Donald J. Trump took time to look up close at the damage fire has brought to California.
I am glad the president went to the fire-scarred ruins of Paradise, Calif.; I am glad Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom and Paradise Mayor Jody Jones were there to walk among the destruction with him.
I also am glad that the officials — from president to small-town mayor — are expressing hope that we’ll never see this kind of damage done again.
The hope, I fear, is futile. I fear for the worst, not necessarily in the communities already ravaged by the fire, but for others.
It boils down to two words … and they aren’t “forest management.” The two words are “climate change.”
The president keeps denying that the climate is changing. He calls it a “hoax.” He says it’s cooked up by China and that government’s efforts to undermine the U.S. fossil fuel industry.
I do not believe he is correct. I believe that climate change is delivering its wreckage in the form of these fires.
The management of the state forests should not be the concern of the president. The ongoing drought that continues to plague much of the Far West, the Mountain West, the High Plains and the Great Plains deserve the nation’s attention. By that I mean to infer the president’s attention.
These fires will continue to scorch the landscape likely for well past the foreseeable future. It might be too late at this juncture to curb them.
The president did the right thing today by touring the devastation brought by Mother Nature’s fire-borne fury. If only he would dial back his instinct to criticize his political foes and simply listen to the learned voices of those who keep warning us about the real dangers posed by Earth’s changing climate.
And heed their warnings that humankind contributes to it.
