President-elect of the United States Donald Trump
The administration Trump has asked the Environmental Protection Agency (US Environmental Protection Agency), known as EPA for its acronym in English, that remove the page referring to climate change of its web. Two agency employees relayed to Reuters the latest move by the new executive to erase any initiative by the former president related to climate change.
This notification reached the agency staff through public employees of the same last Tuesday. The page in question contains links to research on global warming and detailed information on gas emissions. The sources consulted indicate that the web could close today wednesday.
EPA website at time of article publication
The sources consulted by the Reuters agency, prefer not to be named since they have forbidden to speak to the press. These sources indicate that they have also been prohibited from awarding new contracts or grants for the time being.
«If the web closes, years of work done on climate change will disappear"One of the organization's members told Reuters, adding that some employees were fighting to save part of the information included on the web or to convince the Trump administration to keep at least part of it.
Trump and climate change
The order is the result of the Trump administration's attempt to slow down the flow of information from various government organizations that monitor climate change issues. These actions, which include the disappearance of information about Climate Change from the White House Official Website, began last week. Some of these measures have raised concerns about their potential impact on the fight against climate change and, in particular, how New York could suffer flooding if appropriate measures are not taken. It is also important to consider how cities that could disappear due to global warming could be affected in the future.
Myron Ebell, the head of the EPA transition from Trump's November election to his inauguration last week, has indicated he has not been caught off guard by the move. More specifically he said «I suppose that the web pages will be retired, but the links and information will remain available«. However, uncertainty persists regarding the accessibility of critical information such as that related to the reasons for climate change and the efforts that were being made. In this sense, it is essential to analyze how deserts threatened by global warming could be an indicator of the future impact of climate change.
At the time of publication of this article, the EPA's climate change section was still active, but according to information received by Reuters, the information on climate change could soon be much more difficult to find.
Source: Reuters