Edits on EPA’s SmartWay Program website reduce emphasis on global warming

19 September 2017 (EDGI) –
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) changed language on the SmartWay
Program website, reducing mentions of carbon, greenhouse gasses, and climate change. Terms like “sustainability” and “emissions” replaced mentions of “carbon,”
and emphasis on international SmartWay and other climate efforts were reduced.

Description

The EPA’s SmartWay Program was established in 2004 to help companies advance supply
chain sustainability by measuring and benchmarking freight transportation efficiency. On
the SmartWay website, mentions of “greenhouse gasses”, “carbon”, and “climate change”
were removed in favor of more general terms not directly connected to climate change,
such as “sustainability”, “emissions”, and “air pollution.” These language changes occurred
at the same time as general information and statistics were updated. As part of a broader
trend on the SmartWay website of shifting emphasis away from international efforts,
mentions and description of the EPA’s work with the United Nations Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and links to the CCAC website were removed from particular pages.
The most notable changes to the EPA SmartWay website are summarized here:

Removed mentions of “carbon” and “greenhouse gasses” in favor of more general terms
a. Changed title of the “SmartWay Carbon Accounting and Reporting” webpage to “SmartWay Sustainability Accounting and Reporting” (Change 1.1a)
b. Removed section titled “The science is clear - greenhouse gas emissions from all sources must decrease” (Change 2.2d)
c. Removed terms like “carbon footprint”, “carbon emissions”, “carbon data”, and “greenhouse gasses” (Changes 1.1b-d, 2.1i, 2.2a, 2.2b)
d. Changed terms “carbon” and “greenhouse gasses” to “emissions” and “air pollutants” (Changes 1.1h, 2.2f, 3.1c)
e. Changed the word “carbon” to “sustainability” (Changes 1.1a, 1.1g, 1.1i, 1.1k, 1.1l)

Reduced emphasis on climate change
a. Changed phrase “pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change” with “pollution” (Change 2.2a)
b. Changed term “climate change” to “air pollution” (Change 2.2e)
c. Changed term “climate change” to “cleaner air” (Change 2.2g)
d. Changed phrase “counter climate change” to “protect the environment” (Change 4.2c)
e. Removed link to the EPA’s climate change website (Change 1.1m)

Reduced emphasis on international SmartWay efforts
a. Removed description and mentions of the EPA’s international work with the United Nations Environment Programme’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition (Changes 3.1a, 3.1b, 3.1d, 4.2d)
b. Changed phrase “Increasingly, U.S. consumer products are manufactured overseas” to “Increasingly, U.S. manufacturing relies upon multiple sources and modes of transportation” (Change 2.1f)
c. Removed section titled “SmartWay is an International Leader in Green Freight” in exchange for one titled “SmartWay Demonstrates American Leadership in Green Freight.” In addition to removed information about CCAC, the section used to include a bullet point about EPA’s “training curriculum to help other countries build sustainable transportation supply chain programs of their own” (Change 4.2d-e)

Significantly Altered EPA SmartWay Pages

Below is a list of EPA SmartWay pages and corresponding URLs that have been identified as
being significantly altered since 20 January 2017. The four pages analyzed in this report
were selected as representative examples of the type of language changes across the
website. The previous and current Internet Archive (IA) versions of the corresponding pages
are provided for reference. Not all of the more than 30 pages of the SmartWay website have been checked for significant alterations. [more]