Brown swings back at Trump: Climate change is propelling California’s fires, governor says
BY ADAM ASHTON
AASHTON@SACBEE.COM
November 11, 2018 06:33 PM
Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday said wildfires like the ones spanning the state today threaten “our whole way of life” and lend urgency to efforts that would slow the impacts of man-made climate change.
“This is not the new normal,” he said, employing a phrase that state leaders have used to describe the past two deadly, prolonged California fire seasons. “This is the new abnormal, and this new abnormal will continue certainly in the next 10 to 15 years.”
He spoke a day after President Donald Trump wrote a message on Twitter that seemed to blame California government for the 2017 and 2018 wildfires that wiped out parts of Santa Rosa, Redding and now Paradise.
“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” Trump wrote.
Brown earlier Sunday asked the Trump administration to make a major disaster declaration, which would free up federal resources for emergency relief.
Brown said at a press conference that forest management alone would not spare California from the kind of expansive, deadly fires that are unfolding today. He connected the fires to man-made climate change, which is expected to yieldlonger droughts and extreme weather conditions in California.
Brown did not say the president’s name but twice alluded to the text of Trump’s tweet.
“We have a real challenge here threatening our whole way of life,” he said. “We’re going to have to invest more and more in adaptation. It’s not millions. It’s billions and tens and probably hundreds of billions (of dollars).”
The outgoing governor has made climate change a signature issues for his second run leading the state. In September, he announced a plan to develop a state government satellite that would track weather patterns and gather data on climate change.
