'Climate change is making the fires start easier, spread faster': Jay Inslee — ABC News

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: When you have a heat dome over the entire west coast of the United States, when you have temperatures, record-breaking temperatures, record droughts, then you've got something else at play. California, folks, is America fast forward. What we're experiencing right here is coming to a community all across the United States of America unless we get our act together on climate change. [00:00:24] Speaker 2: Stark warning there from California. Governor Gavin Newsom, after the worst week of wildfires ever, up and down the Pacific coast, apocalyptic scenes, at least 27 dead, dozens more missing, thousands forced to flee their homes. Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco now among the worst cities for air quality anywhere in the world. President Trump is heading to California tomorrow, and we're joined now by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. Thank you both for joining us this morning. And Senator Merkley, let me begin with you. I know you spent the day traveling your state yesterday. What have you learned? Where do things stand right now? [00:00:59] Jeff Merkley: Yeah, George, it is apocalyptic. I drove 600 miles up and down the state. I never escaped the smoke. We have thousands of people who have lost their homes. I could never have envisioned this. The east winds came over the top of the mountain, proceeded to turn the fires into blow torches that went down and just incinerated a series of small towns like Blue River and Phoenix and Talent. Just you have community after community with fairgrounds full of people, of refugees from the fires. [00:01:32] Speaker 2: And Governor Inslee, how's the situation in Washington State this morning? [00:01:37] Jay Inslee: The same situation. The skies are a smoke that we've never seen before except two or three years ago. It's apocalyptic. And it is maddening, George. And I'll tell you why. I was in Malden the other day, a town that was absolutely decimated. 80% of the homes were burned down in southeastern Washington, talking to a woman who moved there to try to have a peaceful existence in a small town. And she just broke down and could not stop crying. And what struck me is, as I was listening to her, the only moisture in eastern Washington was the tears of people who've lost their homes and mingling with the ashes. And now we have a blow torch over our states in the West, which is climate change. And we know that climate change is making fires start easier, spread faster, and intensify. And it is maddening right now that when we have this cosmic challenge to our communities with the entire west coast of the United States on fire, to have a president to deny that these are not just wildfires, these are climate fires. And if this is not a signal to the United States, I don't know what it will take. Because as Governor Newsom suggested, it may not be fires in the Midwest. It's floods in Hamburg, which washed away Hamburg, Iowa. It's the rising seas that are drowning Miami Beach. It's the hurricanes in the east coast. We need to act, and we need to act now. And these people whose homes were destroyed, that I've seen with their tears in the last few days, they deserve action against climate change. [00:03:14] Speaker 2: And, Senator Merkley, the president did address that last night in Nevada. He actually bragged about leaving the Paris Climate Accords, and then went on to say this about the fires. [00:03:24] Speaker 5: I spoke to the folks in Oregon, Washington. They really haven't - they never had anything like this. But, you know, it is about forest management. Please remember the words, very simple. Forest management, please remember. It's about forest management. And other things, but forest management. [00:03:47] Speaker 2: Is that contributing to this, Senator Merkley? [00:03:51] Jeff Merkley: You know, the president has said it's all about raking the forests. It's just a big and devastating lie. We have - the Cascade snowpacks have gotten smaller. Our forests have gotten drier. Our ocean has gotten warmer and more acidic. And this has been happening steadily over the last several decades. These are consequences of a warming planet that have huge impacts. Huge impacts on rural America with our forests, with our farming, with our fishing. This should not be blue or red. This should not be rural or urban. This is devastating to everyone. And we need - just on COVID, we need to have a president follow the science. We need to have a president now who follows the science on global warming. America not only has to get its own act in order. It has to help lead the world to take this on. This is a planetary-scale tragedy of the commons that we need leadership to end. [00:04:45] Speaker 2: One of the other signs of the times here, Governor Inslee, that we're seeing is that the response to this fire has been complicated by a lot of disinformation out there on social media. Any way to combat that? [00:04:57] Jay Inslee: Yes, vote. Vote. And vote on climate. Get out there and vote against any politician like Donald Trump who has downplayed climate change just like he's downplayed COVID. And for Donald Trump to say he's a hero of climate change is like saying he's a hero of masks against COVID. And this idea that somehow we could have solved this problem by timber thinning is just a bunch malarkey. I was in Bridgeport, Washington yesterday, a town that lost about 20 homes. And I looked at where the fire came from. And where it came from was grass and bunch grass and sheet grass and sagebrush. It doesn't have a dang thing to do with thinning timber. It's just a bunch of malarkey. Now there are places where it makes sense that we thin our timber. And we are doing that. Of course, the Trump administration doesn't want to help us actually finance that. They just want an excuse. And listen, it is way too late to be debating this. This is not a debate. The time for excuses, for denial, for downplaying this, those days are over. The days of consequence are upon us. And the point I want to make about this event, it's not just happening to us. And it's happening today. Look, most of the scientists thought, you know, maybe we had a few more years to deal with this, but it's today. The orange skies over California is something that we thought Hollywood just would portray in some apocalypse movie. But it's today. So we need to act. We need to act now. We are doing it. We're building jobs. We're putting people to work. We've got a great candidate, Joe Biden, who understands we can put people to work. You know that town I told you that burned down? You can see the wind turbines there that are generating clean electricity and putting people to jobs, with good union jobs, generating clean energy. That's the future that we need, but we've got to have action. So what we can do is vote this year. [00:06:54] Speaker 2: Finally, Senator Merkle, there are some signs that the weather could bring some relief in the coming days. What's the greatest need in Oregon right now? [00:07:04] Jeff Merkley: Well, we are hearing reports that as the winds start to move back onshore, we may have gusting starting this afternoon. We're very worried about that. This would move the fires back to the east. Right now, the winds are calm. We have a little more humidity. That's great. The weather can change, and we have fires still burning across our states. So we're very concerned about this moment and the days to come. [00:07:30] Speaker 2: Gentlemen, thank you both very much. We know it's such a tough situation out there. Thank you, thank you. Thank you.