As wildfires sweep the west, hazardous air conditions stretch far
beyond the flames making air quality in Seattle, Portland
San Francisco and Los Angeles some of the world's worst. Wildfires are
scorching the West Coast, leaving behind a path of death
and destruction. Smoke from dozens of major fires
has drifted all the way across the country.
So many are wondering: When will it end? It's just a devastating situation.
Devastating for California and the other West Coast states,
but will it also prove harmful to Donald Trump's campaign for re-election?
Climate change has taken something of a back seat in the campaign so far this
year; Hardly surprising, when you have your
economy shut down by a global pandemic, there are mass protests and riots
against police racism, not to mention the worst jobless claims
figures ever reported. But with the skies over
San Francisco turning an eerie orange and many Californians sealing themselves
into their houses as the air outside became unbreathable with smoke,
climate change has made a comeback. Here's what happened
when Donald Trump, who went to California to see the devastation first-hand,
was challenged to accept the role of climate change in intensifying the fires.
Reporter: If we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it's
all about vegetation management we're not going to succeed together
protecting californians. Trump: okay it'll start getting cooler, you just
watch. Reporter: I wish science agreed with you. Trump: Oh well,
I don't think science knows actually. With Trump on the back foot, his opponent
Joe Biden was keen to capitalise. Biden: If we have four more
years of trump's climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in
wildfires? How many suburban neighbourhoods will
have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown
away in super storms? 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? So, with climate change at the top of the US national news agenda,
could this prove a pivotal moment in the election campaign?
I asked the BBC North America correspondent Anthony
Zurcher. It has been getting fairly significant coverage here in the United
States. The wildfires are so devastating, and so
unusual in their size, I believe we've had 3.2 million acres
of wildfires in California alone since the start of 2020.
That is an area roughly the size of the state of Connecticut.
So it has become a national story and has gotten the attention
not only the national media here but of national politicians as well.
And extraordinary images of San Francisco with this livid red kind of
otherworldly red sky so much so the images and the
kind of the scale of the destruction has been enough
to call forth quite strong responses from the two presidential candidates.
Let's talk about Biden first, what has he been saying? Well,
Joe Biden's directly attributing these forest fires to
climate change, that it is creating an environment
where these kind of fires can spread much more quickly
and can be much more devastating, and he's drawing a line between
these forest fires but also hurricanes that hit the US Gulf Coast and the US
East Coast, deadly storms that have hit the middle of the country,
flooding, so this is all part he says of a much larger problem of climate change
that is going to have to be addressed on a global scale. I mean he had some of
his sharpest attacks on Donald Trump that we've seen during this campaign.
He called Donald Trump a 'climate arsonist'
and said that if you elect a climate arsonist for another four years in
office don't be surprised if more US suburbs
go up in flames and don't be surprised if you see more massive flooding and
more hurricanes hitting the coast so, you know, Donald Trump has campaigned on
law and order and positioning him as a defender of the suburbs
and a defender of the safety of americans, well Joe Biden in that speech
kind of flipped it on its head and said it's Donald Trump
because of his climate policies that are endangering Americans where
they live. And Trump engaged very directly in this
didn't he, he flew into California didn't he, to see the damage for himself and give
his perspective on what's been happening? He did, he flew in on Monday and met with
Governor Gavin Newsom of California who is a very vocal proponent of
man-made climate change being the cause of these
fires. During their meetings, Donald Trump once again
downplayed climate as a factor. He said the climate would eventually get
cooler again, and that's in keeping what Donald Trump has said in the past,
he offers a kind of a smorgasbord of explanations for
climate change: He's called it a 'hoax' perpetrated by China before he was
elected president, at other times he says well the climate
is changing, but it's not man-made, or he said that he is taking
steps to address it, even though he pulled the United States out of the Paris
Climate Accord, so it's like Donald Trump is with a lot of
controversial policies, you can kind of pick and choose what he says
at various times depending on what you want to believe he believes
but in this case he very directly said that he thinks
that things are going to get cooler, essentially like the coronavirus that
it's going to get better on its own. You know, what we're seeing
here is quite a major kind of cleavage line, if you like,
between the two candidates aren't we? Yeah it is one of the more divisive
issues, where you have Donald Trump taking steps to roll back
regulations by the federal government that attempt
to address greenhouse gases in the environment,
talking about increasing the use of coal as a source of energy, so you have him on
one hand doing this, and then you have Joe Biden on the other,
he's actually moved farther and farther to the left in favour of
a massive government program to address climate change that is in the trillions
of dollars, so there are very two distinct directions
the US could go in the next four years, depending on
who wins the presidential race. That was our North America correspondent Anthony
Zurcher here on Business Daily on the BBC World
Service. So what does the Republican camp make of
all this? Do they feel vulnerable on the issue of
climate change, and what even is their candidate Donald Trump's true
opinion about global warming? David Banks used to advise President Trump on energy
policy and climate change and before that
he advised President George W Bush. There's no question that he's a skeptic,
I mean no question. He's been very public about it, and he's been very public about it
for a long time. Having said that, he's not an
ideologue. There are conservatives in the United
States who are who are ideologically opposed to
doing anything on climate; the president's not there. Again, he's
skeptical of the science, he's also very much an
opponent of what he would consider to be an
unfair burden for the United States or some
huge regulatory cost to the American economy.
Having said that, again, you know, I think that if you were to look at a second
term now a lot of this I think is staff-driven.
The president on his own, I would be really surprised if he
changed his mind about US participation in the Paris agreement during a second
term, but I think if you had the right staff
perhaps within the administration and especially, you know, if they brought
in, you know, some of the trade elements that
are emerging as part of the broader climate
mitigation agenda and, you know, you're hearing this in Europe now
with what the EU is talking about doing. You know, I think that
there is that possibility - - Just to be clear, Dave, what kind of things are you
talking about in terms of the EU? The border carbon adjustment
conversation. So this is the idea, you're talking about the idea that if the EU
raises its kind of game, cuts carbon aggressively, it's saying we might impose
a sort of carbon tariff on imports from countries which are
more carbon intensive, I think that'd be a fair summary wouldn't it?
Precisely. Now let me say one quick thing about the
kind of the messaging right now. The president is very good about
coming up with very short sound bites that he repeats over and over and over
again as part of a campaign message, just simply because that's what
you know, that's what the average person sort of picks up on and remembers
and I think right now what the president is doing is contrasting his position
with Vice-President Biden, and so I think that
even if the president were open to a more nuanced position
I don't think he would communicate that, just simply because it's hard to do so.
But isn't there a danger, because I mean there was some polling by Pugh
in February I think it was, that suggested that something about
two-thirds of Americans believed in anthropogenic man-made
climate change and not only that, thought it should be a high priority
for American policy and something that should concern the president
and the congress, so this was quite a strong
finding in this big poll that was done that suggests that there is a danger if
you take that more skeptical position that position that says you know this is
not something that we should prioritise in terms of action
that you could alienate, you know, a significant section of the
electorate. Do you think there's a danger there, do you think climate's a salient
issue that's going to alienate voters from
President Trump? So, I will say this: So I agree,
I agree with you in the assessment that the majority of Americans
believe that we, humans, are having a major impact on the climate.
There's no question that younger voters, even, you know, conservative-leaning,
republican-leaning voters, accept the science and there's very
little doubt that the position of climate skepticism
hurts the candidate, and not only with younger
voters but with independents as well, but let's let's look at the context here.
There's no question that the vast majority of Americans
right now, you know, their main priority is the economy,
Covid, you know, and how we're going to move forward with the recovery and
you know, getting past the virus. But isn't there a danger I suppose that what,
you know, and this goes across issues not just with climate, that Trump's emphasis
is and has been throughout his presidency
has been on, you know, speaking to his base, building his base,
you know, enacting policy consistent with his promises to his base,
but his base, you know, is not a majority of American voters and the danger would
be that he's sort of doubling down there and not making enough effort perhaps to
reach out to a wider electorate? I mean would you see that as a danger?
If I were advising the president today, you know, I think I would probably be
pushing this more nuanced position, but having said that i'm not quite sure
I'm not quite sure if that would be successful, simply because, again,
just from a messaging perspective, the strategy around,
you know, the campaign, they're going to want to keep things very concise.
Look, the Green New Deal is certainly a target rich environment for Republicans,
just simply because of the regulatory costs associated
with the program because it's a lot more than climate, right? It's also,
there are also other aspects, you know, health care,
housing, those kind of pieces that were, that were included within that, now I
know that, I know that Vice-President Biden is not
pushing all of that, all that agenda, but again I think just
from a campaign perspective, you know,
you're going to want to make a distinction, a very simple distinction
between your position and the Democratic
position. And so just to be clear on Biden's agenda, we're talking now what
two and a half trillion dollar package for a green
stimulus so this would be presented as a kind of response to the economic
challenges Covid has brought for America, a way of spending
money to kind of rebuild and renew America but in a clean, low-carbon
way. So that's his agenda and you're
saying that, you know, taking a firm kind of position
against that defines you as a
Republican, defines you in opposition to Biden, is that what you're saying?
Well, during the campaign, right. That was former adviser to Donald Trump, David
Banks. Well, Donald Trump's strategy of
promoting coal is designed to appeal to his supporters in coal mining
communities in places like Pennsylvania. It has infuriated environmental
campaigners, because coal is the most polluting of
fossil fuels. But despite his best efforts, Mr Trump's
attempts to revive the coal industry have not
been working. Cheryl LaFleur served as a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission under President Obama.
President Trump has promised for some time, since
his first election, to revive the American
coal industry. Now America has large reserves of
coal and that has has not been going so well in the first four years of his
presidency because not just because it's the most carbon
intensive of the fuels, which is an issue, but it also is economically in many
cases inferior to natural gas. America has very
large reserves of natural gas that can be both burned for electricity
or for other end uses here and liquefied and exported and that's
another big piece of President Trump's continuing plan.
Right now what's happening is that in the United States, because there's no
federal response to climate change, a lot of the states are doing their own
thing. The states are trying to respond and then you get into sort of a choppy
system, as we see in California, where there's no overall response but the
states do different things. I mean when you look at these incredible
wildfires and you see the kind of livid red skies above San
Francisco you would think that there's no better
argument for action on climate change than the most catastrophic wildfires
California or indeed the United States has ever experienced
how salient do you think this is in the election, how
concerned are American people when they see the
west of the country burning like this, how anxious are they? Will it
translate into votes do you think? I think that it's a very
poignant reminder of the importance of addressing climate change and I believe
people are concerned and I think for people for the more than
two-thirds of the american public that believes climate change
is real and needs to be addressed and the United States should not sit on the
sidelines, hopefully that will motivate them to get
out and vote, and vote for candidates both for president and other offices who
support action on climate change. For the however many people it is, the 30
percent or 30 to 40 percent who are firmly in President Trump's camp,
there just seems to be a way of believing that they believe the
president and don't necessarily get swayed by
other evidence but I would hope that the
compelling evidence of the wildfires would change some minds. That was Cheryl
LaFleur who served on the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission under President Obama.
So could climate change swing the election further from Trump's
grasp, or could he still win re-election? A final word from republican energy
adviser David Banks: If we could forecast that
with any confidence you know we'd be or at least I would be
a multi-millionaire because I would have, I would have bet, you know, bet in the
past on the markets et cetera, but on the other hand let me
just put to you before we before we finish this interview I
mean the huge fires raging through California,
the hurricanes, you know, hitting the West Coast, I mean there are
environmental concerns that will affect, you know, not just, you know, millions of
Americans but tens of millions of Americans,
to what extent do you think that is going to play in the election? My
impression is that, you know, this is a subsidiary issue that
is not going to drive the election proper
is that correct i agree with you but primarily because it's an electoral map
issue so the states that are being affected the most right now are states
that the president would probably lose anyway.
So I don't see the states in the mid-west, the swing states,
being particularly swayed one way or another
by what's happening with the fires, so I think you're correct.