It’s a devastating and historic fire season. Scientists say the climate crisis is to blame.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said climate change and mismanagement of the nation’s forests are both to blame for the fires raging in her state and across the West Coast, during an interview on CBS Face the Nation.
Brown was responded to questions about a former Oregon lawmaker’s op-ed in the Washington Post, which alleges the state mismanaged forests and ignored warnings.
“It’s decades of mismanagement of our forests in this country and it is the failure to tackle climate change, we need to do both, and we can,” Brown said.
According to Brown, Oregon usually has about 500,000 acres burned in fires annually.
“This week alone, we burned over a million acres of beautiful Oregon,” said Brown.
This year, “we saw the perfect fire storm, we saw incredible winds, we saw very cold, hot temperatures and of course we have a landscape that has seen 30 years of drought,” Brown said. “This is truly the bellwether for climate change on the West Coast,” according to Brown.
What other leaders are saying: Both Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti have also attributed the intensity of this season’s fires to climate change. Meanwhile, President Trump at a weekend rally repeatedly said the fires are about “forest management,” a characterization he has repeatedly offered of such blazes that has been previously criticized as inaccurate.
