Former California Gov. Jerry Brown brushed off the idea of an exodus from the state as wildfires rage because climate change affects the entire world.
“You might say, ‘We are getting out of here — we are going someplace else,’” Brown told the New York Times. “No. There are going to be problems everywhere in the United States. This is the new normal. It’s been predicted, and it’s happening. This is part of the new long-term experience.”
“Tell me: Where are you going to go?” he continued. “What’s your alternative? Maybe Canada. You’re going to go to places like Iowa, where you have intensifying tornadoes? The fact is, we have a global crisis that has been mounting and the scientists have been telling us about. For the most part, it’s been ignored. Now, we have a graphic example.”
The New York Times added in its story, “Mr. Brown acknowledged that the devastating fires were partly the result of the failure of the state and the federal government to thin forests, which are now filled with trees that died in the drought — fuel for the fires.”
Brown made climate initiatives a focal point of his administration. In 2018, he set the goal of “carbon neutrality” in California by 2045, then ordered the state to “maintain net negative emissions thereafter.”
Brown also moved to motivate other nations and religious leaders to address climate change when he delivered remarks at the Vatican in 2017.
“Until religious leaders from every part of the globe and from every denomination are engaged, we’re not going to be able to move aside the huge rock of indifference, complacency and inertia,” he said. “Going forward, we’re going to have to find the pathway to awaken the world to get done what needs to be done.”
Brown, who left the governorship in 2019 after his fourth term in office, also previously brushed off Californians threatening to leave the state back in 2014 over taxes.
“We’ve got a few problems. We have lots of little burdens and regulations and taxes,” he said. “But smart people figure out how to make it.”
