The environment is the last to receive funding but the first to receive budget cuts.

“Trump’s budget – bought and paid for by his fossil fuel megadonors – would be an unmit­ig­ated dis­aster for every­one except the loot­ers and pol­luters,” said Sen. Shel­don White­house of Rhode Island, the top Demo­crat on the Envir­on­ment and Pub­lic Works Com­mit­tee, in a news release.

 

Read the original article here at PressReader .

Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum

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Budget cuts could wreak cli­mate havoc

Dems say they’ll work against some reduc­tions

EcologyClimate ChangeU.S. NewsUS PoliticsPolitics

• 12 May 2025
• +94 more
• Dinah Voyles Pul­ver

Com­ing up with a final fed­eral budget always involves arm twist­ing and other nego­ti­at­ing tac­tics as every­one lob­bies for their pri­or­it­ies, so the ini­tial budget pro­posal released by the White House in early May remains far from final.

However, pick any topic related to con­ser­va­tion, envir­on­mental pro­tec­tion, cli­mate change or weather and it’s not hard to find someone con­cerned by the cuts the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is pro­pos­ing in its quest to shrink the fed­eral budget.

In total, Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s pro­posed budget recom­mends chop­ping more than $32 bil­lion across agen­cies charged with mon­it­or­ing weather, oceans and the atmo­sphere, and with pro­tect­ing nat­ural and his­toric resources, parks and con­ser­va­tion lands, accord­ing to a USA TODAY ana­lysis. The cuts echo an array of actions already taken by fed­eral agen­cies and the pres­id­ent’s Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­ciency.

Demo­crats, former fed­eral sci­ent­ists and advocacy groups say the cuts will set back the nation’s efforts to com­bat cli­mate change, leave the coun­try’s envir­on­mental satel­lite pro­grams lag­ging other nations, and allow increases in pol­lu­tion and harm­ful emis­sions.

The pres­id­ent’s sup­port­ers say such cuts have to hap­pen if the nation is ever going to pay down its debt.

The pres­id­ent’s budget does include “a lot of cuts to offices that look at renew­ables and social and envir­on­mental justice,” said Diana Furcht­gott-Roth, dir­ector of the Cen­ter for Energy, Cli­mate and Envir­on­ment at the Her­it­age Found­a­tion, the con­ser­vat­ive think-tank that draf­ted Project 2025. “We have a $36 tril­lion national debt and we have a $2 tril­lion defi­cit. We shouldn’t be spend­ing money on these things.”

But a wide range of con­ser­va­tion and envir­on­mental advoc­ates argue the pres­id­ent’s budget could have dev­ast­at­ing impacts for years to come and that there are spend­ing.

Rank­ing Demo­crats in the House and Sen­ate vowed to work against some of the budget reduc­tions.

“Trump’s budget – bought and paid for by his fossil fuel megadonors – would be an unmit­ig­ated dis­aster for every­one except the loot­ers and pol­luters,” said Sen. Shel­don White­house of Rhode Island, the top Demo­crat on the Envir­on­ment and Pub­lic Works Com­mit­tee, in a news release.

With the cuts to the EPA budget, the “most haz­ard­ous indus­tries would get to spew can­cer-caus­ing pol­lu­tion and green­house gases into our air, exacer­bat­ing cli­mate-fla­tion on everything from insur­ance to gro­cer­ies.”

With the cuts to the EPA budget, the “most haz­ard­ous indus­tries would get to spew can­cer-caus­ing pol­lu­tion and green­house gases into our air, exacer­bat­ing cli­mate-fla­tion on everything from insur­ance to gro­cer­ies.”

Here are some examples of key cuts

Depart­ment of Interior

At the Interior depart­ment, which includes the National Park Ser­vice, Fish and Wild­life Ser­vice and Geo­lo­gical Sur­vey, the budget would drop from $17 bil­lion to $12 bil­lion in 2026, even though it’s slated to take on ser­vices now provided by other agen­cies.

National parks advocacy groups were quick to raise con­cerns about the more than $1 bil­lion cut to the parks budget, a 25% reduc­tion. The budget also included a pro­posal to shed “many” of the smal­ler, less-vis­ited 433 parks by hand­ing them over to states to man­age.

At the U.S. Geo­lo­gical Sur­vey, $564 mil­lion would be elim­in­ated for uni­versity grants and pro­grams that focus on “social agen­das” such as cli­mate change rather than “achiev­ing dom­in­ance in energy and crit­ical min­er­als,“accord­ing to the budget doc­u­ment.

At the U.S. Geo­lo­gical Sur­vey, $564 mil­lion would be elim­in­ated for uni­versity grants and pro­grams that focus on “social agen­das” such as cli­mate change rather than “achiev­ing dom­in­ance in energy and crit­ical min­er­als,“accord­ing to the budget doc­u­ment.

The National Oceanic and Atmo­spheric Admin­is­tra­tion’s office that over­sees pro­tec­ted mar­ine spe­cies such as whales and sea turtles would be merged with an office per­form­ing sim­ilar func­tions for land and fresh­wa­ter spe­cies at the fish and wild­life ser­vice, which is slated for a $37 mil­lion cut.

The admin­is­tra­tion’s budget also announced plans to cre­ate a new “Fed­eral Wild­land Fire Ser­vice” in the Interior Depart­ment. Wild­fire mit­ig­a­tion and fire­fight­ing respons­ib­il­it­ies at the U.S. Forest Ser­vice, which has been under the Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture for 120 years, would be merged with sim­ilar respons­ib­il­it­ies at four agen­cies in the Interior Depart­ment.

Envir­on­mental Pro­tec­tion Agency

The Envir­on­mental Pro­tec­tion Agency’s budget would shrink from $9.1 bil­lion to $4.2 bil­lion.

The cuts would end $1 bil­lion in grant fund­ing to states. Almost $500 mil­lion would be elim­in­at­ing or redu­cing three grant pro­grams the admin­is­tra­tion describes as “rad­ical envir­on­mental justice work, woke cli­mate research, and skewed, overly-pre­cau­tion­ary mod­el­ing that influ­ences reg­u­la­tions.”

Two addi­tions are noted across these envir­on­mental areas, $9 mil­lion would be added to a budget of more than $100 mil­lion for the drink­ing water pro­gram and $27 mil­lion to a grant pro­gram for Indi­gen­ous Tribes to main­tain water and wastewa­ter infra­struc­ture, increas­ing the pro­gram’s budget sev­eral times over.

National Oceanic and Atmo­spheric Admin­is­tra­tion

A vari­ety of “cli­mate-dom­in­ated” research, data and grant pro­grams would be ter­min­ated at NOAA, redu­cing the budget by $1.3 bil­lion. The cuts also include NOAA’s cli­mate adapt­a­tion part­ner­ships.

The pro­posal would scale back the planned replace­ment for NOAA’s exist­ing geo­sta­tion­ary oper­a­tional envir­on­mental satel­lites, includ­ing instru­ments for mon­it­or­ing the atmo­sphere and ocean. The sys­tem provides a host of pub­lic data for weather obser­va­tion and mod­el­ing, as well as other kinds of earth, atmo­spheric and solar data. The Trump pro­posal would also can­cel unspe­cified con­tracts for what the admin­is­tra­tion termed “unne­ces­sary cli­mate meas­ure­ments.”

Depart­ment of Energy

Although the so-called “green new deal” was never passed by Con­gress, the pres­id­ent’s budget makes sev­eral ref­er­ences to the “Green New Scam” in its pro­posal to shave money from the Energy depart­ment’s budget.

It pro­poses can­celing more than $15 bil­lion in funds alloc­ated from the 2021 Bipar­tisan Infra­struc­ture Law for renew­able energy sources.

More than $2.5 bil­lion would be cut from the office of Energy Effi­ciency and Renew­able Energy, which over­sees the depart­ment’s “Energy Star” pro­gram – blamed for unpop­u­lar reg­u­la­tions on gas stoves and light bulbs. It also cuts $389 mil­lion from the envir­on­mental man­age­ment pro­gram that over­sees waste cleanup at 14 act­ive clean-up sites.

Other pro­posed spend­ing cuts:

• Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture: The budget cuts more than $2 bil­lion in envir­on­mental-related expenses, such as $754 mil­lion for a pro­gram that provides tech­nical assist­ance for prop­erty own­ers who want to con­serve and main­tain nat­ural resources on their land.
• NASA: The space agency would see a 24.3% cut in its pro­grams related to Earth sci­ence and cli­mate change, a reduc­tion from $24.8 bil­lion to $18.8 bil­lion. It also would elim­in­ate $1.1 bil­lion for “low-pri­or­ity cli­mate mon­it­or­ing satel­lites.”