January 30, 2025
The new Trump Administration’s recent actions show that we are facing profound threats to climate progress at the federal level.
The impact of several Executive Orders, and a potential federal funding freeze, go well beyond our work on climate change – we are very sensitive to the fact that real people’s lives will be affected by these actions in a myriad of negative ways.
The President has issued a slew of orders that will negatively impact the environment and federal efforts to address climate change. A handful of the most detrimental orders include:
- Energy exploration that promotes fossil fuel development and hinders offshore wind.
- A national energy emergency that seeks to increase oil and gas production and ignore the benefits of solar and wind.
- Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, slowing international progress to cut climate warming emissions.
- A proposed federal funding freeze, which was temporarily blocked, would withhold investments from things like protecting our rivers and water conservation, state parks, clean cars, trucks and buses, construction of new clean energy projects and factories, and many other critical projects.
WRA was prepared for this. But this new era is different. It’s more important than ever to continue to make progress on climate change. And the states, including here in WRA’s region, will play a major role in advancing that progress. We must create durable state policies that protect ourselves and the environment from the whims of the federal government.
We are well-positioned on the ground in our states and will continue to advocate for key policies to reduce climate warming emissions in state decision-making forums, to protect rivers across the region and to protect habitat and wildlife from development and other threats.
We’ve built the expertise, infrastructure, and relationships across the Interior West to do this work. While the federal environment will be incredibly challenging over the next several years, we must continue to make progress to advance climate solutions. That pathway goes through the states.
It is critical that governors and state leaders take actions that will protect their constituents from chaos and uncertainty. The states must join together to make sure we’re protected – and WRA is here to support them.
What can you do? You can reach out to your state representatives, your governor, and your members of Congress to encourage them to aggressively pursue the state level climate action that we need and to protect their constituents against dangerous Executive Orders and funding freezes.
