References to “Climate Change” Removed from FHWA Program

On December 17, 2017, the Washington Post reported that the Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) had removed references to “climate change” from the name of a program aimed at coping with the impacts of climate change. FHWA’s “Sustainable Transport and Climate Change” program was renamed the “Sustainable Transportation and Resilience” program. Several references to “climate change” were also removed from the program’s website, including an overview document titled “Building Climate Resilient Transportation.”

A Department of Transportation spokesperson told the Washington Post that the change occurred “after several weeks of internal discussions by FHWA’s Associate Administrator for Planning and Environment to more accurately reflect our agency’s emphasis on resilience activities (which constitutes a large portion of our portfolio of work).”