Trump On West Coast Fires: I Don’t Think Science Knows

United States President Donald Trump has blamed poor forest management for the wild fires currently ravaging through the West Coast, disregarding scientific facts and saying that it would “start getting cooler”.

Trump, who decided to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement, is facing blazes in California, Oregon and Washington state in the build up to November’s presidential election, in which Climate Change will be a massive talking point. However, with two million hectares of land burning up since early August and 36 people dying in the West Coast fires, Trump has been pressed on the issue and his responses have been concerning.

“It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch… I don’t think science knows actually,” Trump said, after a reporter issued a plea not to “ignore the science”, as reported by .

“I think this is more of a management situation,” Trump said, brushing off the fact that similar wildfires have occurred in the Amazon and Australia recently, which experts have attributed to climate change.

“They don’t have problems like this. They have very explosive trees, but they don’t have problems like this.”

Finally, Trump resorted to whataboutisms, asking what other industrial powerhouses around the world are doing to mitigate the devastating effects of climate change.

“When you get into climate change, well is India going to change its ways? And is China going to change its ways? And Russia? Is Russia going to change its ways?”

India, Russia and China are all signatories to the Paris Agreement, which committed 187 countries (previously 188 with the US) to keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels.

Former Vice President, and Democratic nominee for November’s election, Joe Biden, has referred to Trump as “a climate arsonist” and that his re-election would see “more of America ablaze”, .

Biden’s campaign is reaffirming its commitment to tackled climate change by expanding on his original plan for spending $1.7tn infrastructure and green jobs over 10 years to $2tn over four years. Trump, meanwhile has led his administration to rollback over 70 environmental regulations, many of which deal with climate change.

Originally published at https://essentialmillennial.com on September 15, 2020.