Governor Asks GOP Candidates Their Stand on Climate Change

Dear Candidate:

Over the past week millions of Californians, from the San Joaquin Valley to the North Coast, woke up to a familiar sight and smell: thick, smoke-filled air. As I write, 10,000 federal, state and local emergency personnel are fighting fires spanning more than 100,000 acres across California – the equivalent of San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Manhattan all being fully enveloped by flames. Dozens of homes have been destroyed, thousands of people have been evacuated, and tragically, one firefighter — a father of two — lost his life battling the fires. Already this year, more than 4,000 fires have charred state land. The average fire season here used to span six months; now it’s year-round.

As the state’s drought stretches into its fourth year, California is also hotter and drier than it’s ever been. Last year was the warmest on record and the three-year period from fall 2011 to fall 2014 was the driest since records were first kept in 1895. These conditions have not only turned the state’s forests into a tinderbox, they’ve left reservoirs at historically low levels and growers, who collectively produce nearly half of American grown fruits, nuts and vegetables, reeling. Billions of dollars in revenue, hundreds of thousands of acres of crops and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost.