Project 2025 would 'unequivocally' lead to more hurricane deaths, experts warn

Source: The Guardian

Tue 8 Oct 2024 06.00 EDT


With communities still reeling from Hurricane Helene, one of the deadliest storms ever to hit the US, further pain in the form of Hurricane Milton is about to hit Florida. Experts warn such disasters will be deepened if Donald Trump is elected and follows the policy plans of the controversial rightwing Project 2025 manifesto.

Under Project 2025, authored by numerous former Trump officials but disavowed by the former president himself, the federal forecasting of severe storms and aid given to shattered towns and cities would be drastically scaled back. Emergency management officials say the cuts would severely worsen the outcomes from a storm like Helene.

Project 2025 calls for “breaking up and downsizing” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), which it calls a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry”. The agency’s climate research is “harmful to future US prosperity” and should be disbanded, the document says.

Noaa houses the National Weather Service (NWS) which provides forecasts and analyses on hurricanes and other extreme weather events. Project 2025 calls for the service to “fully commercialize its forecasting operations”. “They want to pretend climate change isn’t clearly having an effect,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire and who called the proposals “ridiculous”. Introducing a profit-motive into the NWS would undermine commitment to the public interest, said Rosenberg.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/08/trump-project-2025-hurricanes