It’s no surprise in an already polarized country that debate over what’s causing the wildfires ravaging the West Coast would get partisan, especially with this being an election year.
Visiting California this week, President Trump again tried to put the blame on forest management, while his rival, former Vice President Joe Biden pointed to climate change.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, with the caveat that pretty much everyone in the West rolled their eyes at Trump’s bizarre assertion that raking leaves on the forest floor would reduce the fire risk.
To be clear, climate change certainly plays a central role in these fires’ alarming scale and severity, but it’s not the only reason we’re seeing such deadly and destructive blazes, especially in the iconic — and typically wet — woods of the Pacific Northwest.
