Climate clash hits 2020 race as California burns
Joe Biden linked the blazes to climate change, while
President Donald Trump dismissed the science that shows rising global
temperatures make natural disasters worse.
By CAITLIN
OPRYSKO, KELSEY TAMBORRINO and CARLA MARINUCCI
09/14/2020
07:08 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/14/biden-trump-california-fires-climate-change-414753
SACRAMENTO,
Calif. — President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, on Monday
offered a striking split screen on the role of climate change in raging
wildfires on the West Coast, with each staking out dramatically different
positions on what has caused the blazes that have consumed vast amounts of acreage
in California in recent weeks.
In dueling
events, Biden linked the blazes — as well as deadly heat waves and a recent
string of hurricanes and disastrous flooding elsewhere — to climate change,
while Trump dismissed the established science that shows global temperatures
will continue to climb because of rising greenhouse gases from the use of
fossil fuels.
The
president, in California for a briefing on the fires, sparred with the state’s
natural resources chief over his denial of the role that rising temperatures
have played in the worsening fire season, with the secretary at one point
responding to the president: “I don’t think the science agrees with you.”
While Biden
and Trump’s divergent attitudes toward climate change were already well
established, their comments on Monday only stood to underscore their
differences on an issue that has put lives at stake.
The
showdown came as historic wildfires have displaced tens of thousands of
residents up and down the West Coast, tinged the sky a red-orange hue and
created some of the world’s worst air quality in parts of California. At least
35 people are dead across California, Oregon and Washington, and more than 3
million acres of land have been scorched.
In remarks
from Wilmington, Del., the former vice president pitched himself as the only
choice to combat climate change shortly ahead of Trump’s first visit to view
the damage in California from the fires that have been raging for weeks.
“If you
give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be
surprised if we have more America ablaze?” Biden said. “If you give a climate
denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when
more of America is underwater?”
Trump faced
a more direct confrontation at his event here in California’s capital, from
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Wade Crowfoot, the head of the state’s Natural Resources
Agency.
“I think we
want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it
means for our forests and actually work together with that science,” Crowfoot
told the president at the wildfire briefing, which featured local and federal
officials involved in combating the fires. Crowfoot emphasized to the president
that “science is going to be key.”
While he
applauded Trump’s focus on forest management as a method of controlling and
fighting wildfires, Crowfoot warned Trump not to “ignore” the science of
climate change, arguing that it would be misguided to “sort of put our heads in
the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management,” a course of action he
said would not ultimately protect Californians.
Trump,
however, pushed back on Crowfoot’s assessment, telling the secretary that “it’ll
start getting cooler, just watch.”
“I don’t
think the science agrees with you,” Crowfoot responded, to which Trump
countered: “I don’t think science knows, actually.”
After the
briefing, Crawfoot fired back at the president on Twitter, posting a graph of
California’s average temperature from June to September, with a trendline
showing that figure steadily increasing over the last four decades.
“It
actually won’t get cooler Mr. President. #ClimateChangeIsReal,” Crowfoot wrote.
Newsom, a
Democrat with whom Trump has had a hot-and-cold relationship, also challenged
the president on his views, even as he acknowledged that Trump was unlikely to
change them.
“I’d be
negligent, and this is not — we’ve known each other too long and as you
suggest, the working relationship, I value,” he told the president. “We
obviously feel very strongly that the hots are getting hotter, the dries are getting
drier.”
“Something’s
happened to the plumbing of the world and we come from a perspective, humbly,
where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident, that
climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this,” he continued, urging
Trump to “please respect the difference of opinion out here with respect to this
fundamental issue of climate change.”
“Absolutely,”
the president responded.
Climate
change is playing a role in the severity of the fires, which are expected to
increase in frequency in future years. The U.S. endured its fourth-hottest
summer ever recorded amid an abnormally dry season, according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That helped create the volatile
conditions on the heels of the nation’s sixth-warmest winter, as lightning
strikes ignited West Coast blazes even before official wildfire season began.
“Donald
Trump’s climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and
record hurricanes, but if he gets a second term these hellish events will
continue to become more common, more devastating and more deadly,” Biden said
on Monday.
Biden laid
out the consequences of climate change along the nation’s coasts and in
suburbs, pointing to the health concerns stemming from wildfires and other
natural disasters that disproportionately affect communities of color, as well
as the massive costs to the economy and the national security threats posed by
sea-level rise.
“With every
bout of nature’s fury, caused by our own inaction on climate change, more
Americans see and feel the devastation, whether they’re in big cities, small
towns, on coastlines or farm lands,” Biden said. “It’s happening everywhere and
it’s happening now, and it affects us all.”
Biden also
took aim at Trump’s central campaign theme on law and order, using the same
phrasing he has employed when criticizing Trump’s response to the protests that
swept across the country to attack him on his lack of action on climate change.
“It’s clear
that we’re not safe in Donald Trump’s America,” Biden said. “This is Donald
Trump’s America. He’s in charge.”
Trump has
also warned that immigration is threatening U.S. suburbs, an assertion that
Biden called “ridiculous” in his remarks.
“You know
what is actually threatening our suburbs?” he said “Wildfires are burning the
suburbs of the West. Floods are wiping out suburban neighbors in the Midwest.
Hurricanes are imperiling suburban life along our coast. If we have four more
years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned by wildfires?
How many suburban neighborhoods will be flooded out? How many suburbs will have
been blown away by superstorms?”
Biden
positioned Trump’s policies and actions as “backward-looking politics” that
will stand to harm the environment, make communities less healthy and hold back
economic progress.
“It’s a
mindset that doesn’t have any faith in the capacity of the American people to
compete, to innovate and to win,” Biden said, pointing instead to his own
climate plan, which calls for making buildings more energy-efficient, boosting
clean-energy jobs and expanding electric transportation.
“We have to
act as a nation,” Biden said. “It shouldn’t be so bad that millions of
Americans live in the shadow of an orange sky and are left asking, ‘Is Doomsday
here?’”
Trump met
with local and federal personnel and attended the wildfire briefing during a trip
to McClellan Park near Sacramento, after facing criticism that he has ignored
the Western wildfires for weeks.
He
forcefully pushed back on that criticism prior to the briefing, appearing
annoyed when asked what he says to critics who said he was too slow to respond,
calling it a “nasty question.”
“I said it
immediately, let me just tell you,’’ Trump said. “I got a call from the
governor immediately when the fires began, I called him, and on that call I
declared it an emergency,’’ he told reporters on the tarmac upon landing in
Sacramento. “That was immediate. So don’t tell me about not doing it, because
that was immediate. … That included FEMA coming here, and everything else, so
that’s a nasty question.”
Trump has
previously denied and downplayed the existence of climate change, and recently
reprised attacks on California, accusing the state of causing the wildfires by
not taking care of its forests. While forest management plays a role — decades
of stomping out flames has allowed fuel to build up, creating kindling —
scientists say the drier, hotter conditions and shifting precipitation patterns
brought by climate change are a primary factor for recent wildfires.
At campaign
rallies over the weekend in Nevada, Trump criticized California’s fire
management practices and attacked what he called the state’s “extreme agenda.”
“Please
remember the words, very simple: forest management,” he said of the wildfires.
Trump has previously accused the state of failing to “clean” or rake its forests.
Newsom has
meanwhile emphasized that the fires are the direct result of climate change and
pledged to “fast-track” the state’s climate policies in response to the fires.
Asked on
Monday specifically whether climate change had a role in the current wildfires,
as Newsom has repeatedly argued, Trump disagreed.
“This is
more of a management situation,’’ he said. “You look at other countries,
Austria, Finland, they’re forest nations and they don’t have problems. They
manage their forest and they’ve been doing it brilliantly for many years and it
should happen here. The state has to really do that, that includes the state of
Washington and Oregon.”
Trump
repeatedly cited “explosive trees,’’ as a problem in California, “meaning they
catch fire much easier,’’ and can be the start of huge wildfires even with a
dropped cigarette.
He
downplayed disagreements with Newsom on climate change.
“He does
agree with forest management. When I started talking about it years ago, nobody
agreed with me,’’ Trump said, adding that “you can do it beautifully.’’
Miles
Taylor, the chief of staff to former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen
Nielsen, has said Trump wanted to shut off emergency relief for California amid
the state’s 2019 wildfires because it was a blue state.
Biden’s
running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, is also expected to travel to her home state
of California on Monday. She will meet with emergency service personnel on
Tuesday for an assessment of the wildfires, according to the Biden campaign.
Carla
Marinucci reported from Sacramento, Calif., and Kelsey Tamborrino and Caitlin
Oprysko from Washington. Gabby Orr contributed to this report from Sacramento,
and Zack Colman from Washington.
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