Trump, Biden facing off on wildfires, climate change

President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden are focusing presidential campaign on wildfire-scorched West Coast, with Trump meeting fire officials in California on Monday while Biden declares fires underscore an urgent need to dress climate change.

dueling events just seven weeks before Election Day mark a stark moment on campaign trail, where two candidates’ dramatically contrasting outlooks on climate change —and impact it has h on record-setting fires ravaging California, Oregon and Washington state —will be front-and-center.

Trump, who will be briefed during a stop near Sacramento before a campaign visit to Phoenix, has been mostly quiet as catastrophe on West Coast has unfolded over past few weeks. He tweeted appreciation of firefighters and emergency responders on Friday, first pubic comments he h me in weeks about fires that have killed at least 33, burned millions of acres and forced thousands from ir homes on West Coast.

When he has weighed in on fires, it has been mostly to blast Western Democratic leers, making claim that poor forest manment is to blame for fires that have created a hellscape in big swaths of West.

At his campaign rally in Neva Sunday, Trump contended anew that Democratic state leers are to blame for failing to rake leaves and clear de timber from forest floors. However, many of blazes have roared through coastal chaparral and grasslands, t forest.

As he was campaigning, he also offered condolences to those impacted.

“We are with m all way!” Trump tweeted, ting his ministration has approved ditional federal and or resources to fight fires.

disaster and new national attention on climate change could be creating ar difficult moment for a president facing multiple challenges, including coronavirus pandemic, joblessness and social unrest. Trump has repeatedly discounted impact of climate change, walked away from a major international climate agreement and proudly rolled back environmental regulations.

Biden, who is to give his climate speech in Delaware on Monday, released a $2 trillion plan in July to boost investment in clean energy and stop all climate-damaging emissions from U.S. power plants by 2035.

But as wildfires r, some climate activists have expressed frustration that Biden has t been more forceful on issue. He has t embraced, for instance, some of most progressive elements of Green New Deal.

Amid that disapproval from left, Biden over weekend offered his most pointed criticism connecting Trump’s climate change denialism to fires.

“ science is clear, and dely signs like se are unmistakable — climate change poses an imminent, existential threat to our way of life,” Biden said in a statement. “President Trump can try to deny that reality, but facts are undeniable. We absolutely must act w to avoid a future defined by an unending barr of trdies like one American families are enduring across West today.”

Biden’s running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, will return to her home state on Tuesday to meet with emergency service personnel to be briefed on state’s wildfires.

Trump often casts doubt on climate change.

In 2015, he stated bluntly: “I’m t a believer in global warming, I’m t a believer in man-me global warming.” After publication of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report concluded climate change would hurt ecomy, Trump said he re it but didn’t believe it. In September 2019, he falsely slammed Green New Deal as an effort that would le to “ more cows. more planes ... more people, right?”

Climate scientists say rising heat and worsening droughts in California consistent with climate change have expanded what h been state’s autumn wildfire season to year-round, sparking bigger, delier and more frequent fires.

All five of state’s largest fires in history have rd in past three years, as well as deliest fire, a 2018 blaze that killed 85 people when it swept through town of Parise on slopes of Sierra Neva.

An analysis out in August from Stanford climate and wildfire researcher Michael Goss and ors found that a nearly 2-degree (1 Celsius) rise in autumn temperatures and 30 percent drop in rainfall has more than doubled number of autumn days with extreme fire wear over past 40 years. Confronting worsening conditions of climate change, and still more dangerous conditions to come, has “critical relevance for ongoing efforts to man wildfire risks in California and or regions,” researchers wrote.

All five of state’s hottest days on record have struck since 2014, overlapping one of state’s worst droughts on record.