EPA Removes Climate Change Page From Website To ‘Reflect Agency’s New Direction’

“We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language,” EPA says in a statement

Climate March
Astrid Riecken/Getty Images

If you’re looking for info about climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website is not the place to go.

Friday, the eve before tens of thousands took to the streets of Washington D.C. for the Climate March, the page relating to climate change and the Obama administration’s main emissions regulation for power plants was removed from www.epa.gov. J.P. Freire, the EPA’s associate administrator for public affairs said in a statement that the change was made to “reflect the agency’s new direction under Donald Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt.”

“As EPA renews its commitment to human health and clean air, land and water, our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency,” Freire wrote. In its place, a story about the EPA “complying with President Trump’s executive order on energy independence, which undoes former-President Obama’s climate agenda.”

“We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”

The White House stirred emotions when it removed a climate change page from its website shortly after Trump’s inauguration, claiming it was part of an “overhaul of the site.” But the president terminated his predecessor’s Clean Power Plan via executive order in an effort to revive the coal industry.

Both Trump and Pruitt have been vocal about their disbelief of the science behind climate change. The POTUS famously tweeted in 2012 “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

And in May 2016, Pruitt wrote: “Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired on of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind… Dissent in not a crime.”

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