Trump spurns science on climate & wildfires, Biden blasts him as a ‘climate arsonist’

SACRAMENTO, California — With the smell of California wildfires in the air, President Donald Trump on Monday ignored the scientific consensus that climate change is playing a central role in historic West Coast infernos and renewed his unfounded claim that poor forest management is mostly to blame.

The fires are threatening to become another front in Trump’s reelection bid, which is already facing hurdles because of the coronavirus pandemic, joblessness and social unrest. His Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, in his own speech on Monday said the destruction and mounting death toll across California, Oregon and Washington require stronger presidential leadership and labeled Trump a “climate arsonist.”

Trump traveled to Northern California to be briefed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state and federal officials. At one point, state Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot urged the president to “recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests.”

“If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians,” Crowfoot added.

Trump responded, “It will start getting cooler, just you watch.”

Crowfoot politely pushed back that he wished the science agreed with the president. Trump countered, “I don’t think science knows, actually.”

That striking moment came on a day of dueling campaign events, with Trump and Biden dramatically contrasting their outlooks on climate change —and the impact it has had on the record-setting fires ravaging the West Coast.

"If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze? If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater?" Biden said in remarks he delivered in Wilmington, Delaware.

Referring to one of Trump's main arguments in his re-election campaign about the safety of suburbs, Biden said, "You know what is actually threatening our suburbs? Wildfires are burning the suburbs in the West, floods are wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest."

By Monday, more than 3.3 million acres had been burned in the Golden State this year -- more than 27 times more than in 2019, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Firefighters in the state have not seen anything like this season in more than a century, when the Great Fire of 1910 blazed through more than 3 million acres.

The wildfires also claimed the lives of 27 people last week, and officials remain concerned that this week's weather conditions will not bring a respite to the region.

Throughout his remarks, Biden sought to tie together the president's response to the coronavirus pandemic and climate change, criticizing Trump for "his disdain for science and facts."

"Once again, he fails the most basic duty to a nation. He fails to protect us from the pandemic, from an economic freefall, from racial unrest, from the ravages of climate change. It's clear that we're not safe and Donald Trump's America. This is Donald Trump's America. He's in charge," Biden said, co-opting a line often used by the Trump campaign against him.

Preempting Trump's California stop, Biden argued Trump has "no interest" in confronting the challenge of climate change, saying it's "another crisis he won't take responsibility for," a dig at the administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"As [Trump] flies to California today, we know he has no interest in meeting this moment. We know he won't listen to the experts or treat this disaster with the urgency it demands as any president should do during a national emergency," Biden said, adding, "The West is literally on fire, and he blames the people whose homes and communities are burning."

Biden cast the response to climate change as a choice between uniting to fight the problem or surrendering and ignoring it.

"We have a choice. We can invest in our infrastructure to make it stronger and more resilient, improving the health of Americans and creating millions of good paying jobs while at the same time tackling the root causes of climate change," Biden said. "Or we can continue down the path Donald Trump has us on -- a path of indifference, costing tens of billions of dollars to rebuild."

Biden expressed his support for those suffering from the effects of the fires, as well as the firefighters and first responders on the front lines of the emergency, while also blasting Trump for "deny[ing] ... reality" on climate change's role in the ongoing crisis.

"The science is clear, and deadly signs like these are unmistakable -- climate change poses an imminent, existential threat to our way of life. President Trump can try to deny that reality, but the facts are undeniable. We absolutely must act now to avoid a future defined by an unending barrage of tragedies like the one American families are enduring across the West today," Biden said.

Biden and Trump have offered vastly different visions when it comes to tackling the issue of climate change.

The former vice president has unveiled a sweeping proposal that calls for the United States to achieve a carbon-free power sector by 2035 and make a $2 trillion investment over his first four years in office in green energy and infrastructure to combat the threat of climate change.

Throughout his first term in office, Trump has rolled back a slate of Obama-era environmental regulations, including ones that placed emissions-standards on American-made cars and the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which would have limited carbon emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants, and withdrew the United States from the landmark Paris Climate Agreement.

Despite those rollbacks, Trump declared himself "a great environmentalist," during a speech in Florida last week, where he announced the extension of a 10-year moratorium on oil and gas drilling off the state's coast as well as the Georgia and South Carolina coasts.