Let me salute our firefighters, who are so courageous, so brave, risking their lives to save other lives. We have lost one, hopefully no more. But you see the danger that is there and the courage that it takes to fight it.
The governor of the states — the governors of the states, as well as our members of Congress who represent these districts, are in communication with all of us here.
And when I left San — California over the previous weekend, the air was unhealthy and terrible. It’s even worse now. So, again, there are short-term and long-term issues that have to be dealt with.
The denial of the science of climate change is something that is — some people are going to have to answer to their children and grandchildren for.
I just had a meeting of world leaders, virtually, of course, of the speakers, the presidents of the parliaments from the seven — the G7, plus the E.U. The theme was addressing the climate crisis with economic and environmental justice. And that will now have to include COVID, which had descended upon us since we establish that theme one year ago.
There is agreement among everyone outside of our country that there is — that this is a fact that has to be dealt with. Why the president ignores that, I don’t know.
In the short term, however, we did make a change in a bipartisan way in the Congress in 2018, where we stopped the borrowing from the fire funds. People were borrowing the money for cleaning up, rather than using the money earlier on for prevention and increasing the amount of money that we had to mitigate for future — for future damage as we went along.
So, that is an improvement. But we have to do much more.
And when the president says all they have to do is rake the leaves, and ignore the climate challenge that we face, it’s really quite sad.
And I understand he had an anti-science rally, is what the press reported. It was an anti-science rally in Nevada. So, you see the challenge is a clear one.
