We’re keeping our focus on the USDA today, as the Guardian’s Oliver Milman dropped a bombshell frontpage report about the agency’s censorship of climate change.
As the new administration took over, emails detailing changes in department language were sent around the agency indicating “climate change” should be avoided and “weather extremes” used instead. According to the staffer who sent the email, the USDA “won’t change the modeling, just how we talk about it.” Another email asked senior employees to “visit with your staff and make them aware of this shift in perspective within the executive branch.”
Natasha Geiling of Think Progress was quick to tweet and write a post reminding us of how farmers are uniquely vulnerable to climate change (sorry, ”weather extremes”) as well as some recent history on the verbal gymnastics employed by Obama’s USDA when addressing climate change with a demographic largely considered hostile to the idea.
This sort of self-censorship is no doubt happening across the federal government. While evidence of the administration clamping down on agency speech would be even more damning, the chilling effect demonstrated here is nonetheless highly damaging. If staffers can’t talk honestly with themselves and their constituents, how can we be confident they are properly protecting us?
That said, the change in language is meant not for the public or farmers the USDA is charged with helping, but an audience of one: the Whiner in Chief. Unlike hardworking farmers, Trump and his ilk seemingly can’t stand the harsh light of reality, to the point where they’ve started Trump TV, because apparently even Fox News isn’t sufficiently sycophantic.
Between the rollover to Orwellian doublespeak when it comes to climate change and the installation of political hack Clovis at the top science post, the USDA is giving a whole new meaning to what archaeologists know as “Clovis Culture.”
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