Trump Didn't Set The Wildfires, But...

Another non-partisan Patagonia ad

Trump won support from just 31.6% of Californians, but that still came to 4,483,810 votes-- more than anywhere else but Texas (4,685,047) and Florida (4,617,886). Almost four and a half million Californians voted for him and, disproportionately, they're in parts of the state that are on fire. Also 1,221,747 Washingtonians and 782,403 Oregonians voted for him. But he's offering no help or solace to anyone on the West Coast and feels put upon but this over demonstration of Climate Change or, as he puts it, the "Chinese hoax."

One hard hit fire area is the Butte/Tehama/Glenn Lightning Complex, 3 counties that are as red as you can imagine. Trump won Butte with 48%, Glenn with 61.7% and Tehama gave him 65.5%. But because the West Coast's 74 electoral votes went to Hillary and will go to Biden... Trump doesn't care about anyone in California, Oregon or Washington. NPR reported over the weekend that annual catastrophic wildfires "are the latest signal that we shouldn't necessarily even be rebuilding or encouraging more development in places we know will burn. In the libertarian-leaning West, loose building codes and other factors have been attributed to an explosion in development in wild lands that are prone to fire. Yet therein lies one of the biggest and thorniest issues facing the West, and many other parts of the country in this era of climate change. Many people are living in high fire risk areas in California and Oregon in particular because it's the only place they can afford to."

Robert Reich's read on the wildfires is similar-- Trump doesn't care if wildfires destroy the west-- it didn't vote for him. He wrote that the air quality outside of his window is yellow, although it was orange the day before. And the Air Quality Index where he is is over 200-- and has been for several days. The EPA defines numbers that high as a "health alert" in which "everyone may experience more serious health effects if they are exposed for 24 hours." Today it will have been 96 hours. "The west is burning," he wrote. "Wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington are incinerating homes, killing scores of people, sickening many others, causing hundreds of thousands to evacuate, burning entire towns to the ground, consuming millions of acres, and blanketing the western third of the United States with thick, acrid and dangerous smoke. Yet the president has said and done almost nothing. A month ago, Trump wanted to protect lives in Oregon and California from 'rioters and looters.' He sent federal forces into the streets of Portland and threatened to send them to Oakland and Los Angeles. Today, Portland is in danger of being burned and Oakland and Los Angeles are under health alerts. Trump will visit California on Monday, but he has said little. One reason: these states voted against him in 2016 and he still bears a grudge. He came close to rejecting California’s request for emergency funding. 'He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn’t support him,' said former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor."

Another explanation for Trump’s silence is that the wildfires are tied to human-caused climate change, which Trump has done everything humanly possible to worsen.

Extreme weather disasters are rampaging across America. On Wednesday, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released its latest State of the Climate report, finding that just in August the US was hit by four billion-dollar calamities. In addition to wildfires, there were two enormous hurricanes and an extraordinary Midwest derecho.

These are inconvenient facts for a president who has spent much of his presidency dismantling every major climate and environmental policy he can lay his hands on.

Starting with his unilateral decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump has been the most anti-environmental president in history.

He has called climate change a “hoax.” He has claimed, with no evidence, that windmills cause cancer. He has weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide from power plants and from cars and trucks. He has rolled back rules governing clean air, water and toxic chemicals. He has opened more public land to oil and gas drilling.

He has targeted California in particular, revoking the state’s authority to set tougher car emission standards than those required by the federal government.

In all, the Trump administration has reversed, repealed, or otherwise rolled back nearly 70 environmental rules and regulations. More than 30 rollbacks are still in progress.

Trump may be a ring-leader couldn't do this alone. In California, Climate Change-denying conservatives are complicit. I asked some of the California candidates being opposed by conservatives why more isn't being done about Climate in a state that should be much tougher in protecting the people here.