It will start getting cooler soon, says Trump in new climate-change row
DONALD TRUMP has sparked a new controversy over climate change by telling officials in fire-ravaged California: “It will start getting cooler soon.”
The President made the remark on a visit to the West Coast where wildfires have devastated almost two million hectares of land and killed 36 people since early August. Mr Trump, who has previously called climate change an “expensive hoax”, repeated his claim that poor forest management was to blame for the crisis as he met officials fighting the wildfires near Sacramento.
He dismissed a plea from the head of the state’s Natural Resources Agency to not “ignore the science” on climate change, telling him: “It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch... I don’t think science knows actually.”
Mr Trump also claimed other countries had not dealt with the same level of forest fires, despite the recent bushfires disaster in Australia that burned nearly 19 million hectares and 3,000 homes, pushing many species towards extinction, which many have blamed on climate change. “They don’t have problems like this,” he said. “They have very explosive trees, but they don’t have problems like this.” He added: “When you get into climate change, well is India going to change its ways? And is China going to change its ways? And Russia?”
Following the visit, Democrat Joe Biden, who is challenging Mr Trump in November’s election, renewed his attack on the President over his reluctance to take climate change seriously, tweeting: “You know what’s actually threatening our suburbs? Wildfires. Floods. Hurricanes. We need to act on climate. Now.” Mr Biden earlier denounced Mr Trump as a “climate arsonist”. Speaking at the meeting with
Mr Trump, California’s governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged that “we have not done justice on our forest management”. However he added: “The hots are getting hotter, the dries are getting drier. We submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident: that climate change is real.”