U.S. EPA deletes climate change information from its website

The Trump EPA yanked long-standing information about climate change science from the agency’s website at the end of April. “Our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency,” explains J. P. Freire, an EPA spokesperson. “We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language,” including information about the Obama Administration’s keystone climate change regulation, the Clean Power Plan, Freire says. As part of an executive order on domestic energy production, President Donald J. Trump in March ordered EPA to review the regulation, which limits carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing coal-fired power plants, with the goal of rescinding it. The agency’s website contains a link to an archive of the agency’s climate change pages from Jan. 19, the last day of the Obama Administration. Meanwhile, the city of Chicago last week posted the deleted EPA climate change information to its website. In another development, a federal court in late April suspended the Clean Power Plan for 60 days while judges hear arguments on whether to send the rule back to EPA for reconsideration.