‘Code red:’ Biden urges Congress to address climate change after touring California wildfires

Mixing policy with politics on his first California visit since taking office, President Joe Biden flew to Sacramento on Monday for a tour of wildfire-ravaged El Dorado County before heading south to campaign with Gov. Gavin Newsom against the gubernatorial recall election.

A day after declaring the Caldor Fire a major disaster — setting the stage for federal aid — Biden stepped off Air Force One in the blazing afternoon sun in his aviator sunglasses at Mather Airport, where Newsom greeted him.

After a quick briefing at the nearby California Office of Emergency Services command center, Biden and Newsom boarded a Marine aircraft for a tour of damage wrought by the Caldor Fire. The fire has chewed through 219,267 acres in the Eldorado National Forest, destroyed more than 1,000 buildings and spilled dangerously into the Lake Tahoe Basin.

“These fires are blinking code red for our nation,” Biden said afterward, standing in front of a Cal Fire engine at a Mather hangar. “We can’t ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change.

“Everyone in Northern California knows the time of year when you can’t go outside, when the air will be filled with smoke, and the sky will turn an apocalyptic shade of orange,” he added.

Mainly, the president hammered home the virtue of fighting climate change and urged Congress to pass his long-delayed $1 trillion infrastructure bill — two issues that he said are inextricably linked. Although some of his proposed climate investments were stripped out of the infrastructure bill, they have been included in his budget plan, which is also pending in Congress.

The infrastructure bill includes about $3 billion in additional funding for the USDA Forest Service — an expenditure that could remedy a sore spot in California’s fight against wildfires.

The Forest Service, which owns one-fifth of California’s land, has been hit with a barrage of criticism from Newsom and others over its handling of the state’s wildfires. Top officials in Biden’s administration have vowed to improve their firefighting efforts, but say they need the extra billions to make that happen.

Biden addressed one problem with the Forest Service without Congress’ permission, recently raising the minimum wage for federal firefighters to $15 an hour. Biden said it should be higher. “We owe them, we owe them a hell of a lot more,” he said at the command center.

The president also spent several minutes offering the staff at the Office of Emergency Services a pep talk on their efforts to control the state’s wildfires.

“You’ve been fighting like hell, you’ve been moving in a way that few states have done,” he said, strolling in front of the giant electronic map pinpointing the location of California’s major fires.

With his usual folksy style, Biden led a chorus of “Happy Birthday” for one employee, 27-year-old Joanna Bautista, and knelt down to pet another employee’s service dog, a black Lab named Deuce.

After returning to Mather from their Caldor Fire tour, Biden and Newsom spoke to reporters for about 15 minutes. As he turned to leave, Biden was asked, “what do you think about the governor misrepresenting his administration’s wildfire efforts?”

“He didn’t,” the president said, and walked away.

The question referred to an investigation by Capital Public Radio earlier this summer that showed Newsom had overstated the number of acres treated with wildfire fuel breaks and prescribed burns by 690%.

The two men then headed to Long Beach for an election-eve rally for Newsom, who is battling against a recall. Biden’s time in Northern California lasted about two and a half hours.

The president’s tour of California was part of a whirlwind trip that began at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, where he was briefed on the scope of fire perils plaguing the West. About 3.1 million acres have burned this year nationwide.

Yet even as he sat through a half-hour briefing in Idaho, the president’s thoughts returned to California.

“You saved many communities, the firefighters, and you saved South Lake Tahoe,” Biden said in Boise.

In California, more than 2.2 million acres have burned already this year and the traditional peak of the fire season is still about two weeks away. Although Biden’s focus Monday was on El Dorado County, the Caldor is dwarfed by the 960,335-acre Dixie Fire, which is about to become the largest fire in modern California history.

Smaller fires are beginning to generate chaos, too: The just-begun KNP Complex fire in Sequioa National Park sparked mandatory evacuations, as did the day-old Hopkins Fire in rural Mendocino County. A red flag warning was issued Monday for the California-Oregon border region.

A contrast to Donald Trump’s visit

Biden’s impassioned remarks about wildfire dangers and climate change represented a stark contrast with the last time a president visited Sacramento.

A year ago Tuesday, as fires were burning a record 4 million acres in the state, then-President Donald Trump arrived at McClellan Park to meet with state officials, days after the North Complex fire killed 15 people in Butte County. Newsom had visited the area, ash falling all around him, and railed against anyone who would deny the effects of climate change.

After Newsom brought up climate change to Trump, the president stunned his hosts by falsely claiming the earth “will start getting cooler — just you watch.”

In a brief but riveting exchange that went viral, Wade Crowfoot, the secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, challenged the president.

“I wish science agreed with you,” Crowfoot said.

“I don’t think science knows,” Trump replied.

Biden’s infrastructure bill

As Biden inspected storm damage in New York and New Jersey last week, he urged Congress to take action on global warming — and again linked that battle to his infrastructure bill, saying the country needs to fortify its infrastructure to withstand the effects of the climate crisis. The infrastructure bill passed the Senate but is still pending in the House.

At the same time, his administration has had to acknowledge the Forest Service’s struggles to deal with wildfires starting in California’s national forests.

In late July, Newsom complained to Biden that the agency’s “wait and see” approach allowed the 68,000 Tamarack Fire to spread. A few days later, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who oversees the Forest Service, met with Newsom in the Mendocino National Forest — home of last year’s August Complex fire, the largest in the state’s history — and pledged to do better.

“We have tried to do this job on the cheap,” Vilsack said. Noting that the infrastructure bill would increase funding for the agency, he added: “We are prepared to do a better job — if we have the resources.”

Francesca Chambers of the McClatchy Washington, D.C. bureau contributed to this report.

This story was originally published September 13, 2021 at 2:16 PM.