Deep in the bowels of .gov web addresses sits a site that houses the climate adaptation plans for more than two dozen federal agencies. They outline everything from the Smithsonian protecting the National Museum of American History from flooding to the Department of Defense “incorporat[ing] climate considerations into wargames.”
The fact that these documents remain available — including on the recently updated Environmental Protection Agency site — stands in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s broader purge of climate-related programming from the federal government. Even the rest of the sustainability.gov website where they reside has largely been wiped clean since Trump’s inauguration.
“I don’t know if leaving [them] up was intentional,” said Elizabeth Losos, an executive in residence at Duke University, who provided technical support for the plans. She said it could be an oversight and the plans will be taken down eventually. Or it could be a sign that some within the administration want to tackle issues related to natural disaster and climate preparedness.
“There are folks there who know that if you screw this up too much it comes back and bites you,” Losos said. She also said she believes that “they aren’t nearly as hostile to climate adaptation and resiliency as they are climate mitigation.”
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including one sent to the Council on Environmental Quality, which spearheaded the plans. Grist also reached out to all 30 government entities that produced the documents. Only a handful responded, though they avoided referencing “climate change.”
“The [State] Department will continue to plan for and seek to mitigate disruptions to its critical operations from a range of possible disruptions, including natural hazards,” said one agency spokesperson in an email. Another wrote that the “EPA takes very seriously how natural hazards and disasters can affect human health and the environment.” Neither agency responded to follow up questions.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned electric utility, directly addressed the future of its plan, confirming that “no changes to the current plan have been identified.” Press secretary Charlotte Taylor dismissed questions about the Department of Interior’s plan by email, writing, “A leftist blog’s interpretation of the federal government’s actions is not a matter of concern.”
The Biden administration released the first comprehensive climate adaptation plans in 2021, and the latest versions came out in 2024. They run through 2027 and range from 15 (the National Archives and Records Administration) to 115 (State Department) pages long.
“Some of the plans were stronger than others,” said one person who worked on the plans and asked to remain anonymous to discuss them candidly. While the plans were largely unfunded, this person says they were important for setting departmental strategy and priorities. And, most importantly, the goal was to protect government assets and save taxpayers money.
“It falls into efficiency and smart government use of funds,” the person told Grist. “I think it’s a really good federal investment for the long run.”
According to the Government Accountability Office, GAO, the federal government is the largest property owner in the United States and spends billions of dollars running and maintaining its assets. But a 2021 GAO report found no specific directives for incorporating natural disaster resilience into decisions for managing that vast portfolio.
“The federal government does not have a strategic federal approach for investing in the highest priority climate-resilience projects,” the report read. Disaster-resilient assets, it continued, “can reduce potential physical damages, and thus, may also reduce future needs for Congress to appropriate supplemental funds.”
Saving money would fit with the Trump administration’s stated goals of slashing the cost of government. Climate-friendly policies wouldn’t. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, for example, recently shuttered its ‘Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities’ program. Thousands of people have been, or are slated to be, laid off at agencies that help address climate issues, such as the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Rollbacks like these make the presence of the Climate Adaptation Plans particularly puzzling.
“It’s hard to reconcile with other actions,” said Hannah Persl, a senior staff attorney with the Harvard Environmental & Energy Law Program. She added that there likely isn’t anything requiring the administration to keep them online or in effect.
In response to the 2021 GAO report, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Disaster Resiliency Planning Act. That law, along with a Biden-era executive order on climate action, led the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, to issue guidance to how agencies should plan for disaster resiliency. But that memo did not make climate action plans mandatory and, even if it had, OMB could update it at any time.
Despite a lack of anything requiring the climate adaptation plan, they remain intact and a GAO report from last year found that all 13 agencies it looked at were incorporating climate vulnerabilities into their investment decisions. But most observers are skeptical of their continued utility under Trump.
“They’re meaningful to the extent agency leadership are committed to implementing them,” said Perls. “If we collect the breadcrumbs and put them all in a row, it would suggest [this administration is] not really interested in meaningfully implementing these plans.”
