Climate The State Department Rewrote Its Climate Change Page The changes reflect a major shift in US climate change policy under the administration of President Donald Trump and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

Within a day of Rex Tillerson's swearing in as secretary of state, the State Department's climate change website began to change. The changes signal a shift away from leading international climate actions that the Obama administration pursued and a pivot toward a more passive role. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative tracked the changes to the Office of Global Change web page and shared them with Climate Central. They are the first changes to the State Department site documented by EDGI after Tillerson took over on Feb. 1, according to Toly Rinberg, a researcher who helps coordinate EDGI's Website Tracking Team. Nearly the entire description of the office was changed. Deleted from the text was: "The United States is taking a leading role by advancing an ever-expanding suite of measures at home and abroad." Also stricken were references to mitigation efforts and other mentions of leading on climate change. In its place is more generic language, solely referencing that the office represents the US at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other international forums. It does use the word "lead" once, but only saying the office leads the US government in participating with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The new language does note foreign assistance for clean energy and adaptation. The addition of adaptation language mirrors changes to the Environmental Protection Agency's website.

Other changes to the page that occurred prior to Tillerson's swearing in include paring down the sidebar menu that had links to reports and statements about climate change that included how the US was addressing its international climate commitments. On their own, they are small changes and are to be expected with any new administration. But they didn't happen in a vacuum and taken with other actions, they offer insights into America's climate change strategy abroad. The G20 finance ministers recently axed climate finance from a communique under US pressure, a move that business leaders promptly decried. That stands in contrast to the 2016 communique, when G20 finance ministers lauded the Paris Agreement and pledged to provide assistance to developing countries for clean energy and adaptation projects through mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund, which aims to raise $100 billion by 2020.