Calling President Trump a “climate arsonist,” Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden catalogued a list of catastrophic weather and environmental events hitting the United States and the world, calling on the United States to do more to address the dramatic impact of climate change, including the US launching a “Civilian Climate Corps” to help mitigate the impact of climate change.
“Meanwhile, Donald Trump is warns that integration is threatening our suburbs,” Biden said. “It’s ridiculous. But you know what’s actually threatening our suburbs? Wildfires are burning our suburbs to the West. Floods are wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest. Hurricanes are imperiling suburban life along our coasts.”
Biden noted that as the United States sees 50 million acres of wildfires in the US, other areas are preparing for the landfall of any hurricane. He noted that the Americans in Puerto Rico are still trying to from Hurricane Maria, which hit three years ago.
Saying that “none of this happens in a vacuum,” Biden noted that family farmers in the Midwest are being impacted by record flooding and drought, as well as recent windstorms called derechos which recently ruined tens of thousands of acres of corn, soybeans and other crops in Iowa.
“Hurricanes don’t swerve to avoid red states or blue states. Wildfires don’t skip towns that voided a certain way,” Biden said. “The impacts of climate change don’t pick and choose. That’s because it’s not a partisan phenomenon. It’s the science. Our response should be the same: grounded in science.”
Biden slammed Trump’s partisan response to natural disasters. “As he flies to California today, we know he has no interest in meeting this moment. We know he won’t listen to the experts or treat this disaster with the urgency it demands, as any president should do during a national emergency” Biden said.
“He’s already said he wanted to without aid to California, to punish the people of California because they didn’t vote for him,” Biden said. “This is another crisis, another crisis he won’t take responsibility for,” Biden stated, referring to Trump’s claim that he takes “no responsibility for [the coronavirus response.].”
“[The nation needs] a president who recognizes, understands and cares that Americans are dying,” Biden said, “which makes President Trump’s climate denialism, his disdain for scientific facts all the more unconscionable.”
Listing the threats from climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and racial injustice, Biden stated “It’s clear we’re not safe in Donald Trump’s America. And this is Donald Trump’s America. He’s in charge.”
Biden pivoted to the economic opportunity available through “green” jobs. “When Donald Trump thinks about renewable energy, he sees windmills as somehow causing cancer. I see American manufacturing.”
“I’ll put us back in the business of leading the world of leading on climate change,” Biden declared, “and I’ll challenge every other country to up the ante on climate commitments.”