Climate Change Pages Removed from State Department Website

On January 25, 2017, ThinkProgress reported that various pages mentioning climate change had been removed from the State Department website. The removed pages dealt with, among other things, the U.S. contribution to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, U.S. obligations under the Montreal Protocol, and the State Department’s Climate Action Report (with links to the 2010, 2014, and 2016 Reports removed).

Various references to “climate change” and associated terms were also removed from other State Department webpages. For example, the department’s “Office of Global Change” webpage was updated to remove references to “greenhouse gases.” The webpage of the “Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change” was also amended to remove a sentence indicating that it is “committed to combating climate change.” The page now states that the office is “responsible for developing, implementing, and overseeing U.S. international policy on climate change.”

Update: 

On February 27, 2018, members of the House of Representatives Safe Climate Caucus wrote to President Trump to protest the removal of climate change information from federal agency websites. The Caucus members expressed “concern” that the removals “fundamentally interfere with the American public’s ability to access reliable information” about climate change and thus may “violate the intent of the Federal Records Act.”

A State Department webpage explaining the objectives of, and U.S. obligations under, the Montreal Protocol has been live since February 11, 2019. Any mention of U.S. involvement in the U.N. Green Climate Fund was still absent from the website as of May 2021.