EPA buries inconvenient climate information

On the eve of the People’s Climate March, which may see record-breaking heat on the National Mall, the Environmental Protection Agency began “updating language” on its website to “reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt.” One obvious result of the remodeling is that fact sheets and other climate information contradicting recent statements by Trump and Pruitt are being scrubbed.

For example, many pages—such as one that previously informed visitors about the EPA’s 2009 determination that “greenhouse gas pollution threatens Americans’ health and welfare”—have now been replaced by a page describing Trump’s March 28 signing of the Executive Order on Energy Independence, which calls for a rollback of Obama-era plans to curb greenhouse pollution. Other pages on climate change, such as one previously titled “Climate Change: Basic Information,” now display a message informing visitors that the page is being updated.

An EPA staffer told the Washington Post that the update is “a work in progress, but we can’t have information which contradicts the actions we have taken in the last two months.” The inconvenient information on climate change is now archived as a January 19 snapshot of the previous administration’s website.