California plans on spending billions over the next several years clearing out forest floors in an attempt to limit wildfires. The media ridiculed former President Trump for suggesting they do the same.
A Bloomberg News report indicates $500 million will be spent this fiscal year in trying to clear the forest floors in California, with Governor Gavin Newsom looking to request $2 billion more from the state legislature to accelerate the effort.
“After a succession of horrific, record-setting wildfire seasons,” they report, California will engage in “an effort that includes clearing pines, firs and redwoods” from the forest floor.
“Without all this fuel on the forest floor, California officials contend, blazes will be less likely to turn into the mega-fires that devour thousands of acres,” they write.
To avoid a ‘forever war’ with wildfires, California is changing its strategy https://t.co/wI01zAE01L
— Bloomberg Green (@climate) June 20, 2021
RELATED: Trump Proposes Actions To Help Prevent Catastrophic Forest Fires
Trump Suggested California Clear Their Forest Floors to Combat Wildfires
For those with a decent memory, the proposal for California to clear its forest floors to combat wildfires is something that has been explored in the past by former President Donald Trump.
“I see again the forest fires are starting,” Trump said at a Pennsylvania campaign rally last summer.
“They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up,” he continued.
In 2019, he tweeted that Newsom should stop listening to environmentalist “bosses” and “clean” the forest floors.
He delivered a similar message in 2018.
“I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen,” Trump said at the 2020 rally. “‘The environment, the environment,’ but they have massive fires again.”
The former President repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funds if California didn’t do something to limit the wildfires.
‘You gotta clean your floors. You gotta clean your forests.’ — Trump’s still blaming California’s wildfires on unclean ‘floors’ pic.twitter.com/3G4hHyDBGG
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 29, 2020
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Trump Was Mocked
The media mocked Donald Trump for advising California to clean its floors as a means to limit the spread of wildfires.
In a report covering his comments at the rally, Politico indicated that the suggestions from Trump prompted “head-scratching from experts.”
The ‘experts,’ they wrote at the time, “say his prescriptions — more raking, less water released into the ocean for environmental purposes — suggest he does not understand the science of wildfires.”
“You’ve got to clean your floors.”
This is what Trump said today about California and its wildfires. (This is real, from the pool. I know you won’t believe it. But it is.) pic.twitter.com/MB6aw8v8tD
— Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) August 21, 2020
Democrats have long argued that global warming is the reason for out-of-control wildfires in California.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one month after Trump’s rally comments, said the wildfires were Mother Nature’s way of saying she’s angry with people.
“Mother Earth is angry,” Speaker Pelosi says, discussing wildfires burning in California. “She’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, whatever it is…the climate crisis is real and has an impact.” pic.twitter.com/ulY4Vwh7AC
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 11, 2020
Newsom, who is now following the advice Trump gave him years ago, said Kamala Harris “gets it” when she claimed the California wildfires were caused by climate change.
President Biden, as a candidate at the time, called Trump a “climate arsonist” and suggested the suburbs would burn down if he won a second term.
“We have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned by wildfires?” he asked.
“Elect me or the riots will continue.”
“Elect me or your suburb will be burned and blown away in a super storm and America will be underwater.”
Who is trying to scare whom? pic.twitter.com/QBnCfL8vjR
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) September 14, 2020
“California officials now say they’re going to do exactly what Trump had suggested: clear the forests of debris that intensifies fires,” The Blaze writes.
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