Last year, extreme weather cost us hundreds of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. So… why is the Trump Administration defunding the Weather Service?

The Weather Service is part of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We need NOAA to help us predict storms and warn people when they need to evacuate. The data is used by airports to make sure planes can fly safely, by farmers to know when to plant their crops, by fishing companies to know when it’s safe to send boats out on the water, and by construction companies to plan the best time to pour concrete and calculate the right risks of wildfires or flooding. And individual Americans rely on their weather apps and local meteorologists to tell them when it’s safe to go out for a hike or what to pack for an upcoming vacation. The weather app on your phone isn’t magical - it relies on weather data provided by NOAA.

Climate and weather may be complicated, but the reason why Trump is cutting NOAA is very simple: it’s in Project 2025.

What Project 2025 wants to do is make NOAA a private, for-profit service. But some things are a public good - like schools, parks, and information. Who benefits when climate and weather information is suddenly paywalled? The millionaires and billionaires who run the companies that now own that information.

If we want to survive and thrive over the next few generations, we need access to the best information about our atmosphere and oceans. Weather isn’t a partisan issue and we should keep it that way.

For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected].

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