“This project—a broadcast, a book, and a download—restores access to 1,964 climate change-related URLs that were removed from www.EPA.gov on April 28, 2017. The URLs point to web pages, documents, presentations, publications, and other files that were purged by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the direction of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and the Trump administration. Some of the assets had been accessible on the web since 1997.

The April 28 purge redirected hundreds of climate change URLs to one of three new pages: ‘This page is being updated,’ ‘Complying with President Trump’s Executive Order on Energy Independence,’ or the scrubbed ‘Energy Resources for State, Local, and Tribal Governments.’ But many document files (PDFs, PPTs, mp3s, docs) survived the purge and continued to live online, remaining hidden from public view without their corresponding links—until now. Steve, Harvey and Matt, broadcasts the entire collection of climate change URLs ten times each day—a randomized mix of restored access and empty gestures. The 734-page printed book contains EPA emails and spreadsheets that detail the purge, obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests” (Paul Soulellis, “Readme” on Github).

Many emails are repeated multiple times in the book, apparently because they were sent to several people and therefore saved several times. This shows how many people were involved. Attached to the mails are often screenshots, reports, lists of subpages, etc., documenting the changes made and the problems encountered. The team congratulates itself at the end for having made it, quoting Margaret Mead: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world.”

The email to Steve, Harvey, and Matt with the request to purge the EPA’s internet presence can be found several times in the book as well as on the back cover. This is where the title of the entire project comes from, as well as the subtitles of the book As discussed with Nancy, we would like the content at the links below removed and archived as soon as possible and the ZIP-download We appreciate your assistance in this time-sensitive matter.