Obama set to utter term 'climate change' in Florida on Earth Day trip

• State made headlines for reported rule against using the phrase
• President says climate change ‘can no longer be denied – or ignored’
• Florida banned state workers from using term ‘climate change’ – report

@MartinPengelly, The Guardian
Last modified on Saturday 18 April 2015 12.56 EDT

Announcing an Earth Day trip to Florida on Saturday, President Barack Obama used his weekly address to say “climate change can no longer be denied – or ignored”.

Attitudes to climate change among Republicans and in Florida recently made national news, after it was reported that the state’s Department of Environmental Protection had issued an unwritten policy to forbid state workers from using the term.

“We were instructed by our regional administrator that we were no longer allowed to use the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ or even ‘sea-level rise’,” a former DEP employee was quoted as saying in a report by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. “Sea-level rise was to be referred to as ‘nuisance flooding’.”

The Florida DEP and the office of the Republican governor, Rick Scott, denied that such a policy existed.

(More here.)