Advertisement

Wildfire Victim Asks GOP Candidates To ‘Get Real’ And Discuss Climate Change

Little remains of a hillside home destroyed by fire Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015, in Hidden Valley, Calif. Republican presidential candidates will be debating in California on Wednesday night. CREDIT: AP PHOTOS/ERIC RISBERG/JOHN MINCHILLO
Little remains of a hillside home destroyed by fire Sunday, Sept. 13, 2015, in Hidden Valley, Calif. Republican presidential candidates will be debating in California on Wednesday night. CREDIT: AP PHOTOS/ERIC RISBERG/JOHN MINCHILLO

Sixteen Republican presidential candidates will appear on CNN’s debate stage in California on Wednesday night, and nearly all of them deny the science of human-caused climate change.

Jessica Jennings Pyska — a Californian who just lost her home in one of the three devastating wildfires currently raging across the state — would like those candidates to rethink that position, at least while they’re in her home state.

“Climate change is a nightmare that’s affecting us now,” she wrote Wednesday in an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News. “We need the presidential candidates in Los Angeles today for the Republican primary debate to get real and address the issue.”

California is in the midst of an almost unprecedented wildfire season, driven primarily by severe drought and intense heat. Jennings Pyska is only one of approximately 13,000 Californians who have been forced to flee their homes, and her home is one of the 1,000 structures that have so far been destroyed across the state.

Advertisement

In her op-ed, she recounts the trauma of gathering her young children and belongings, banging on her elderly neighbors’ doors to warn them that a fire was coming, and feeling the hot wind blow against her face.

“I never thought I would feel the impacts of climate change so personally,” she wrote. “As I look at pictures where my house used to be, I still can’t believe that this has happened to me.”

This is why she’s calling on the Republican presidential candidates to take on the issue. Scientists increasingly attribute the severity of California’s wildfire season to human-caused climate change, which they say has made the state’s drought 15 to 20 percent worse than it normally would have been. While wildfires are common in the state, the average season burns around 500,000 acres — so far, approximately 700,000 acres have burned this year, with the season nowhere near over.

However, the Republican candidates have just not been asked that many questions about climate change so far in the campaign. At the first debate, held by Fox News last month, not one question was asked on the topic.

Environmentalists are hoping that won’t be the case tonight. On Twitter, they’ve been relentlessly prodding debate moderator Jake Tapper to broach the subject, noting his history of asking politicians about climate change and calling them out when their answers are scientifically inaccurate.