Seconds after being confirmed, the Trump administration unveiled their “America First Energy Plan” on the newly revamped Whitehouse.gov, promising to eliminate President Obama’s so called “Climate Action Plan.”
Now, the media is broadcasting activist concerns over routine, and widely expected, changes to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website.
Climate Central reports the Trump administration “is removing references to Obama-era projects such as the Climate Action Plan and other federal roadmaps to address climate change.” President Trump’s team also removed mentions of various EPA global warming programs and task forces.
Climate Central noted a reference to “carbon pollution as a cause of climate change has also been removed and adaptation has been emphasized,” according to information shared by activists with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI).
EDGI has been monitoring changes the Trump administration is making to agency websites, following concerns the incoming administration would delete environmental data — a concern stoked by environmentalists last year.
“They’re mostly scrubbing it of anything that has a hint of Obama,” Gretchen Goldman, a research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), told Climate Central. “The United Nations stuff being removed is also maybe not surprising but definitely not positive.”
UCS was one of the groups warning Trump could delete climate data at federal agencies, sparking outcry by left-wing scientists. Some scientists got together to “preserve” government data from Trump based on UCS’s warning.
Trump’s team made similar changes to Whitehouse.gov, getting rid of Obama’s “climate change” webpage and replacing it with an “America First Energy Plan” page with no mention of global warming. Obama’s Whitehouse.gov is archived online.
The new Whitehouse.gov says Trump “is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.”
So, it should come as no surprise the Trump administration would remove policies they disagree with — and have no intention of carrying out — from government websites. More changes like this are expected across federal agencies.
EPA mostly removed references to Obama’s Climate Action Plan, which includes a massive regulatory scheme to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. That rule runs counter to Trump’s campaign promise to rollback Obama-era regulations targeting the coal industry.
The EPA told Climate Central “all the changes were routine and in line with agency guidelines.”
Here’s the references to Obama’s climate plan EPA removed from its website:
Screenshot of archived EPA.gov
Here’s a link to EPA’s archived site, and another link to the current EPA.gov.
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