Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead” that the fight against climate change had to be stepped up when asked about the devastation left by the wildfires in Southern California.
Host Jake Tapper said, “You know, our country and the world really is watching these horrible fires in Los Angeles. Canada has a lot of experience with similar conflagrations. I know that you have been offering resources to the people of California and Los Angeles. What advice could you offer them?”
Trudeau said, “Well, I think unfortunately over the past years we’ve seen it get far worse and we’ve seen wildfires increasingly encroaching on urban areas. And that’s an interface fire where we’re having to train up more local municipal firefighters to deal with wildfires in a way that we never had before. I’ve been back and forth texting with Governor Newsom. We’ve offered a tremendous amount of equipment that they’re they’re already accepting. There’s expertise, there’s things that we’re having to do to deal with together as we, of course, respond to these fires, but also know that climate change means they’re going to get steadily worse. And we have to keep stepping up on fighting climate change.”
Tapper said, “To a lot of people out there might say, what does climate change have to do with this, explain.”
Trudeau said, “Well, when the summers get drier, when the weather gets hotter, when weather patterns shift, communities that were built in a place that never saw fires are suddenly seeing fires much more frequently. There’s a there’s a shift in everything that means even what we see now is going to just get worse and worse and worse over the coming decades. If we’re not serious about reducing our emissions and looking for ways to protect our future generations.”
