This is the most recent tweet from the EPA, dated January 19, 2017. Images: EPA
Following a rogue tweet asserting the reality of climate change via the Badlands National Park twitter and some leaked executive orders, Trump blasted the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Interior with a media blackout. While it’s partly been rescinded, it looks like he’s started building walls along Twitter borders too. And the scolding went way beyond agency leaders. EPA employees were ordered to steer clear of any social networking while the agency defined its relationship with the new boss. In short, the heavy hand of the law has told our environmental management agencies to shut the fuck up. Enter the age of the eco-communication breakdown. Scientists be wary. But in the war between the white-collar billionaires and the white lab coat scientists, who really loses?
Well, blue-collar federal workers lose first.
Department of Interior has roughly 70,000 employees from scientists and national park rangers, to office clerks and maintenance workers. They employ the U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers that are vital to curbing the surging wildlife trafficking black market that is undermining global security. But also the people who take the trash out at Yosemite. Whatever. Shut up. Don’t tweet.
The Environmental Protection Agency employs about 15,000 people. Yes, this includes scientists whose facts might be alternative to Trump’s. But also the hazardous material workers charged with cleaning up the toxic uranium mines left abandoned throughout the atomic Southwest. You can’t tweet in a hazmat suit anyway, so get back to work.
The Department of Agriculture employs over 100,000 people, and, luckily, it’s ban on communication has been partially rescinded, but their employees are still not able to use “news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content” to communicate with the public according to a Buzzfeed report. Who are these folks? Scientists, sure, but let’s also consider the food inspectors that all but eradicated the major food-borne epidemics of centuries past. Put your phone away. The Trump administration clearly has an issue with research indicating global warming is a phenomenon caused by humans. Some scientists employed by these agencies act on this research daily.
Collateral damage: 185,000 federal employees got their screen time taken away. Bummer.
As the global warming debate heats up between the rich and the researched, ordinary citizens lose, too. We lose the vital information that these agencies provide. We lose hazard alerts and travel advisories. Public service announcements. Food quality concerns. Critical wildlife reintroduction progress. Construction projects. Status unknown. These are our tax dollars at work, but you wouldn’t know it today. The feeds are freezed. Yet beyond blue-collar federal workers and safety concerns, there is a much more sinister side to the eco-communication breakdown. It is a full-scale attack on a specific way of life, a scientific worldview that is the foundation for many people’s identities. And who knows, your world view might be blacked out next.
It’s likely that these media blackouts will lift soon. But this is just the first skirmish in the war between the white collar and the white lab coat. In other words, two distinct ways of relating yourself to the environment. You may be on one side or the other. You may disagree with both. What’s important is that how and where we go outside and what we do when we’re there is now under a new kind of federal scrutiny. Beware of your feeds and the kinds of activity you post about, the kinds of outdoor lives you lead. Because, who knows, in the age of the eco-communication breakdown, white collar politics could drop the black curtain on you, too.
