Understanding the Impact of Project 2025 on Caribbean Nations like Barbados

As more and more Americans become sensitised to the highly controversial Project 2025 and the insidious plan to radically alter the United States of America as we know it, people are also beginning to uncover the impact of some of the Project’s plans that would directly affect Barbados and other nations of the Caribbean.

While the Republican Party’s presidential candidate Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the well-documented plan, those denials are as hollow as his denials about knowing any of his associates who have brought negative attention to him.

The fact remains that those behind Project 2025 – the Heritage Foundation, including many of the named team of authors were members of Trump’s inner circle, including Stephen Miller a senior advisor to the former president. The news publication Politico, which has bagged at least one Pulitzer Prize wrote: “The authors include Trump’s former Cabinet secretaries, top White House officials and senior aides — including former Trump appointees to the EPA, the Interior Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.”

The publication has described it as “a policy blueprint” that would dismantle many of the agencies that not only help to keep the US safe, but the rest of the world who rely on the scientific expertise of these public servants.

These include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which ensures that big manufacturers including the offshore oil drilling companies are undertaking their work in a manner that protects the marine environment and contain the pollution they generate; the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which countries like Barbados depend on to guarantee or confirm the quality of food items, drugs, medicines are safe to consume and administer. Frequently, when food items and drugs are recalled on the local market it is often on the advice of the FDA.

Countries like Barbados will never have the resources to monitor big oil companies drilling in our waters and therefore, we rely on the standards and guidelines they are required to maintain by agencies like the EPA.

Incredibly, among the targets of Project 2025 are the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), two agencies that provide critical services to assist the region in monitoring weather and atmospheric developments across the western hemisphere.

Worse yet, proponents of climate action and resilience like Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley are fiercely disliked by those behind Project 2025.

The people behind this plan have no interest in combatting climate change and seek to collapse agencies that highlight the environmental dangers. They propose to revoke funding for advocates of such climate change and environmental protection. Essentially, big industries should be allowed to have their way without federal oversight.

The Los Angeles Times, which is situated in California, a US state where the impact of climate change has been evident in the excessive rains, scorching heat and massive wild fires, sought to alert people about what is at stake in a piece published this week.

It stated: “Among its many sweeping calls for change in American government, a conservative platform document known as Project 2025 urges the demolition of some of the nation’s most dependable resources for tracking weather, combating climate change and protecting the public from environmental hazards.”

The authors of Project 2025 argued that the NOAA and the National Weather Service: “Form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future US prosperity.”

With a possible dismantling of NOAA, experts warn of the dangers, noting the NOAA provided valuable free data including weather forecasts, satellite observations, information on hurricanes, heat waves, and other extreme weather conditions.

Project 2025 calls for the National Weather Service to sell its data rather than freely share it with countries like ours in the region. The conservative group behind the plan simply does not like the information coming from NOAA about climate change and so it is prepared to silence it.

For those who still find it difficult to understand the connection between what Project 2025 has in store for the region, simply consider the impact of thousands of Caribbean immigrants who could be evicted from the US in one fell swoop. Project 2025 is arguably one of the greatest global threats and Barbadians need to be on their guard.