First rule about denying climate change: Don’t talk about climate change. That’s the decree at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of International Climate and Clean Energy. A supervisor at the agency reportedly has banned the phrases climate change, emissions reduction, and Paris Agreement in memos and other written communications. A DOE spokesperson denies the censorship, but this follows similar reports that other offices within the DOE and State Department have stopped using climate-related terms, in accordance with the Trump administration’s views on the issue. Indeed, this is not really surprising given that the EPA previously removed the word science from its mission statement and scrubbed its website of climate data. One fact is clear: Just as not calling it cancer doesn’t make the disease go away, removing the word climate won’t solve the climate crisis.
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