Credit: Preston Keres/USDA
The Guardian reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has ordered its staff to avoid using the term climate change. Below are examples of the scientific realities Trump’s USDA wants to ignore, accompanied by their euphemistic phrasings in quotes.
| Climate change | "Weather extremes" |
| Climate change adaptation | "Resilience to weather extremes/intense weather events: drought, heavy rain, spring ponding" |
| Reduce greenhouse gases | "Build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency" |
| Sequester carbon | “Build soil organic matter” |
In other words, lose any reference to a changing climate, greenhouse gases, and carbon pollution (and heat, it appears) and substitute them with fuzzy language that doesn’t convey the urgency of a global environmental, health, and social threat, nor agriculture’s role in it.
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