Jacksonville environmentalist: Project 2025 could be disastrous on climate change alone

Project 2025, the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank) is a plan for a sprawling, multifaceted effort to reshape the United States. If implemented, it will fundamentally change the country. Their plan for climate change alone is nothing short of cataclysmic.

Project 2025's response to climate change as outlined in Chapter 12, "Department of Energy and Related Commissions," will have disastrous outcomes in the United States. It will shut down climate change research, encourage more fossil fuel extraction and repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.

Enacted in 2022, that landmark legislation included the country's largest investment in the reduction of greenhouse gases in history.

In coastal communities like Jacksonville, with many miles of river and oceanfront, the changes mandated in Project 2025 will accelerate recent projections made by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Those projections state that by 2050, dozens of properties — such as police, fire, educational, utility and health care facilities — will be subjected to increased flooding due to sea level rise.

What Project 2025 also proposes is to block the expansion of the alternative energy grid and "slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials."

Then, there is this:

"…[I]ncreased energy scarcity will allow government, (pg. 364) either directly or through access to banks and Wall Street investors, to decide who is ‘worthy’ to receive funding for energy projects."

Deciding who is "worthy" of government investment is a timeworn practice in this country. Who would deny the Pacific Railway Act (1862) was beneficial to the development of the nation? How about the Rural Electrification Act (1936), or the Interstate Highway System Act (1956)? All were taxpayer-funded acts with enormous capital expenditures.

Government spending — when it works — benefits the entire country.

As for government partnering with "banks and Wall Street investors," this tactic dates to Alexander Hamilton, who championed the idea of the national government assuming the Revolutionary War debt of various states. This had the effect of binding investors to the fate of the nation and relieving these states of debt.

They were thereby allowed to invest in projects that helped build the nation we have today.

The Joe Biden administration is doing the same as what the George Washington administration did at the beginning of this country's history. The motivation is no less grand — to physically preserve our nation's future, which will enable the economic engines that power our way of life to continue sustainably.

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Climate change is a clear and present danger. Nearly 100% of the scientists that study climate change believe that human activity is the primary cause; the machinations of Project 2025 will only exacerbate its effects. A majority of people across all ideologies in this country are equally concerned.

The aims described on the Heritage Foundation's website outline what will be our future if the presumptive candidate for the Republican Party is elected. It's all there in black and white, with no hyperbole. Should this be the actual outcome, it may be the death knell for the planet.

In this election, I'm not voting for a candidate — I'm voting for what I want my country to be about. One side is striking fear into the hearts of those they can. The other is pleading for tolerance, acceptance and unity in working together to make this country better than it is now.

It's that simple.

Chris Hildreth, Jacksonville

This guest column is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Times-Union. We welcome a diversity of opinions.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Coastal towns like Jacksonville to suffer the most under Project 2025