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California, Oregon, Washington fires perpetuated by climate crisis

Photo:AP

 

California, Oregon, Washington fires perpetuated by climate crisis

 

By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | SEPTEMBER 15th 2020

 

United States presidential candidate Joe Biden, the current rival of President Donal Trump, has dubbed Trump a “climate arsonist” on Monday. This came following Trump’s response to the wildfire crisis, referring to it simply as fault of poor forestry management.

President Trump has been known for a long while now to be a denier of Climate Change, having referred to it as a “hoax” in 2017 after pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords. More recently, he’d denied the involvement of global warming in the case of the fires.

He rebutted an official on Monday in McClellan Park, California, who pleaded that he listen to the science. President Trump responded by stating that “I don’t think science knows, actually.” He later told Wade Crowfoot, the secretary of California's Natural Resources Agency, that “It'll start getting cooler. You just watch.”

Climate experts spoke with CNN, explaining that the rising of temperatures is causing extreme heats, leading to drier vegetation, and wilder fire behaviour. This is primarily perpetuated by human conduct. Crowfoot explained to President Trump the dangers of being ignorant of the science of climate change, about putting “our head in the sand and thinking that it's all about vegetation management.”

 

A law enforcement officer watches flames leap into the air as wildfires continued to spread near Oroville, California on September 9, 2020. Photo:AFP

 

Dozens of fires have raged across that states of Oregon, California and Washington since early August. 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) have been scorched since that time, destroying thousands of homes, and leading to the deaths of 36 people at the time of writing, with a still-rising death toll. Many people are still missing, and authorities are searching through charred rubble for bodies.

Videos have erupted on social media and news sites of the orange skies in California, where they’ve all taken on the fiery colour the terrible crisis. The resulting smoke, soot and ash created by the fires is blocking out the sun in some places, as well as adding to the still existing threat of the coronavirus pandemic – given that the virus is respiratory, any health issues created by, or exacerbated by the ash and smoke could lead to a higher lethality if contact is made with the virus.

Over the weekend, moister weather atmosphere, as well as cooler conditions and winds gave the state’s firefighters a leg up in the battle. They managed to outflank the blazes, but fire managers warned that the ordeal of flames is far from over.

“I think this is more of a management situation,” said President Trump, as further response to reporter inquiries to his opinions on the connections that the blazes had to climate change. Trump went on to assert that other countries “don’t have this problem,” failing to bring up the many fires in Australia, Siberia, or the Amazon.

“They have more explosive trees, meaning they catch fire much easier,” he said. “But they don’t have problems like this.”

Trump insisted that better forestry management would work as a short term solution, whereas climate change is a more difficult, long term problem that would require time and international cooperation. “When you get into climate change, well is India going to change its ways?” he asked, after landing in California. “And is China going to change its ways? And Russia? Is Russia going to change its ways?”

Former vice president and current presidential candidate Joe Biden has included climate change on his list of greatest crises threatening America. He referred to Trump as a “climate arsonist,” further stating “If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned by wildfires? How many suburban neighbourhoods will have been flooded out?”

California Governor Gavin Newsom, whom Trump primarily blamed for the fires, acknowledged the greater need for forestry protection, but still said that the main driving factor behind the fires is climate change nonetheless.

“We obviously feel very strongly the hots are getting hotter,” Newsom said. “The dries are getting drier. When we're having heat domes, the likes of which we've never seen in our history. We come from a perspective, humbly, where the science is in, and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real and that is exacerbating this.”

Oregon is deploying as many as 1,000 National Guard troops to assist in the areas and communities where the fires left many helpless and homeless. The number of people displaced from their homes, adjusting to life as evacuees, is thought to be somewhere in the tens of thousands. Shelters have been set up for the evacuees, but the numbers continue to grow by the day, as the fires rage on, and the problem remains unresolved.

 

By Patryk Krych | © The World Daily 2020

 

 

Categories:
Environment
Tags:
North AmericaCaliforniaOregonWashingtonWildfiresTrees and Forests