Opinion: GOP Leadership and Project 2025 will worsen Wisconsin’s climate crisis and hurt the economy

State Senator Chris Larson highlights Wisconsin’s climate challenges and the risks posed by GOP opposition and Project 2025 to clean energy and economic progress.

A new report highlights just how high the stakes of climate change are for our state. As reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, parts of the Great Plains and the Midwest are projected to warm by more than three degrees by 2040. When thinking about climate, you should think about that number more in terms of how you think about your body temperature than the temperature outside on any given day. A rise of three degrees is dangerous.

Climate change is leading not just to record heat but also to other extreme weather events, including heavy downpours and flooding. This June, several inches of rainfall in parts of Wisconsin led to rising rivers that flooded roads and backyards. Year after year, my kiddos and I watch as our favorite park trails get erased by floodwaters.   

In the last decade, Wisconsin witnessed two severe flooding events that caused at least $15.6 billion in damages and 13 deaths. In total, our state experienced 31 billion-dollar climate-related disasters over the past ten years, causing $113.9 billion in damages that killed more than four hundred people. 

I wrote in early 2023 that Wisconsin can’t go it alone on climate change. As I pointed out at the time, the climate crisis is one of society’s greatest challenges and poses an existential threat to our well-being.

So what’s being done about it? At the municipal, state, and federal levels, Democrats know it’s a crisis and are taking climate action that is creating good-paying jobs, saving Wisconsinites money, and addressing the long-term economic impact of worsening extreme weather events. Republicans, on the other hand, want to reverse course on this progress while denying the problem and ignoring reality.

Republicans have voted more than 40 times to repeal the Biden-Harris administration’s clean energy plan and various provisions of the law. If former President Donald Trump wins, more than 330,000 jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in private sector clean energy investments will be in jeopardy, including $940 million in local investments and close to 2,000 new clean energy jobs in Wisconsin. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for this plan, which is projected to triple clean energy production and will help Americans save $38 billion on electricity bills.

In total, Wisconsin is home to more than 87,000 clean energy jobs, and 60% of our state’s total energy jobs are in clean energy. Wisconsinites overwhelmingly support increasing clean energy in the state, including 84% of independents and 59% of Republicans. 

The benefits of investing in clean energy extend beyond the creation of good-paying jobs. Our health, our pocketbooks, and our environment also benefit. Dozens of Wisconsin school districts received over $35 million from the EPA’s Clean School Bus Rebate Program to purchase low- and zero-emission school buses, while more than 100 Wisconsin municipalities will receive $402 million to build water infrastructure projects, replace lead service lines, and address emerging contaminants such as PFAS.

Just last month, Wisconsin became the first state to launch our Home Energy Rebates program, which helps households make upgrades to improve energy efficiency. Wisconsin received nearly $150 million in federal funds to support the program.

In the midst of this progress, hypocrisy abounds among some of my colleagues in government. A number of elected Republican representatives to the US Congress have touted the benefits that clean energy investments are bringing to their districts after voting against the federal legislation that spurred these investments. 

The top of the Republican ticket makes it clear where the GOP’s priorities lie. Trump’s attacks on clean energy while he was president cost Americans 1.1 million clean energy jobs. If he wins a second term, Trump will end investments in clean energy, jeopardizing American jobs and hurting communities across the country. 

Trump has gone so far as to offer Big Oil companies a “deal”: $1 billion in campaign contributions in exchange for implementing their agenda and gutting our hard-fought climate and clean energy economy progress. This is unsurprising given Trump’s tendency to put his own personal interests above all others. When dozens of Trump’s own rally-goers were hospitalized or received medical attention amid triple-digit temperatures, Trump urged them not to die, saying: “I don’t care about you, I just want your vote.”

Trump’s Project 2025, which calls for blocking the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar and shuttering the Department of Energy’s renewable energy offices, will cost American households $32 billion more in total energy costs. Americans agree Project 2025 is dangerous and extreme, with 77% saying they find the plan’s proposal to eliminate the National Weather Service concerning. 

When it comes to climate and clean energy, Democrats want to take us forward, while Republicans want to drag us backwards. We can’t let Trump and his fellow Republicans take away our opportunity to invest in renewable energy and further jeopardize the planet for future generations.

Related: How Project 2025 would poison millions of Americans