Project 2025 and Donald Trump Want You to Pay to Get Weather Reports

Republicans have a strategy for dealing with climate change: don’t talk about it. For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill this year that removed references to climate change from the state’s laws. Other states, like Arizona, have passed legislation prohibiting the use of state funds on climate change initiatives.

READ: Columbia Law School Silencing Science Tracker

Project 2025 and a second Trump administration take climate change denial to the next level by calling for the dissolution of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and privatizing weather forecasting services. Why? Because NOAA collects and provides free weather and climate data, which, while it is a life-saving source of information, could also be used to support action on climate issues.

According to Matthew Sanders of the Environment Law Clinic:

“To propose undercutting, breaking up and quote-unquote streamlining NOAA is really an effort to block and make less available information about climate change in order to serve an agenda of climate change denial.”

“FULLY COMMERCIALIZED” WEATHER SERVICES

The vision outlined in the Project 2025 plan would end free weather forecasting services and either turn them over entirely to private corporations or require entities to pay for weather data.

In other words, if you want to know whether to prepare for a storm, flood or any other weather event, you’d better be well-connected. Those who can pay for the information will have it and those who can’t will have to hope they can get to their roofs and pay a contractor to rescue them from rising rivers.

Experts say that creating a weather oligarchy would “unequivocally” lead to increased storm fatalities. But Donald Trump doesn’t care. As long as he and his rich friends are safe, the rest of us can keep guessing about what’s headed our way.