As communities in the United States Southeast reel from the devastation of Hurricane Helene and as Florida braces for the potentially catastrophic Hurricane Milton, the impacts of climate change are more apparent than ever.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has a plan to accelerate climate change by cutting the size and scope of federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Weather Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, falsely claiming these agencies themselves are “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” It calls for the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change so the U.S. wouldn’t need to track, report, or reduce emissions.
An August 2024 study determined that if all of the document’s climate-related recommendations were implemented, the U.S. would spew an additional 2.7 billion tons of climate-heating emissions into the atmosphere by 2030. Antonia Juhasz, energy, climate, and environmental justice author, analyst, and investigative journalist spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about what a progressive vision of climate justice could look like, as part of YES! Media’s ongoing Progress 2025 initiative.