. @RealDonaldTrump – I hope you had an enlightening trip to the West Coast, where your refusal to address climate change — and your active steps to allow even more carbon pollution — will accelerate devastating wildfires like you are seeing today.

We agree – forest management is important. That’s why WA has spent $130 million on forest health and fire preparedness since 2009.

But there is no fire suppression plan on this planet that does anyone any good if it doesn’t acknowledge, and combat, the role of climate change.

Forest management would not have saved the town of Malden, where 80% of the buildings burned down. That fire was fueled by grass and brush – not forest.

The rules of fighting wildfires are changing because our climate is changing.

Today, you said about the climate “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.”

That is false.

This abandonment of leadership has left states on our own to protect the lives and livelihoods of the people we represent. https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1305579284904452097?s=20

The people of Washington, of Bonney Lake, Bridgeport, Graham and Malden deserve to know why their air is hazardous and their homes are burning down.

And they deserve leaders who will do something about it.

My full letter https://medium.com/wagovernor/open-letter-to-president-donald-trump-on-the-role-of-climate-change-in-historic-wildfires-115a9ef2d9b9