Energy Outlook

By: Jacob Kim

In an unprecedented move, but not totally unexpected, the Trump administration has ordered the United States Department of Agriculture to take down all federal websites referencing the climate crisis. The order, which already took down key research pages and adaptation tools on the USFS website, portends a serious blow to climate change education, public policy, and environmental research.

By Friday, many federal sites related to climate change, risks of wildfires, and ways to adapt had gone dark. Included were the USFS Climate Change Resource Center, the Climate Action Tracker, and the National Roadmap for Responding to Climate Change. In lieu of the critical scientific data, what appeared before users were error messages or simple statements declaring they were “not authorized” to view the content. Although USDA officials contended that the content was not removed but rather only “archived,” such a move in fact bars access by the public to information so vital in grasping and addressing climate change.

The removal of the climate hub and its related resources is just one part of a broader Trump administration attempt to dismantle environmental protections and reshape federal policies on climate action. In addition to these website takedowns, Trump has rolled back rules introduced during the Biden administration, declared an “energy emergency” to fast-track extracting fossil fuels, and pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement once more. The administration also issued a hiring freeze, put environmental projects on hold, and offered buyouts for federal employees to quit in their jobs, further weakening the government’s capacity to act on climate.

But this is more than a bureaucratic decision, as the real-world consequences are very serious. Many of those websites supplied essential tools to farmers, firefighters, policymakers, and educators in dealing with the increasing vagaries of climate change. And without access to wildfire vulnerability assessments, climate adaptation resources, and emissions tracking tools, communities across the country are in the dark as natural disasters worsen, temperatures rise, and weather patterns shift.

Taking climate science out of public purview sets quite a dangerous precedent. It is an undermining of decades of research, disruption to scientific communication, and fueling of misinformation. When key environmental data is censored or obscured, the public loses access to factual information needed for informed decision-making. Students, researchers, and policymakers use these federal resources to develop solutions to address the climate crisis and to implement sustainability. It means that without them, the ability to educate future generations and equip them with knowledge to handle the climate crisis is hugely compromised.

Beyond climate policy, this represents part of a larger trend in the suppression of scientific information in the Trump administration. Similar efforts have been conducted at the CDC to remove publicly available public health information on HIV prevention and transgender health. This represents a broader political strategy of deliberately limiting the accessibility of evidence-based research to serve political dogma.

Removing climate change references from federal websites is a dangerous step backward at a time when the world is experiencing record-breaking ocean temperatures, intensifying wildfires, and rising sea levels. It is an attempt to silence science at a time when we need the most science. While local governments, private organizations, and independent researchers will continue to do their work in climate education, federal leadership cannot be replaced in making accurate, accessible information available to all.

This begs the very immediate question: how can we ask society to act if science is hidden? It won’t be stopped by temporarily obscuring the crisis with the Trump administration’s climate resource removals. Only a commitment to transparency, scientific integrity, and the public right to know equips us with what it will take in order to face this crisis head-on.