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President Trump has dismissed concerns about climate change in a visit to fire-ravaged California, telling an official it would “start to cool down.”
Fires in California, Oregon and Washington state have burned nearly 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of land and killed at least 35 people since early August.
Climate change skeptic Trump blames the crisis on poor forest management.
On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called Trump “a climate arsonist.”
He said at an event in Delaware that four more years of his opponent in the White House would see “more of America on fire.”
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- Is Trump Right About The Cause Of The Wildfires In America?
During his visit to the west coast of the United States, Trump repeated his argument that forest mismanagement was to blame when he met with California officials involved in the battle against wildfires at a stop near Sacramento, in the center of the state. .
Dismissing an official’s request not to “ignore the science” on climate change, Trump said: “It’s going to start to get cooler, just look … I don’t think science really knows.”
Climate change is at the center of politics
For at least one day, climate change is at the center of America’s presidential campaign. While touring fire-ravaged California, Donald Trump downplayed the role a warming planet could play in the devastation, suggesting that temperatures “will begin to cool down” and that recent conflagrations were a proper forest management problem.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden went on the attack, calling the president a “climate arson” who ignores a “core crisis” facing the nation.
Although the environment has typically been a secondary issue, receiving little attention even during the Democratic primary, the issue is one on which Trump and Biden are deeply divided. The Trump administration has repealed more than 70 environmental regulations, many of which deal with climate change, while also withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. Biden, on the other hand, has moved to the left on the environment in recent months, expanding his original plan to spend $ 1.7 trillion on infrastructure and green jobs over 10 years to $ 2 trillion in four years.
Despite Monday’s attention, the environment remains behind issues like health care and the economy for most Americans. Still, it’s an important issue for younger voters, a group that Biden, in particular, is eager to get to the polls in November.
What else did Trump say about the weather?
When asked by a reporter in California if climate change was a factor in the massive wildfires, Trump responded, “I think this is more of a management situation.”
He claimed that other countries had not faced the same level of wildfires, despite major conflagrations in Australia and the Amazon rainforest in recent years that experts attributed to climate change.
“They don’t have problems like this,” he said. “They have very explosive trees, but they don’t have problems like this.”
He added: “When you get into climate change, is India going to change its ways? And China is going to change its ways? And Russia? Is Russia going to change its ways?”
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What’s the latest on the ground?
Authorities in California, where 24 people have died since Aug. 15, report that firefighters are working to contain 29 major wildfires across the state.
They warned that strong southerly winds and low humidity forecast for Monday could bring an elevated fire risk and potentially have an impact on the North Complex Fire, which has burned 106,000 hectares and is only 26% contained.
The US National Weather Service also issued a “red flag warning” for other areas of the West Coast, including Jackson County, Oregon, where the Almeda Fire has destroyed hundreds of homes.
The Oregon Office of Emergency Management said Sunday that firefighters in the state were struggling to contain more than 30 active wildfires, the largest of which was more than 89 kilometers (55 miles) wide.
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At least 10 people died in Oregon last week. Authorities have said dozens of people are missing and warned that the death toll could rise.
One person died in Washington, where there were five major fires on Sunday.
What do politicians say?
Speaking in a meeting with Trump on Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged that “we have not done justice to our forest management,” but said that more than half of the land in California was under federal, not state control.
But he echoed his own statement on Friday that the fires showed that the debate on climate change was “over.”
“The hot spots are getting hotter, the dry ones are getting drier,” he said. “We present the science and the observed evidence is self-evident: that climate change is real and that is making it worse.”
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has said her state is facing “the perfect firestorm” and said the timing is “truly the benchmark for climate change on the West Coast.
“And this is a wake-up call to all of us that we have to do everything in our power to address climate change.”
Washington Governor Jay Inslee described the situation as “apocalyptic” and condemned Trump’s stance on the climate.
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Six of the 20 largest fires on record in California have occurred this year.
At an election campaign event in Nevada on Saturday, President Trump said he was praying for everyone on the West Coast affected by the wildfires.
But he insisted that the fires were “due to forest management”, which includes cutting down trees and clearing brush.
“They have never had anything like this,” he said. “Please remember the words, very simple, forest management.”
Trump has previously called climate change “mythical,” “non-existent,” or “an expensive hoax,” but has also described it as a “serious issue.”
It has decided to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord, which committed the US and 187 other countries to keeping global temperature rise this century well below 2 ° C (3.6 ° F). above pre-industrial levels.
What role does climate change play?
BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath says that while natural factors such as strong winds have helped the west coast fires spread, the underlying warming of the climate due to human activities is causing these conflagrations be bigger and more explosive.
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Nine of the world’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, and the UN warned this week that the five years from 2016 to this year will most likely be the hottest period on record so far. Both Oregon and California have warmed more than 1 ° C since 1900.
The sustained heat has caused six of the 20 largest fires on record in California to occur this year. In Oregon, the series of fires burned nearly twice the number of average annual losses in one week.
In California, a prolonged drought over the past decade has killed millions of trees, turning them into powerful fuel for fires. Mountainous regions that are typically colder and wetter have dried up more quickly in the summer, increasing the potential fuel load.
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