Organic farmers and environmental groups sued the Agriculture Department on Monday over its scrubbing of references to climate change from its website.
The department had ordered staff to take down pages focused on climate change on Jan. 30, according to the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Within hours, it said, information started disappearing.
At the same time, the department also froze funding that had been promised to businesses and nonprofits through conservation and climate programs. The purge then “removed critical information about these programs from the public record, denying farmers access to resources they need to advocate for funds they are owed,” it said.
Peter Lehner, a lawyer for Earthjustice, said the pages being purged were crucial for farmers facing risks linked to climate change, including heat waves, droughts, floods, extreme weather and wildfires. The websites had contained information about how to mitigate dangers and adopt new agricultural techniques and strategies. Long-term weather data and trends are valuable in the agriculture industry for planning, research and business strategy.
“You can purge a website of the words climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change goes away,” Mr. Lehner said.
The plaintiffs allege the actions violated three federal laws and were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” They asked the court to compel the agency to restore the pages and to block it from deleting any others.
Wes Gillingham, president of the board of Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, said that farmers were just heading into planning for the summer growing season. He said taking information down because of a “political agenda about climate change” was senseless.
I am once again calling attention to the growing leopards obesity problem!
I don’t think these farmers voted for trump.
Organic may have. It gets people both on tge right and tge left, people who want more natural and less science/additives/pesticides, etc.
Often called woo woo stuff, it’s generally alternative to mainstream stuff, and can be harmless, or could be Goop, Alex Jones stuff, anti modernity etc.
Vegans and environmentalists can also sometimes take those feelings to extremes also, though we should never blame the whole movement on that.
An example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_Devi
Her motivations to turning to fascism looks to have been at least helped by her passion for animal rights, as lots of people in Europe still tortured cats at the time and she kinda hated people for it.
That biography was a trip. Whenever I think that Ian Fleming was just making stuff up, I’ll remember this…
A prime example of the fact that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Also this is why I pull all of my philosophy from slovenly Rednecks and openly crazed philosophers, if ya cant imagine them kicking down the door and lowdly entering the room with a plucked chicken then clearly theg care too much about the social order. Alternatively if they seem like theyd chuck a gallon of hemlock extract of spite to prove a point, that is also acceptable.
Maybe maybe not, remember, there are groups like “Gays for Trump” and “Latinos for Trump” that exist