‘Global warming’ and ‘sustainability’ among phrases allegedly barred
at state’s Department of Environmental Protection, investigative report
finds. Florida is threatened by climate change, according to the 2014 US
national climate assessment.
Officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the agency in charge
of setting conservation policy and enforcing environmental laws in the
state, issued directives in 2011 barring thousands of employees from
using the phrases “climate change” and “global warming”, according to a bombshell report by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR).
The report ties the alleged policy, which is described as
“unwritten”, to the election of Republican governor Rick Scott and his
appointment of a new department director that year. Scott, who was
re-elected last November, has declined to say whether he believes in
climate change caused by human activity.
“I’m not a scientist,” he said in one appearance last May.
Scott’s office did not comment on Sunday, when contacted by the Guardian. A spokesperson for the governor told the FCIR team: “There’s no policy on this.”
The FCIR report was based on statements by multiple named former
employees who worked in different DEP offices around Florida. The
instruction not to refer to “climate change” came from agency
supervisors as well as lawyers, according to the report.
“We were told not to use the terms ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’
or ‘sustainability’,” the report quotes Christopher Byrd, who was an
attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from
2008 to 2013, as saying. “That message was communicated to me and my
colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel.”
“We were instructed by our regional administrator that we were no
longer allowed to use the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ or
even ‘sea-level rise’,” said a second former DEP employee, Kristina
Trotta. “Sea-level rise was to be referred to as ‘nuisance flooding’.”
According to the employees’ accounts, the ban left damaging holes in
everything from educational material published by the agency to training
programs to annual reports on the environment that could be used to set
energy and business policy.
The 2014 national climate assessment for the US found
an “imminent threat of increased inland flooding” in Florida due to
climate change and called the state “uniquely vulnerable to sea level
rise”.
