A proposal by Donald Trump for California to make use of Canadian water sources like a “very large faucet” is being mocked by consultants on engineering and politics in Canada.
On Friday, at a press convention in Los Angeles, Trump was requested what he plans to do to help Californians dealing with hazard from wildfires.
Trump blamed water shortages in southern California on environmental protections to avoid wasting the delta smelt fish, however this can be a declare he has made for years that just isn’t supported by scientific information. He then proceeded to supply a questionable answer.
Trump: So you might have hundreds of thousands of gallons of water pouring down from the north, with the snow caps and Canada, and—all pouring down, they usually have a—primarily—a really massive faucet, and also you flip the tap and it takes sooner or later to show it, it’s huge. It’s as massive because the wall of that constructing proper there behind you. And also you flip that, and all of that water goes into the—aimlessly into the Pacific. And in the event that they turned it again, all of that water would come proper down right here, and proper into Los Angeles.
Tricia Stadnyk, an environmental engineering professor on the College of Calgary, was skeptical of Trump’s thought in an interview with Canadian information outlet CTV.
“To me, it’s an uninformed opinion,” Stadnyk mentioned. “It’s somebody that doesn’t fully understand how water works and doesn’t understand the intricacies of allocating water not only between two countries but also for the environment.”
She defined to CTV that Trump was referencing the Columbia River, which traces its supply to the Columbia Lake in Canada. However the river flows into the US from Canada by means of Oregon, not California.
Stadnyk mentioned that the U.S couldn’t dictate how a lot water went to every nation and doing so would have catastrophic outcomes for the atmosphere: “We can’t just be taking water and diverting it and sending it somewhere else.”
CTV additionally spoke to College of Calgary professor of political science Lisa Younger about Trump’s speech.
“We’ve certainly seen President Trump on a variety of issues, telling audiences things that they want to hear and presenting them with a great degree of certainty that isn’t necessarily grounded in facts, and this clip certainly looked like another instance of that,” she mentioned.
In 2020 when he was president, Trump threatened to withhold federal funds to help California because it handled the fallout of wildfires.
“You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests,” Trump mentioned, directing his feedback to residents of the state. “There are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”
The tap commentary echoes different off-kilter remarks Trump has made throughout the presidential marketing campaign, like praising fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, discussing sharks whereas talking about electrical batteries, and speaking about wind generators killing birds.
Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has referred to as for drought resistance measures to help California. Touting the infrastructure invoice signed into regulation by President Joe Biden, Harris mentioned in a 2023 go to to her dwelling state that the administration would spend money on tasks to seize and retailer water to construct up resilience and adaptation.
Harris was endorsed in July by the environmental group Meals & Water Motion, who cited her “track record of concern and action for clean water and environmental justice.”
“A President Harris—someone who has taken action on environmental issues and has shown herself to be responsive to community concerns—provides an avenue for future progress, while a President Trump will send us 180 degrees in the wrong direction,” the group mentioned in its assertion.
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