Hundreds of words in government documents and official websites, including those related to the environment and climate change, have been banned or restricted in the United States.
This was reported by journalists of The New York Times. They refer to internal government recommendations that came to their attention, as well as to their own analysis of changes on official websites after the arrival of the new administration.
The newspaper says that the administration of US President Donald Trump is actively changing the official language style of federal agencies, removing or restricting the use of certain words and phrases that it considers politically undesirable.
The recommendations include changes or suggestions to remove certain terms, including from school curricula. In some cases, federal agencies have been urged to be careful with the use of these words, but without an outright ban.
The New York Times published about 200 banned or undesirable words, including: “clean energy”, ‘climate crisis’, ‘climate science’, ‘environmental quality’ and ‘pollution’.
“This list is most likely incomplete. There may be more agency memos than those seen by The New York Times, and some directives are vague or suggest what language may be unacceptable without explicitly stating so,” the publication says.
The journalists claim that this change is already visible on hundreds of federal government websites. They analyzed the pages of federal agencies' web portals before and after Trump took office. The study showed that more than 250 pages contained evidence of deletions or changes to words included in the list published by the publication.
For example, here is how the key topics page of the US State Department's Office of Global Change has changed:
The Negotiating Team represents the United States in the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as well as in many other international forums, dealing with climate change issues, including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the G7, the G20, and others.
The publication noted that the total number of web pages with changes is incomplete, as the analysis included a search for changes on more than 5,000 pages, but it “did not cover the full range of the federal government's web presence.” In addition, the journalists reminded that they selected the pages for comparison in early February, and more changes could have been made since then.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the UN Climate Change Fund.
