Trump's climate denial meets the horror of the wildfires in the West

Donald Trump boards 'Air Force One' in Las Vegas for Sacramento this Monday.JONATHAN ERNST / Reuters

The chief denier of the United States landed on Monday at the center of one of the greatest evidences of the effects of climate change that the country has witnessed since that concept exists.

Donald Trump was scheduled to learn from the field about the fires in California, while his Democratic rival in the elections, Joe Biden, gave a speech on climate change.

The extraordinary fire crisis in the American West has become an unavoidable campaign issue that can only go further.

After days without referring to an emergency affecting California, Oregon, Washington and Colorado, Trump spoke out last week to blame "forest management."

All the governors of these states affirm that, although the causes of the fires are varied, the reason why records are broken more and more quickly is the hardening of climatic conditions due to global warming caused by greenhouse gases.

There is no scientific debate on this.

The visit to California by Trump, whose administration has not only ruled out any progress in the fight against global warming but has reversed the policies in place, places his speech in front of a nightmare setting.

Ravaged forests, cities drowned in smoke, scorched neighborhoods and, above all, a still provisional death toll that stood at 33 on Monday. The entire United States is watching on its televisions and newspapers a catastrophe in real time that is very difficult to counter with skepticism salon.

Since last week, the Democratic Party has been taking advantage to put climate change at the center of the debate as one more brutal consequence of Trump's incompetence, such as the tragedy of the coronavirus or the economic crisis.

Basically, against the background of the fires, the Democrats are trying to make the electorate wonder if the United States can afford four more years of a White House that denies climate change and boycotts environmental policies.

California has seen 12,000 square kilometers burn so far this year, most in the last three weeks, since a thunderstorm in mid-August started hundreds of simultaneous fires that overwhelmed state resources.

It is 10 times the size of New York and almost 30 times the previous record for hectares burned.

Typically, large fires start in late September and last until November.

In neighboring Oregon the record for hectares burned has also been broken.

"The debate on climate change is over," California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Friday, visibly irritated.

"This is a bloody weather emergency."

Newsom had planned to meet behind closed doors with Trump, to whom, on the other hand, he has always thanked in an institutional tone for the federal help to California in the fight against the coronavirus and the emergency media.

In the last decade, the fight against climate change has become a state affair in California, to the point that the state Republican Party hardly protests the emission reduction targets (similar to those of the EU and the most ambitious from USA).

It is simply not discussed.

The denialism of Trump and Republican sectors of other states is seen as an eccentricity that provokes between stupor and irritation.

Trump, for his part, has tried to crack down on California's authority to set its own emission limits.

The environment is the issue where the clash between California (self-proclaimed

) and the Republican president has been most stark, along with immigration policies.

The president had planned to land in Sacramento (California) from a campaign event in Las Vegas (Nevada) and receive a

closed-door

on the situation of the fires.

Later, Trump was going to participate in a tribute to the California National Guard, a military corps of reservists that is activated in emergencies and that, this year, was deployed on the streets of Los Angeles in the first days of the demonstrations for the death by George Floyd.

No military has been seen on the streets since the 1992 riots. Trump had another election parade planned in Phoenix, Arizona, before returning to Washington.