Taking Down Climate Signs Won’t Stop the Heat

As dangerous heat grips communities across the country, the Trump administration is trying to take climate science down from the walls of our national parks.

Families are being warned to stay indoors. Outdoor workers are being put at risk. Older adults, children, unhoused people, and people who cannot afford air conditioning are facing life-threatening conditions.

And while climate change makes extreme heat more dangerous, the administration is fighting to remove or alter national park signs and exhibits that tell the truth about the crisis unfolding around us.

According to recent reporting, those efforts are part of a broader push to censor national park materials about climate change, slavery, Indigenous history, immigration, racism, and other essential parts of the American story.

That is not public service. It is political censorship.

Taking down signs about climate change will not stop climate change. It will not cool overheated cities. It will not protect park visitors from wildfire smoke. It will not restore drying rivers, save forests from drought, or stop rising seas from threatening coastal parks.

It will only make it harder for the public to understand the crisis unfolding around us and in turn, make it harder to address the cause.

Our national parks belong to the people. They are not campaign props for any president. They are not propaganda boards for any political movement. They are places where visitors should be able to learn honestly about the land, the climate, the species that depend on these ecosystems, and the history that shaped them.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the National Park Service have a responsibility to protect the truth, not erase it. Park staff should be allowed — and directed — to share accurate, science-based information with the public, including the reality that human-caused climate change is already affecting national parks and the people who visit them.

Tell Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the National Park Service to stop censoring signs and tell the truth about the effects of climate change.

The petition to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the National Park Service reads: Taking down climate signs will not stop dangerous heat, wildfires, drought, flooding, or rising seas. Restore accurate climate change signage, exhibits, and interpretive materials in our national parks, stop politically censoring science and history, and protect the public’s right to learn the truth about the climate crisis.