President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden spoke about the wildfires ravaging the West. Biden says climate change has played a role in the severity of the fires. Trump remains skeptical.
WASHINGTON —As wildfires raging through the West force millions of voters to confront the consequences of a warming planet, the presidential race became intensely focused Monday on climate change — an issue that has been overshadowed through much of the campaign.
The realities of communities ablaze, mass evacuations and curtains of thick smoke settling over large, densely populated swaths of the Pacific coast pushed the rival candidates to detour from the battleground states and lay out starkly contrasting visions for reversing the cycle of worsening natural disaster.
Landing in California, where state officials say his unyielding efforts to undermine global action on climate have intensified the crisis, President Donald Trump continued to express skepticism about climate science.
In a briefing with state and federal officials, Gov. Gavin Newsom told Trump: “We feel very strongly the hots are getting hotter, the dries are getting drier.”
“Something has happened to the plumbing of the world, and we come from a perspective, humbly, that we assert that the science is in, and the observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real. Please respect the difference of opinion out here with respect to the fundamental issue of climate change,” he said.
The president said, “Absolutely.”
A few moments later, however, during a presentation by California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, Trump said: “It will start getting cooler, you just watch.”
When Crowfoot said that science disagreed, Trump shot back: “I don’t think science knows.”
The exchange came as Crowfoot emphasized the effect of warming by noting Death Valley has broken a world record with temperatures reaching 130 degrees. Trump raised his eyebrows and smiled, signaling he was impressed but not alarmed.
Just before Trump landed, Democratic nominee Joe Biden denounced Trump as a “climate arsonist” and laid out how different policies would be under a Biden administration.
“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?’” said Biden, delivering remarks in a meadow outside the natural history museum near his home in Wilmington, Del.
Biden pilloried the president for his response to the fires — which has included blaming the state for doing a poor job of raking leaves in forests and threatening to withhold desperately needed federal aid — and he took aim at Trump’s broader effort to scrap federal action to curb climate change.
He accused the president of trying to stoke racist fears among suburban voters about inclusive housing policies when, Biden said, it is natural disasters caused by climate change that pose the biggest threat to suburbs.
“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many more suburbs will burn from wildfires?” Biden said. The effects of the infernos could be felt even thousands of miles away in the mid-Atlantic region where Biden spoke, after the intense smoke drifted east in the jet stream, tinting the sky over Washington with haze.
“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.
