As wildfires continue to burn across the West, former Vice President Joe Biden called President Donald Trump a "climate arsonist" and warned that natural disasters could worsen should Trump win a second term.
Both presidential candidates focused on the wildfires on Sept. 14, with Biden attacking Trump for denying climate change while Trump continued to question the science behind climate change and its role in the massive fires burning in California and elsewhere on the West Coast.
Biden also blamed Trump for enacting policies that he said will worsen the climate crisis. Since assuming office, Trump has focused on deregulation, rolling back many environmental policies enacted under the Obama administration.
"Donald Trump's climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes, but if he gets a second term these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating and more deadly," Biden said during a speech in Delaware. "The impacts of climate change don't pick and choose. That's because it's not a partisan phenomenon. It's science."
Biden said the nation needs to become more resilient and better prepared to withstand worsening weather events. With a response grounded in science, "we can and we will solve the climate crisis," the former vice president said.
Trump has repeatedly denounced the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. He reportedly echoed those sentiments in California while speaking with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
"It will start getting cooler, you just watch," Trump told Newsom and other event attendees, according to the Los Angeles Times. When one of Newsom's aides said climate science disagreed, Trump reportedly said, "I don't think science knows."
The report said Trump also continued to focus on the need for forest management and the role of what he described as exploding trees.
"When trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry — really like a matchstick ... and they can explode,” Trump was quoted as saying. "Also leaves. When you have dried leaves on the ground, it's just fuel for the fires."
Biden has laid out a four-year, $2 trillion climate plan focused on investments in clean energy infrastructure to spur job growth and aid in the nation's economic recovery. That plan seeks to decarbonize the power sector by 2035 and reach net-zero emissions across the entire economy by 2050, putting the nation on a trajectory that "no future president can come along and turn back," Biden said during his speech.
"The unrelenting impact of climate change affects every single solitary one of us, but too often the brunt falls disproportionately on communities of color, exasperating the need for environmental justice," Biden said. "It shouldn't be so bad that millions of Americans live in the shadow of an orange sky and are left asking, 'Is doomsday here?'"