FEMA’s website started deleting ‘climate change’

The term “climate change” has started to vanish from Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) website. Its former “climate resilience” website has been rebranded under the title “future conditions.” There are still subtle references to climate change there, but it’s more of a whisper than an urgent warning as it was before.

The edits come as the Trump administration takes a wrecking ball to federal agencies, attempting to slash the government workforce and eliminate initiatives Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk deem unnecessary. Their anti-diversity crusade has already targeted websites and scientific research mentioning words including “women,” “minority,” and more.

Despite mountains of evidence showing that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are exacerbating extreme weather disasters, President Donald Trump has repeatedly called climate change “a hoax” and campaigned on plans to “drill, baby, drill.” So, naturally, information about climate change is in the crosshairs as the Trump administration enacts a broader purge of health and environmental information it doesn’t want conflicting with his pro-fossil fuel message.

The webpage formerly titled “climate resilience” used to say at the top:

“Climate change is the defining crisis of our time. From extreme heat, drought and wildfires to more severe coastal storms, sea-level rise and inland flooding, the consequences of climate change are all around us.”

Reading the current webpage in comparison is like playing one of those games where you have to guess what changed in a picture. (Hint: there’s a double-space typo where the words “climate change” used to be.) The paragraph now says:

“Disaster incidents are rising due to increased human vulnerability, exposure and a changing climate. From extreme heat, drought and wildfires to more severe coastal storms, sea-level rise and inland flooding, the consequences  are all around us.”  

There are several mentions of climate that have been removed from the page, according to an analysis by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI). The group of researchers came together after Trump was first elected in 2016 to document what might happen to public environmental data. The group found a nearly 40 percent drop in the use of the term “climate change” across websites for federal environmental agencies during the first Trump administration.

As the agency that coordinates federal responses to all kinds of disasters from hurricanes to wildfires, FEMA risks developing a major blindspot in its work if it ignores the effects of climate change. Climate change made the deadly Los Angeles wildfires more likely in January, in just one terrifying instance.

FEMA faces more existential threats, of course, under the Trump administration. The president signed an executive order on January 24th establishing a “review council” to assess whether the agency can “capably and impartially address disasters,” alleging “serious concerns of political bias in FEMA.”

FEMA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge. The changes were made on January 21st, a day after Trump’s inauguration. “We do not know the intention of the team who renamed this website,” EDGI wrote in a blog post today. “Perhaps it was to fly under the radar of the new administration; perhaps it was to align with the priorities of the new administration.”

Other webpages for FEMA and other government agencies are a mixed bag when it comes to mentioning climate change. The Department of Transportation took down a webpage for “climate and sustainability” from its “priorities” website. But other longstanding web resources on climate are still online.

EDGI and other groups have been scrambling to archive federal webpages and datasets. But there are still bigger questions about what happens if those agencies stop paying attention to climate change altogether. As the adage goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.