The city of Boston continues to be a champion for climate change action with a new website sharing information from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Not long after President Donald Trump took office, the EPA began to remove data on climate change, including links to global warming research and data on emissions.
Now that information has a new digital home thanks to an effort by Boston and 12 other cities.
The site, called climatechangedata.boston.gov, is an official city website and a partnership with other cities across the country.
“The city of Boston wishes to acknowledge and attribute this information to the United States Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies for the decades of work that they have done to advance the fight against climate change,” the website reads.
“While this information may not be readily available on the agency’s webpage right now, here in Boston we know climate change is real and we will continue to take action to fight it.”
Chicago seems to have lead the way with the initiative, having launched the City of Chicago “Climate Change is Real” website on May 7.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel then called on other mayors across the country to follow his city’s lead, according to a release from Chicago city officials, as a way of “ensuring the public has ready access to information the EPA developed over decades of research.”
“It is inspiring to see mayors from across the country stand up for the environment through the preservation of climate information data deleted from the web by the Trump administration,” Emanuel said in a statement. “Making climate change research widely available underscores that facts cannot be disputed and science cannot be erased. I will continue to work with these Mayors and all those involved in the Climate Alliance to take action at the local level, including honoring the Paris Agreement.”
Mayor Walsh has also promised that Boston’s efforts to combat climate change will continue undeterred despite Trump’s move to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement.
Of Boston’s decision to create this new climate change website, Austin Blackmon, the city’s chief of Environment, Energy & Open Space also directly acknowledged the president’s anti-climate change actions.
“The President can’t hide from the facts by deleting climate science from federal websites,” he said in a statement. “By preserving important information about climate change and reaffirming our commitment to the Paris Agreement, Boston and other cities are stepping up and continuing the fight to solve this real, urgent problem.”
Along with Boston, the other cities that have posted the climate change data include Atlanta; Evanston, Illinois; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Houston; Milwaukee; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; Seattle; and St. Louis.
