The term “climate change” is reportedly banned in Florida
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/09/the_term_climate_change_is_reportedly_banned_in_florida/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
As rising seas lap at its shore, Floridas come up with a fool-proof plan for dealing with climate change: an official policy of ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away.
For officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the agency ostensibly in charge in studying and preparing for the impacts of climate change, the term climate change itself, along with its counterpart global warming, is reportedly verboten. Thats according to a damning new report from the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, published this weekend in the Miami Herald.
The rationale sounds awfully familiar to Gov. Rick Im not a scientist Scott, who refused to acknowledge the reality of man-made climate change even after a group of Florida scientists sat him down and explained it to him. According to the report, in fact, the climate change ban went into effect after Scott took office in 2011. Neither of the men who served as DEP director during Scotts time in office would comment for the article; the departments press secretary, Tiffany Cowie, denied the existence of any such policy.
While there may not have been an official ban on the books, however, the reports sources say the spoken policy was widely communicated throughout the state they also say they were warned that, should they use the forbidden terms, it would bring unwanted attention to their projects. More tha just an annoyance, they claim it negatively affected their ability to do their jobs. We were dealing with the effects and economic impact of climate change, one anonymous source said, and yet we cant reference it. In one emblematic example, nature writer Jim Harper describes the Monty Python-esque experience of attempting to write a report on coral reef protection in 2013:
Just like Shrub and his EPA rules. Such a sad state of affairs.