What Project 2025 means for the environment

Part Reagan, part Trump, and potentially a big setback for climate change, human health, and the environment

Folks are taking notice of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s potential return to the White House. The document is lengthy and ambitious, covering just about every aspect of the Executive Branch, everything from military policy to education. It’s possible, but really difficult to read the whole document. Also, the document can be opaque, saying things such as “rescind Executive Order 2233” without explaining what Executive Order 2233 is.

I thought that I would try to do an explainer on the project and what it means for the environment and our ability to have clean air and water and preserve the creatures and natural wonders of our country. In discussions of Project 2025, I believe that these environmental matters have been somewhat overlooked, hence this post. It will probably take more than one post of The Green Dispatch to adequately look at these environmental ramifications. Today I will look at the project’s chapter on the Interior Department.

The author

The lead author of the Interior Department chapter is William Perry Pendley, who has a long history of anti-environmental work and opposition. Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, appointed Pendley to direct the Minerals Management Service, which managed the nation's natural gas, oil, and other mineral resources on the offshore outer continental shelf. The department was plagued for decades by conflicts of interest and poor regulatory oversight. Following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Obama administration dissolved the troubled Service.

Pendley has been a climate denier and a denier of a bunch of other things, too. In 1992, he addressed the Heritage Foundation, saying, “Despite the total absence of credible scientific evidence, the media is convinced and is attempting to convince us that we have global warming, an ozone hole, and acid rain, and that it is all man’s fault.” He has compared people who enter the U.S. illegally to cancer.

Among his books is the title Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan’s Battle With Environmental Extremists and Why it Matters Today. He is associated with the Federalist Society, the libertarian organization that has fostered and promoted conservative judges and helped appoint to the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice Roberts has also had his association with the Society. These six justices have sent the Court on an extreme rightward turn.

Pendley served as the Director of the Bureau of Land Management during the latter portion of the Trump administration. A federal judge ruled to terminate his tenure in that role because Pendley had never been confirmed by the Senate, but the Trump administration ignored the ruling.¹ Because Pendley was never confirmed, environmental organizations called for the retraction of the rules promulgated during his tenure.

The rhetoric of Project 2025

Ronald Reagan was the first president to belittle and outright vilify conservation and environmental concerns. The Interior Department chapter echoes the rhetoric of the 40th president with phrases such as “war on fossil fuels,” “radical climate agenda,” and “unnecessarily burden the development or utilization of the Nation's energy resources.”

Project 2025 would have the Fish and Wildlife Service alter its approach to listing and protecting endangered species, ending its reliance on “so-called species specialists who have obvious self-interest, ideological bias, and land-use agendas.” This is how they characterize folks with master’s degrees and doctorates who have spent their careers studying and caring for our nation’s wildlife.

The project’s environmental agenda

As someone interested in environmental science, this caught my eye in Project 2025: the abolition of the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey. Some of the best ecological science is done by this division of the U.S.G.S. The authors of Project 2025 suggest that in its place we should “obtain necessary scientific research about species of concern from universities via competitive requests for proposals.” This could replace the good science of the U.S.G.S. with industry-friendly findings from ideologically driven institutions, such as Hillsdale College. Also, under a Trump administration, how seriously would they take into account actual science-driven research?

Trump has tried to distance himself from the document, yet Project 2025 has his fingerprints all over its plans for the Interior Department, as it advocates to bring back Trump-era Executive Orders and policies. In an effort to hamstring environmental review, Project 2025 wants to reinstate the Trump era restriction on the length of and time limits in filing Environmental Impact Statements, documents used in decision-making processes whenever there are projects or actions that significantly affect our lives or the environment.

Project 2025 reads like a wish list for fossil fuel companies, as it advocates for opening up more public lands to coal mining, opening up more offshore oil exploration, leasing, and production, and reducing the number of inspectors—people who check on safety and environmental compliance—at the nation’s coal mines.

Biden reinstated an Obama-era Executive Order preparing the U.S. for the effects of climate change. The order sets the stage for cities and the rest of the country to better handle increased temperatures and heavier storms. Regionally, this order sets out to prepare our infrastructure for ocean acidification, permafrost thawing, and sea-level rise. Project 2025 wants the projected Trump administration to do away with these safeguarding measures.

Endangered species

Endangered or threatened species usually end up that way because of habitat degradation and loss. But Project 2025 would severely restrict the ability of the Fish and Wildlife Service to designate critical habitat to protect these species. The project would have the agency take into account considerations outside the realms of biology and ecology, such as “economic impacts” and national security when making assessments about habitats. Under the Trump administration, the service was restricted from designating lands that are not currently meeting a species’ needs as habitat, even though the lands have the potential, either naturally or through restoration, to become habitat in the future. Project 2025 wants a return to these more restrictive habitat assessments.

Pendley and his co-authors want to delist species, such as the grizzly bear, the greater sage-grouse, and gray wolf, from endangered species protections. The grizzly bear once roamed throughout the West, from Alaska and Canada south to Mexico and east into the Great Plains. While healthy populations remain in Canada and Alaska, only around 1,500 individuals live in the Western states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Delisting could seriously jeopardize the continued existence of the grizzly bear in the 48.

There are three subspecies of the gray wolf in the West that I know of. A population of Mexican gray wolves hangs on in the Southwest. People kill them inadvertently or on purpose. Delisting the gray wolf, along with bisecting its habitat with the Trump border wall, would most certainly spell extinction for this canine. Much of the habitat of the greater sage-grouse has been lost, leading to its declining numbers. Oil companies, as well as other extractive industries, want to open up more lands in sage-grouse habitat, which would lead further to the species’ decline.

Much of this chapter of Project 2025 concerns Alaska and opening up resource extraction in the 49th state. During the waning days of the Trump presidency, he opened up the sale of oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Project 2025 aims to reinstate these oil leases. It also plans to restart the Trump-era Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial roadway intended to cut through the southern portion of the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, giving mining companies access to copper and zinc deposits in Alaska’s Northwest. The document suggests opening up the Tongass National Forest for extraction as well.

There is much more in this chapter, much of it concerning the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I tried to hit important issues affecting the environment. If you know of anything else that is problematic in this chapter of Project 2025, please share your misgivings in the comments. I plan to look at other portions of Project 2025 and write about them soon.

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1. Friedman, Lisa. "Trump Ignores Rulings on His Acting Officials." New York Times (1923-), 2020 Oct 06, 2020/10/06/. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/trump-ignores-rulings-on-his-acting-officials/docview/2903085178/se-2.