and death, threatening the survival of human and other life, rendering any human-invented “economy” irrelevant. Still, there’s no valid economic reason to avoid or even delay implementing every climate solution available.
But even under the current system, or a similar one modified to remove the worst elements of greedy profiteering, the economic advantages of acting are clear.
IMF research shows that green development and innovation can boost gross domestic product by at least 1.7 percent after five years compared with a baseline scenario, and “other estimates show up to four times the effect.”
The IMF also reports that cheaper energy and expanding energy-efficient production processes increase the benefits, adding, “Most importantly, they come from less global warming and less frequent (and less costly) climate disasters.”
A study in Cell Reports Sustainability found increasing renewable energy in the U.S. substantially reduced sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxides in the atmosphere from 2019 to 2022, providing $249 billion in climate and health benefits.
In terms of coal, oil and gas versus renewable energy, the economic advantages of the latter are undeniable and multiplying. Renewable energy costs less, offers greater energy security, is subject to far less market volatility, is reliable and doesn’t pollute as much.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illustrates the issue of energy security. With gas supplies cut, energy shortages led to price spikes and impacts on global markets — along with more avariciousness from fossil fuel companies. That’s been cushioned by a rapid transition to renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar with energy storage. Costs for wind and solar also continue to drop, making them more affordable overall than fossil fuels — especially when the high costs of fossil fuel pollution and damage are taken into account.
Renewable energy costs less, offers greater energy security, is subject to far less market volatility, is reliable and doesn’t pollute as much.
An abundance of research and examples shows that investing in measures to combat climate change reduces energy costs and makes energy markets less volatile, spurs technological development, cuts health care expenses, avoids costly impacts on everything from agriculture to urban infrastructure and creates greater economic opportunities for a wider range of people.
Meanwhile, the price of inaction accelerates daily: increasing extreme weather events, greater numbers of people fleeing overheating areas, growing pollution- and climate-related health impacts, and worsening water shortages and agricultural losses.
One recent study in Nature conservatively estimates damages from climate change will cost six times as much as limiting global heating to 2 C within the next 26 years — with average incomes falling by 19 per cent.
Another study in Nature estimates the annual cost of climate-related extreme weather damages alone from 2000 to 2019 “average around $143 billion, which breaks down to around $16.3 million per hour,” and that “Over the past 20 years, extreme weather events globally, like hurricanes, floods and heat waves, have cost an estimated $2.8 trillion.” Those figures are rising rapidly.
There are no valid economic arguments against rapidly shifting from burning polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. It’s past time to choose a wiser path.
We’ve seen the costly devastation in Canada: heat domes, floods, drought, rising insurance rates and cost-of-living increases. As the Canadian Climate Institute says, “Between 2010 and 2019, insured losses for catastrophic weather events totalled over $18 billion, and the number of catastrophic events was over three times higher than in the 1980s.”
The fossil fuel industry has provided jobs and economic benefits to many in Canada and around the world, as did other harmful industries like tobacco — but at what price? We’ve long known about the pollution and damage, but industry has worked to downplay or cover up negative consequences. It’s important that those affected by the necessary transition are provided opportunities for better, healthier employment — especially as increasing industry automation kills more jobs. But the only ones really benefiting now from fossil fuels are those profiting from the damage.
There are no valid economic arguments against rapidly shifting from burning polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. It’s past time to choose a wiser path.
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11,000% Return: Trump's $1 Billion Offer Could Yield $110 Billion Windfall for Big Oil
A new analysis explores the possible payout if fossil fuel companies—who have already shown a willingness to put a price tag on the value of planet Earth—agree to the presumptive Republican nominee's election year "quid pro quo" deal.
May 16, 2024
A new analysis reveals that the alleged $1 billion election year "quid pro quo" offer that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump made to executives of major oil company's could, if they agreed to the deal, bank them a handsome profit.
According to the study by Friends of the Earth Action, first reported by The Guardian on Thursday, the "remarkably blunt and transactional" offer from Trump—in which $1 billion in campaign funding put together by the nation's major oil companies would be repaid upon his election with massive deregulation of the oil and gas sector as well as tax relief for the industry—would yield a major windfall for those same corporations, including an estimated $110 billion from the tax breaks alone.
As The Guardian reports:
Biden wants to eliminate the tax breaks, which include long-standing incentives to help drill for oil and gas, with a recent White House budget proposal targeting $35bn in domestic subsidies and $75bn in overseas fossil fuel income.
"Big oil executivess are sweating in their seats at the thought of losing $110bn in special tax loopholes under Biden in 2025," said Lukas Ross, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Action, which conducted the analysis.
Ross said the tax breaks are worth nearly 11,000% more than the amount Trump allegedly asked the executives for in donations. "If Trump promises to protect polluter handouts during tax negotiations, then his $1bn shakedown is a cheap insurance policy for the industry" he said.
Republicans in Congress last year confirmed that if Trump wins back the White House and the GOP resume control of both chambers, they will move aggressively to make the Republican's 2017 tax cuts, which largely benefited the wealthy and corporations, permanent. As some of the most profitable companies in the U.S., oil and gas companies stand to benefit greatly from that outcome.
In Florida last month, not long before his meeting with oil executives, Trump told a different crowd of "rich as hell" supporters gathered at Mar-a-Lago: "We're gonna give you tax cuts, we're gonna pay of our debt." The problem with the second half of that claim is presented in a recent CBO report which found that another wave of tax cuts like those passed by the GOP in 2017 would skyrocket the national debt by an estimated $4.6 trillion over the next ten years.
Earlier this week, House Democrats, led by Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), launched a probe into the "quid pro quo" allegations between Trump and Big Oil, including letters to company executives believed to have been in attendance.
The blatant nature of Trump's corrupt intent, according to some political observers, is an opportunity that Democrats and champions of climate action and other progressive causes should not miss.
Writing about the circumstances in The New Yorker on Wednesday, journalist and veteran climate activist Bill McKibben argued that the stakes of this election are made plain in what Trump has offered the fossil fuel industry in exchange for its financial backing.
"Trump's reported billion-dollar offer to fossil-fuel executives shows that this is the key year to save the planet," McKibben writes.
"Given four years to finish the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, a second-term Biden Administration might finally be able to break the hold of fossil fuel’s political influence," his essay explains. "Another term of Trump, however—and with all that it means for undercutting global efforts at climate regulation, as well—offers an entirely plausible and entirely opposite outcome: climate chaos combined with continued fossil-fuel dependence."
What's true, according to McKibben, is that the fossil fuel industry "might well decide that defeating Biden in November is worth a lot of money." Citing recent profits by Chevron of $21 billion and ExxonMobil's $36 billion, he said the oil giants will "definitely give Trump something, and the return on investment on that donation—if successful—would be better than the luckiest well they ever hit."
The new analysis by Friends of the Earth Action shows that McKibben—once again—probably has the math right.
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