I've Never Seen the American West in Such Deep Distress

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/opinion/fire-coronavirus-west-california.html

I’ve Never Seen the American West in Such Deep Distress
We’re choking on smoke and staring out at Martian-red skies in a world becoming uninhabitable.
By Timothy Egan
Sept. 11, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

About 330,000 acres of the Evergreen State burned last Sunday — more land consumed by fire in a single day than all the acreage of an entire typical season in Washington.

Oregon held California’s smoke, and many of its recent refugees. A record 2.5 million acres have burned in the Golden State this year, and the fire season has only just begun.

Meanwhile, the world’s most dangerous climate change denier continued to spout gibberish. “You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests,” said President Trump, scolding California.

That’s like telling people to drain their wading pools in advance of a hurricane. Nearly 48 percent of the land in California is federally owned. Those are his floors. And this West in distress is made sicker by his defiance of the globe’s existential threat. If ash were falling on his hair, he’d be more alert.