In The Shadows ...

Science Fiction

June 18, 2018. Day 5

Vladimir Lenin said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” No - 😂 – I’m not making the Trump/Russia connection here. I’m talking about how you go about changing a society’s views on everything from what is right and wrong to science. How is this done? Bit by bit. First, you start by deliberately refusing to acknowledge long-held facts as a matter of policy. Take science, for instance.

The What: A new report finds that in the first year of the Trump administration, U.S. government websites have been systematically altered to cut mentions of climate change. The report, published by the nonprofit Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), says that several government agencies—notably the EPA—have removed or reduced their web content about climate change. Since Trump's inauguration, the group has monitored thousands of government web pages for changes or deletions. In some instances, "climate change" is replaced with the vaguer words "sustainability" or "resiliency." In others, some climate change web pages are taken down entirely.

One of the more subtle changes I’ve seen is U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency striking the words “climate change” and associated verbiage from its strategic plan, on the heels of one of the most expensive years of natural disasters in modern U.S. history. The plan says that one of the agency’s major strategic goals is to “ready the nation for catastrophic disasters.” FEMA does not elaborate on the causes of “rising natural hazard risk,” which used to include human-caused climate change.

The Impact: Two recent studies found that the record rainfall from Hurricane Harvey — which cost roughly $125 billion — got a 15-percent boost thanks to climate change.

More importantly, Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, has proclaimed, “The science that we use is going to be transparent. It’s going to be reproducible.” Since “climate change” doesn’t meet his definition –

• FY 2019 budget and addendum, the Trump administration has proposed sweeping rollbacks to U.S. programs designed to study and mitigate the effects of climate change, as well as cuts to research on renewable energy.
• The EPA budget suggests eliminating the environmental agency's climate-change research program, which currently costs the agency $16 million per year. In addition, the EPA has proposed axing several voluntary emissions-reductions programs and STAR, which funds environmental research and graduate student fellowships.
• In a legal memo, the Trump EPA has dropped “once in, always in” (OIAI), policy that aimed to lock in reductions of hazardous air pollution from industrial sources. This action will actually increase exposure to hazardous air pollution—especially among vulnerable populations, who live near major industrial polluters. “They’re really going to be killing people,” said the former environmental justice head at EPA.

The list goes on… and on... while the Earth that we’re creating for our kids, grandkids, and generations beyond will suffer.

I’ll leave you with a final thought: “Lies are a cooperative act. Think about it. A lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.” ~ Pamela Meyer