The Department of Environmental Protection of Florida has banned the phrases "global warming" and "climate change" from all of its communications, including emails and reports, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting announced.
Former DEP employees shared with FCIR that they were instructed to never use the phrases during their time.
"We were told not to use the terms 'climate change' and 'global warming' or 'sustainability'. That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel," Christopher Byrd, who was the Office of General Counsel attorney from 2008 to 2013, said.
Tiffany Cowie, the DEP's press secretary, disagreed with the report saying that they do not have a policy like this.
However, according Byrd's accounts, the unofficial policy was established after Governor Rick Scott took office in 2011 and had to appoint a new DEP director.
The ban on the phrases at the DEP were manifested in several ways, the FCIR wrote. One writer wanted to cite climate change in his series of fact sheets about coral reefs for Florida's Coral Reef Conservation Program, but said that he was specifically instructed "not to" by the employees.
Also, when numerous volunteers attended a Coral Reef Conservation Program in 2014 conducted to train volunteers to execute presentations on the state's coral health, two of them said that they were told not to use climate change when explaining about the threats that the coral reefs are experiencing.
In the 2014 National Climate Assessment, an imminent threat of increased inland flooding in the state is expected due to a climate change. The report has actually referred to the state as "uniquely vulnerable".