The intrusion of Donald Trump into this nation’s political bloodstream and his refusal to depart the field after eight long years has provided him ample opportunity to reveal his nature to the American public. His grotesque mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and his callous disregard of the lives of American citizens was probably the worst example of his stunning lack of human conscience or empathy. That was almost certainly the primary reason Americans decided to dispose of him after one term by a margin of about 7 million votes.
But since his failed coup of Jan. 6, 2021, Trump has even more radically altered his presentation, transforming himself into a full-blown would-be tyrant, vengeful toward anyone that might oppose his return to power. The very idea that he might (somehow) have any real interest in serving the needs of the U.S. public has completely vanished, buried under a constant litany of attacks and contrived grievances. And though his temporary, latest incarnation is that of a small, angry man seething with resentment as he’s forced to face the consequences of hiding his sexual dalliances, it is his plans should he be elected again that Americans really ought to be paying attention to.
That a reanimated Trump administration would pose a worse, more virulent threat to the country than he already does seems to beggar belief. But anyone who bothers to wade through the fanatical right-wing 920-page manifesto known as Project 2025—the conservative template prepared specifically for Trump’s implementation when and if he regains power—will find that threat spelled out in clear, plain language. It meticulously lays out the dismantling and refashioning of our federal government into a vehicle solely dedicated to serving right-wing and Trump’s personal interests and the goals of those now attempting to put him back into office.
Whole swaths of the U.S. public are individually targeted for institutionalized policies of oppression—women, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants among them. But on an even larger scale, the entire notion of government designed to serve Americans’ interests is discarded. Nowhere is that proposed transformation more evident than in its plans to gut the nation’s environmental protections.
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Put simply, Project 2025 is literally a working paper for abandoning the environment and accelerating the process of climate change where any efforts to reverse or mitigate that process will be futile. In the coming months, as Americans continue to be subjected to Trump’s familiar visage and trademark scowl, those plans, and not simply his many scandals and crimes, should be going through their minds. Because what Trump and his enablers plan will have permanent, devastating effects, impacting not only those alive now, but well into the foreseeable future.
Trump’s plan to fundamentally reorder the federal government into a tool designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of the environment has been detailed over and over in media accessible to all Americans.
In practice, however, the mass media does not prioritize environmental concerns until disaster strikes, when a drought, flood or wildfire, for example, suddenly becomes national news. In part because of this lack of media emphasis, most Americans have no idea of the Biden administration’s considerable efforts and accomplishments toward protecting the environment and combatting climate change. Likewise, they are equally unaware of Trump’s plan to erase those accomplishments and permanently hobble any future efforts to preserve the environment.
The political right is well aware of the public’s indifference and the opportunity it presents. As noted by Stephen Marley, writing as a guest essayist for The New York Times, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 initial objective would be the complete evisceration of nearly all of the Biden administration’s environmental efforts. As Markley writes:
The report recommends a repeal of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act, which would shred the tax credits that have led to hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in clean energy, the jump-starting of factory openings and the creation of jobs in virtually every corner of the country. Also lost will be investments in environmental justice, those measures that aim to reduce pollution in marginalized communities, provide affordable clean energy and create jobs in low-income neighborhoods. As for electric cars, which are critical to meeting the nation’s climate goals, the report recommends an end to all federal mandates and subsidies.
A second Trump administration would most likely grant permits for fossil fuel drilling and pipelines basically anywhere it has the say-so, scrap the methane fee on oil and gas producers and dismantle new pollution limits on cars, trucks and power plants. It would almost certainly revoke California’s waiver to approve higher standards under the Clean Air Act, seek repeal of the Antiquities Act used to protect endangered landscapes and attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act.
But as noted by Frederick Hewitt, writing for NPR affiliate WBUR, the decimation of the Biden administration’s climate and clean energy initiatives is just one facet of the overarching scheme by conservatives to wholly reverse the nation’s progress up to this point.
The underlying intent is actually to abandon all efforts at mitigating climate change whatsoever:
“It emphatically repudiates efforts to decarbonize the economy and is a wholesale reversal of the progress made on climate policy over recent years.”
The authors of the mandate ... maintain the world’s best course of action is to abandon the idea of a green energy transition, continue the unabated exploitation of fossil fuels, and deal with the ensuing consequences, which they say will be "mild and manageable." Without this dubious tenet, their program is incoherent.
It may be difficult to conceive the degree of fantasy and magical thinking that permeates such nihilistic ideology, but it can be traced directly back to Trump’s handling of COVID-19. It incorporates the same outright rejection of science, the same prioritization of immediate political gain, and the same wholesale disregard of the public health that informed the Trump administration’s pandemic policies.
But unlike COVID-19, Americans have had the opportunity to experience a sobering preview of what the acceleration of fossil fuel dependency means, both economically and to their personal existence. In 2023, both the U.S. and the entire planet experienced the highest number of billion-dollar weather-related disasters on record. Unprecedented Canadian wildfires left clouds of smoke hovering over American cities for days, rendering the air hazardous to breathe. Unprecedented flooding, drought, and severe heat waves pummeled entire states throughout the year.
On a global scale, as Marley points out, the reality is equally dire, with record loss of Antarctic sea ice, permanent bleaching and devastation of the coral ecosystems, all while the planet last year endured its hottest temperatures on record.
The overwhelming effects of human-induced climate change and progression of global heating are now so dramatic that many scientists and climate researchers have tacitly abandoned hopes to reverse them; They have turned their focus to doing everything possible not to make them worse. The only way to avoid these far more drastic and damaging consequences is to implement policies to curb our reliance on fossil fuels, and that (unbeknownst to most of the U.S. public) is exactly what the Biden administration has been doing.
Those efforts culminated in the Inflation Reduction Act, as Markley observes, “the most significant climate legislation the country has ever seen and a more important achievement than the Paris climate accord.” That act alone has galvanized a record-setting U.S. expansion of renewable energy sources, one that Markley notes has “set a pace for the rest of the world to compete in the growing clean energy economy.”
These advances in renewable energy, currently offering the most immediate way to mitigate the worst aspects of climate change, will be completely reversed if Trump is elected again.
“The stakes of the climate crisis render the cliché of ‘This is the most important election of our lifetimes’ increasingly true because every four years those stakes climb precipitously alongside the toppling records of a radically new climatic regime,” Markley points out.
One can hold up a document like Project 2025 and shout from the rooftops just how extreme it is. One can attempt to use numbers to describe this danger. But everyone will fall short — and, surely, I’ve fallen short — in describing just how frightening a second Trump presidency could actually be.
Do not limit your imagination.
This is something Americans must understand when they see Trump’s grim face displayed over the next few months. Not just whether he plans to erase reproductive rights for women and others (he does), or if he intends to impose a police state to institute a program of mass, forced deportations (he does). Not whether that he intends to leverage the Justice Department and even the U.S. military against anyone who opposes him (he will). But the fact that the place where they will live out the rest of their lives, the world their children will inhabit, will literally be at risk if this person is elected.
Trump is someone who simply does not care what the human consequences of his actions are. He showed that very clearly during the coronavirus pandemic, and he’s preparing to push the entire nation into an irreversible, permanent climatic disaster if he wins in 2024. And if you think he can’t do a whole lot of damage in four years, you’re wrong. In fact, Trump’s policy rollbacks and withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate agreement accelerated global warming.
For any undecided voter, for anyone contemplating voting for a third-party candidate, or anyone who may not be inclined to vote at all, there’s a lot more to consider than the turgid face of one man stewing in a New York City courtroom.
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