What Project 2025 Would Do to the Environment

The policy playbook from the Heritage Foundation would strip away our rights to clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet.

The policy playbook known as Project 2025 is 900 pages, and 150 of them are about how to destroy the environment. This deregulatory agenda written by former government officials and Heritage Foundation staff would strip away our rights to clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet. It would trade these basic freedoms to help polluters profit.

Though the scope of planning written down in Project 2025 is new, many of the ideas it presents are not. At Earthjustice, we’ve seen presidential administrations push similar agendas before — and through the courts we have pushed back.

Yet we know that the lives lost, and habitats obliterated under such disastrous policies cannot be restored, even if the policies themselves are reversed. We are also alarmed by proposed tactics we have not seen any previous administration attempt, particularly the ways in which Project 2025 undermines government staff charged with overseeing health and environmental protections.

We are prepared to defend the environment and communities no matter who holds political office. Here are some of the Project 2025 recommendations we’re most concerned about:

Taking a hatchet to bedrock environmental laws

What Project 2025 says:

Gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA): Project 2025 would rewrite the most successful legal tool we have for protecting wildlife in ways that would harm imperiled species. It specifically calls for removing protections from gray wolves and Yellowstone grizzlies.

No need for national monuments: Another proposal would repeal the Antiquities Act, which would strip the president of the ability to protect priceless public lands and waters as national monuments.

Weaken the Clean Air Act: Project 2025 would nix the part of the law that requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set health-based air quality standards.

Less say for communities in environmental decisions: The plan would undermine key portions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which ensures you have a voice in major projects built near you.

More mining and fossil fuel development on public lands

What Project 2025 says:

Prioritize oil and gas: Project 2025 tells the agencies that manage federal lands and waters to maximize corporate oil and gas extraction. It calls for approving more pipelines like Keystone XL and Dakota Access.

Willow? Make it bigger: The agenda explicitly aims to expand the Willow Project, which is already the largest proposed oil and gas undertaking on U.S. public lands.

Target iconic landscapes: The project also calls for drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and mining in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness, among other irreplaceable natural treasures.

Undermining science and the regulation of toxic chemicals

What Project 2025 says:

Trust the chemical companies: Project 2025 tells the EPA to be more open to industry science and to stop funding major research into toxic chemical exposure.

Make it harder to regulate chemicals: The plan calls for the EPA to meet an absurdly high standard of proof that a chemical is hazardous before deciding to regulate it. This would give chemical companies greater freedom to put toxic substances into our air, water, and products.

Forever chemicals are fine: Project 2025 would walk back the determination that PFAS — the “forever chemicals” linked to reproductive harms, developmental delays, and increased risk of cancer — are a hazardous substance.

Ending government efforts to address the climate crisis

What Project 2025 says:

The plan’s authors are climate skeptics: The document refers pointedly to “the perceived threat of climate change.”

Climate solutions? Don’t need ‘em: Project 2025 calls for undoing many of the clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate solutions bill in history. It also supports Congressional efforts to repeal the law entirely.

Shut down climate research: The plan would get rid of more than a dozen government offices and agencies that study climate change.

Eliminating environmental justice programs

What Project 2025 says:

Environmental justice is not the government’s problem: Project 2025 questions whether the government should address the ways that communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately exposed to dangerous pollution.

Get rid of staff who work on these issues: The plan calls for disbanding offices with the Department of Justice and the EPA that focus on environmental justice.