In a world full of alternative facts, it should come as no surprise that the EPA no-longer stands for Protecting the Environment. On January 20th, 2017, only a day before millions of Americans took to the streets to march in support of climate action, the EPA made major changes to their website. According to their public statement, the EPA website would be “undergoing changes that reflect the agency’s new direction under President Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt.”
The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment. It’s worth repeating the EPA’s purpose, from their website:
- all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work;
- national efforts to reduce environmental risk are based on the best available scientific information;
- federal laws protecting human health and the environment are enforced fairly and effectively;
- environmental protection is an integral consideration in U.S. policies concerning natural resources, human health, economic growth, energy, transportation, agriculture, industry, and international trade, and these factors are similarly considered in establishing environmental policy;
- all parts of society — communities, individuals, businesses, and state, local and tribal governments — have access to accurate information sufficient to effectively participate in managing human health and environmental risks;
- environmental protection contributes to making our communities and ecosystems diverse, sustainable and economically productive; and
- the United States plays a leadership role in working with other nations to protect the global environment.
The most apparent change to the EPA website is that the entire section dedicated to Climate Change was eliminated. No more scientific information, no more Climate Change problem … despite nearly irrefutable scientific evidence that climate change is due to human activity. Their new policies are designed to favor incumbent energy industries without regard to the environment, and are clearly in conflict with the defined mission of the EPA.
Temporarily there is still an archive of the old EPA website at https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climatechange.html. This temporary archive site maintains much of the EPA’s valuable scientific information, as well as the clear ways in which the Climate Change problem and solutions are explained. For more about the EPA’s climate change denial, please Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World.