Thanks to Anonymous who linked to this Politico piece which seems to answer the questions raised yesterday about the Wildfire Commission Report link.
Agriculture Department employees have been ordered to delete landing pages discussing climate change across agency websites and document climate change references for further review, according to an internal email obtained by POLITICO.
The directive from USDA’s office of communications, whose authenticity was validated by three people, could affect information across dozens of programs including climate-smart agriculture initiatives, USDA climate hubs and Forest Service information regarding wildfires, the frequency and severity of which scientists have linked to hotter, drier conditions fueled by climate change. And it is reminiscent of moves made during the first Trump administration to remove references to climate change from federal government websites.
The email sent Thursday afternoon calls on website managers to “Identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change” and “Identify all web content related to climate change and document it in a spreadsheet” for the office to review. It set a Friday deadline for handing over titles, links and “your recommendation on how the content should be handled.”
Interesting that Politico did not post the actual leaked memo.
First, we have to imagine that both the leaker and Politico are being accurate. So I guess we have to trust both of them on this, for now. Stories and reality will be changing by the day, the week and the month.
As reported, the email talks about “landing pages” and not all pages. Which would explain why we can go to any USDA agency, search on climate change, and find many links. Then it says “identify all web content related to climate change and document it in a spreadsheet for the office to review.” So let’s imagine ourselves tasked with this. Since folks had to claim some relationship to climate change to get funding, there is a climate mention in probably all the programmatic documents and many of the administrative ones (at least for grants, and many positions). They are going to put thousands (or millions?) of documents in a spreadsheet by Friday?
What is likely to happen, based on my experience, is that agency/Department career folks will come back and say “here is a sample, is this what you really want?” and the criteria will be refined. Perhaps this refinement will also be leaked, so we can keep up with it?
But I don’t know. So maybe the thing to do is wait and see what happens. If we believe the email has been correctly leaked and reported , and if the Wildland Fire Report was taken down intentionally, then the agency is not following the email. So that’s confusing.
For those of you who haven’t observed this, there’s a thing that happens – particularly in R Admins because most federal employees are Ds. It’s what I call “intentional overreaction.” What happens is that new politicals will send an email or otherwise order agencies to do something. Some people in some agencies overreact (it’s always fun to watch how a Department will send a memo and see how different agencies react or overreact) and shut down things beyond what the memo actually calls for. Sometimes the employees then contact cooperative media outlets and then media outlets interview affected people, but we never get to see the actual memo.
So this climate change memo at USDA is interesting, because we actually have the memo (if we trust leakers and reporters) and can compare it to any actions.
Since the 90’s or so, anything technical we wrote at the FS had to have some reference to climate change, just to assure people we had considered it and were not asleep at the scientific wheel. Since the IRA megabucks were supposedly directed at climate action, then anyone who wanted bucks would definitely make some kind of climate connection, even if it was a stretch. Here’s a fairly stretchy example but probably not unusual.
This one’s actually an EPA grant for $20 mill for a “climate-focused” grant for a community center.
A new community center intended to be a hub for southwest Denver is set to bring food stalls, a coffee shop and sweeping mountain views to the Loretto Heights campus by 2026 — with help from a recent $20 million federal grant.
Loretto Heights, a former college campus known for its sandstone clocktower, is under a major redevelopment after Westside Investment Partners purchased the campus for $15.8 million in 2018.
The new community center, which will be operated by a nonprofit group called Commún, will also offer a wide swath of services, including a donation-based grocery store, a child care center and a community market.
“Think of a food hall,” said Margaret Brugger, executive director of the nonprofit. “It’s lively, there’s coffee, you can get a meal and it has beautiful views. So who wants to come there? Everybody that feels like they belong.”
While the Loretto Heights Community Center will provide some services for lower-income residents, it’s intended to be a space for anyone in the community to connect with their neighbors, Brugger said.
The $20 million grant was awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency in a climate-focused program. It will only partially fund the remodeling of the 1950s-era building known as Machebeuf Hall — a 45,000 square feet structure that formerly operated as a cafeteria. The full project’s budget is $41 million, with other funding coming from the Colorado Trust, the Gates Foundation, the Sisters of Loretto and some government tax credits.
My point being that climate is everywhere, whether or not landing pages are taken down.