Newsom assails climate change deniers
‘What we’re experiencing right here is coming to communities all across the United States of America unless we get our act together’
Historic wildfires continued to rage across California on Friday with nightmarish abandon, toppling all previous acreage records, clouding the skies with a dangerous smoky pall and prompting a rare outburst on climate change from Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Four smaller fires burning on the northern edge of Mendocino National Forest merged into the August Complex overnight, increasing its scope to nearly 750,000 acres — the biggest fire in California history by nearly 300,000 acres — and threatening communities from Lake Pillsbury to Covelo.
Visiting the fire lines in Oroville, where thick smoke hung like tule fog, the governor said that decades of inadequate climate policy — along with the flat-out refusal from some politicians and residents to accept scientific evidence — has pushed California into the mounting
tragedy it now faces.
“I’m exhausted that we have to continue to debate this,” Newsom said, in some of his strongest statements ever on the issue. “This is happening. It’s happening in unprecedented ways. Year in, year out. You can exhaust yourself with your ideological B.S. … but the reality here is the megafires that we’re experiencing come from these megadroughts that we’re experiencing.”
Already this year, wildfires have torn through about 3.1 million acres of California land — 26 times more than last year — and forced tens of thousands of residents to flee. Nine people have died in Butte County’s west zone of the North Complex Fire, bringing the state’s total wildfire death toll for the year to 19.
The smoke was so thick in Oroville that it obscured
the damage from the blaze. Burned, crumpled homes and melted cars became visible only upon driving right up to them, while the black skeletons of trees stood out sharply against the smoke.
Meanwhile in the Bay Area — where some residents only just returned to their homes after another set of blazes threatened the region a few weeks ago — unofficial air readings throughout the region
hovered in the purple “unhealthy” zone, the worst readings of the week in many places. A Spare the Air alert issued by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District remained in effect for the 25th consecutive day, a streak that has shattered the old record of 14, set during the Camp Fire in 2018.
As awful as the smoke is for residents, it has actually proved useful for firefighters battling the Mendocino flames, said Kimberly Kaschalk, spokesperson for the Great Basin Incident Management Team that took command of the August Complex’s southern portion starting Friday.
Over the weekend, crews will evaluate damage and form tighter control lines near natural firefighting barriers such as the Eel and Black Butte rivers. The Lake Pillsbury area northeast of Ukiah has emerged as a priority, Kaschalk said, along with campgrounds between the Eel and the fire’s edge.
“I know a lot of people hate the smoke, but it helps us, because it shields the ground from the direct rays of the sun,” Kaschalk said. “It helps bring the humidity up, and more moisture is better.”
By early next week, temperatures are expected to level off into the mid-70s while a gush of offshore wind blows off the smoke — providing a potential reprieve to both firefighters and smoke-choked Californians,
according to the National Weather Service.
But that’s not soon enough for anxious residents. Alicia Adams-Potts evacuated her Forbestown home Tuesday to stay with her elderly mother in Dobbins while she awaits word on her home. Her native Maidu-Nisenan family, which has lived in the area for 10 generations, attributes the worsening of the fires to a mismanagement of resources and lack of good land stewardship.
“It’s horrific,” AdamsPotts said.
For his part, Newsom acknowledged that the state could do more prescribed burns and forest management to reduce the drytimber fuel propelling these fires. Last month, he signed a major agreement with the U.S. Forest Service to thin 1 million acres of forests in California — more than double the current rate — by 2025. The state is also doing much to address climate change, with about 34% of its electricity currently originating from solar, wind and other renewable resources.
Although he did not specify who, exactly, he meant by climate deniers, Newsom at one point criticized the federal government for rolling back environmental protections. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, though, he has been scrupulous at not singling out the Trump administration, whose help the state needs, for blame.
“California, folks, is America fast forward,” Newsom said. “What we’re experiencing right here is coming to communities all across the United States of America unless we get our act together on climate change — unless we disabuse ourselves of all the B.S. being spewed by a very small group of people that have an ideological reason to advance the cause of a 19th-century framework.”