Biden calls Trump a ‘climate arsonist’ as president denies science on wildfire tour – By Emily Holden and Daniel Strauss (The Guardian) / Sept 14 2020
- Democrat stresses climate crisis and pitches green investment
- Trump falsely claims climate science is still uncertain
The climate crisis and record wildfires in the western US forced their way into the presidential campaign on Monday, with Joe Biden calling Donald Trump a “climate arsonist” and Trump falsely claiming that the planet “will start getting cooler” and that the science is still uncertain.
The historic fires in California, Oregon and Washington have killed at least 35, forced tens of thousands to evacuate and subjected millions to some of the worst air pollution in the world – yet the subject has been slow to penetrate mainstream politics, amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a national reckoning on racial injustice.
In a speech in his home town, Wilmington, Delaware, on a hot afternoon on the heels of the hemisphere’s hottest summer yet, Biden emphasized the wildfires’ connection to the human-made climate crisis and pitched his plan to invest in green infrastructure in order to create jobs and stimulate an economic recovery from the pandemic.
“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires, how many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out, how many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?” Biden asked. “If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze … when more of America is under water?”
Continue to article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/14/biden-trump-wildfires-messages-campaign-trail-california
