Scientists formed EDGI to prevent Trump’s EPA from destroying climate data

After hearing the news that the then presidential election was appointed by Donald Trump Notorious Climate Change Denier In 2016 to lead the Environmental Protection Agency transition team, Nicholas Shapiro, an environmental anthropologist, sent an essential email to a dozen or so fellow scientists.

He was concerned that the EPA had burst from inside, led by Trump. Others on the email thread were concerned that important environmental data would be taken down from federal websites and destroyed. They could only see the brutal attacks on science in Canada – there were irreplaceable scientific records Dumped in the trash Under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper – and he feared something similar might happen in America. Shapiro therefore attempted an aggressive attack to bring his sister, an organizer for the Women’s March, and the researchers together.

“Does anyone know of any social scientists inside the EPA who might be able to document its resolution?” Shapiro, now an assistant professor at UCLA, wrote at the top of his note. “Looks like it could be a humble contribution to our craft – just a stopgap idea that came to mind.”

The effort spread by email eventually turned into a movement to save information about climate change from major environmental datasets and government websites. Shapiro and his colleagues succeeded in engaging with scientists within the EPA to document the agency’s change as an adversary in environmental efforts in the US. And in some cases, scientists were also able to reduce the damage.

The fearsome cadre of scientists is now a large-scale volunteer-based group called the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI). Despite Trump leaving office, his job is over, as he works to ensure that no other president can make excessive remakes of federal websites or destroy data in the future.

Data rescue

Sarah Willey, an associate professor at Northeastern University, responded to Shapiro’s email saying, “Trump wanted to tear the EPA into pieces.” “We start talking on the email thread that we can.”

Scientists expressed concern that if records began to disappear, it would be difficult to build on prior research or use it to contain pollutants. On top of that, the public will lose information that can keep them safe.

In a few weeks, he “Guerrilla collection“Events that made headlines for attracting hundreds of volunteers across America Canada Who helped identify and save environmental datasets. The EPA maintains records, for example, of the most hazardous substances at toxic Superfund sites that have been placed on the National Priority List for cleanliness. In each archiving program, volunteers identified key URLs and determined if they needed to be backed up manually or if they could be truncated by the nonprofit Internet Archive, which would store a history of website changes over time. is.

Effort dovetailed with a help Called the Term of Term Web Archive, which saves content on government websites before every president transitions and makes it publicly available through the Internet Archive. He also collaborated with researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, who are still Home data Which needs to be stored manually.

“It was really public outrage to say, this is public data,” Wiley says. “Federal Government: It was paid by taxpayer dollars. You don’t really have the right to remove or remove it.”

Beyond saving data, Willie worked to make it more accessible to people. During the past year, EDGI began collecting data on EPA’s enforcement actions to make it easier for communities to see where companies violate environmental law. Last year, he made Report Card Another big jump for the Congress districts – a median 98 percent increase – In violation of the American Clean Water Act in 55 districts.

Website guard

Soon after Trump moved into office, EDGI noticed changes to government websites that made it harder to obtain information about climate change and pollution. Science agencies overhauled their websites, took down pages and provided information below.

“You’re asking for a very hasty, fast-paced time,” Greto Gerke, one of Shapiro’s email recipients and now a program leader for EDGI, explains The Reporter Door As a laughingstock she remembers the early days of the group’s work to monitor government websites. A five-man team was put together to monitor tens of thousands of web pages. “We were all working all hours of the night. Everyone had full-time jobs, and we are working 40 hours a week. “

Image: EDGI

Before the group developed more sophisticated software, it started with a version that marked all kinds of changes to websites. In those early days, Gerke and his small team had the tedious task of seeing what was flagged to resolve what was really worthwhile. “It was like searching for a needle in a histac,” Gerke says. “Every difference appeared – that was, for too many pages, a date stamp change or somewhere to remove extra space.”

Typos and date stamps aside, Gerke’s team found changes and deletions that could have serious consequences. Official websites not only reflect the priorities of agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency; They are an important resource for the public to learn about issues such as air and water pollution that affect their lives.

Months under Trump’s presidency, the term “climate change” was already missing from government websites, EDGI found. It also found that webpages for major environmental regulations aimed at protecting Americans’ air and water were taken down months ago so that Trump’s administration also proposed to back it up. Gerke states that they could be revoked by undermining the ability of the public to understand the rules and before participating in a period of public comment.

When the National Park Service reported plans from its website about how individual parks would react to climate change, the Gehrke group sounded alarmed a report Upon removal. Following that report, NPS said it had temporarily taken the information down to make more Accessible For people with disabilities – saying In a statement to EDGI at that time, this information will be returned.

Story for science

As Trump attacked the EPA on its election campaign trail, Chris Sellers, a professor of environmental history at Stony Brook University, felt there was another important source of information that was at risk: the people who actually made science agencies tick Had given. Months before he was elected, Trump called the EPA “the”.Laugh at the world“And that agency has been proposed funding cuts that were sure to lead to staff cuts.

Ultimately, during the first two years of Trump’s presidency, more than 1,600 federal scientists relinquished their positions, The washington post Reported In January 2020. “Many people of federal bureaucratic expertise have fled in panic,” explained Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for the Federation of Climate Change Law at the Columbia Bureau. The Reporter Door Last year.

Confidently began interviewing staff at the EPA and OSHA, hoping to store the wealth of knowledge of cellars and others who held those in EDGI. As of June 2017, EDGI published a report Compilation of 60 confidential interviews. Morale among agency employees “fell,” the report showed. His work was “paralyzed”.

A few months later, EDGI published an interview Along with Mustafa Ali, who led efforts to address environmental racism at the EPA following his high-profile Exit agency. Asked which programs and projects the agency was concerned about, Ali replied: “I am worried about all of them … there are not a lot of places in the agency, which I think this new administration Has not really kept ahead of hard times. “

Now, with a new president in power, more people talking to EDGI are ready to come forward with their stories. Since December, EDGI has slowly released the first anonymous personal interviews on a new website, apeoplesepa.org – Now with names associated with stories. The interviews are not merely an indictment of the Trump administration’s attack on science; They also create a library of lessons learned about how to serve people and the planet.

“At a time when you feel that many of these institutions are being trampled only on Willie Neely, so that something can be done towards removing all those losses. [has] It has been a really gratifying experience, ”says the seller. “It really helped me survive the Trump years.”

---

Some people were scared because of the initial apprehensions of EDGI scientists. By the end of Trump’s term, the use of the term “climate change” fell to about 40 percent for US federal environmental agencies. And access to 20 percent of the EPA’s website was removed, According to EDGI. Trump’s administration withdrew more than 100 environmental regulations. And science agencies actually faced a brain drain. But EDGI celebrated some victories in Trump’s administration, and his job is no longer that someone else is in office.

In total, EDGI and its partners managed to store more than 200 terabytes of data and content from government websites between fall 2016 and spring 2017. The effort was so publicized that EDGI members feel they have actually shut down the trying Trump administration. To delete data. The datasets he cared about the most to save remained on federal websites.

They are still trying to protect that data for posterity. They do not want data to fall prey to future administration. An approach they are looking at is the so-called “Distributed web“It’s still a developing concept, but the idea would be to backup the data on a peer-to-peer network so that no one can control it.” There are too many copies [of the data] Willy says that it can never be magically destroyed.

EDGI is also pushing for policies that provide high standards for web governance. Information should be stored on government websites and can be easily accessible Report good Released in February. This means that even if a web page is taken, its address should go to an archived version of the page – not the “Page Not Found Found” notification. If knowledge is power, they want to ensure that people always have access to it.