“I thought I’d find it funny watching this, but instead it’s just chilling: as the West Coast faces a climate catastrophe, the president laughs at them and denies the problem exists.”
Monday, September 14
President Donald Trump speaks during a briefing on wildfires with local and federal fire and emergency officials at Sacramento McClellan Airport in McClellan Park, California on September 14, 2020. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images) “It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch.”
That is what President Donald Trump said during a televised summit in California Monday afternoon focused on the catastrophic wildfires ripping through the state and other regions of the western United States.
Trump—a notorious denier of climate science and the global consensus that human activity and fossil fuel emissions are driving planetary heating—made the comment after being repeatedly pressed to acknowledge the manner in which extreme weather caused by global warming is a major factor in the wildfires that have burned millions of acres and claimed at least 33 lives in recent weeks.
Watch:
Watch this California official challenge Trump to recognize the changing climate — and the president deny science right to his face pic.twitter.com/5BcBrTv3dJ
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) September 14, 2020
The exchange during the event was between Wade Crowfoot, California’s Natural Resources Secretary, and the president.
“The [climate] science is going to be key,” Crowfoot told Trump. “Because if we ignore that science and kind of put our head in the sand and say that it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians.”
“It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch,” Trump said in response.
“I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot responded. And then Trump added, “I don’t think science knows, actually”—before quickly moving onto another person in the meeting.
Prior to the exchange with Crowfoot, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, also broached the climate connection with Trump.
Quite an interaction between President Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom just now. pic.twitter.com/b0k0KPQmcm
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 14, 2020
As Common Dreams and the Meteor reported earlier Monday, a new comprehensive study—which relied on an analysis of tens of millions of years of atmospheric records trapped in layers of the earth’s subsurface—found that the world is currently on track to hit a warming threshold it has not witnessed in more than 34 million years. Meanwhile, expert after expert has confirmed that the unprecedented wildfires raging across the west are exactly what climate scientists have been warning about for years.
After sharing the video of the exchange online, Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org who now runs Fossil Free Media, said: “I thought I’d find it funny watching this, but instead it’s just chilling: as the West Coast faces a climate catastrophe, the president laughs at them and denies the problem exists.”
This article published by Common Dreams on September 14, 2020, here…
