Climate alarmist Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) made a series of deranged climate change claims about the California wildfires during Thursday's confirmation hearing of Lee Zeldin, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator.
Markey, co-author of AOC's far-left Green New Deal, suggested that climate change is the reason why wildfires erupted in Los Angeles and hurricanes had ravaged the Southeast in September.
"Do you see the fires in L.A. right now? Did you see the storms ripple through Georgia and North Carolina? The threat of climate change hasn't gone away!" Markey said, as Zeldin appeared before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
"Do you see the fires in LA right now? Did you see the storms ripple through Georgia and through North Carolina? The threat of climate change hasn't gone away."
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 16, 2025
Sen. Markey is blaming the fires in LA and recent hurricanes on climate change, just like Biden did in his final… pic.twitter.com/KG7m1dXtE4
Markey, a senior Democrat on the congressional committee, later asked Zeldin whether he believes Americans facing such crises are in any danger. "Are they in danger? Absolutely, for people having their homes burned down," Zeldin replied.
"Then you have an obligation to deal with that!" an irate Markey retorted. "To do something! I'm not hearing you see your job at the EPA as doing something about it."
"We're watching firefighters run towards the flames in Los Angeles, and the EPA is responsible for keeping the fiery embers of climate change under control!" the Massachusetts Democrat exclaimed.
"Are you going to fan the flames of destruction by the demand of the fossil fuel industry, which you now refuse to actually hold responsible for the rapidly warming country that we're living in?!" Markey further questioned Zeldin.
"The EPA is supposed to be the environmental watchdog and not the fossil fuel lapdog!" Markey fumed.
Markey previously claimed that the wildfires are "what a climate emergency looks like" and a preview of "coming atrocities" under the Trump administration. "More fires, more climate disasters, more death," Markey tweeted.
This is what a climate emergency looks like. pic.twitter.com/gvTXmRpQIa
— Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) January 8, 2025
Trump has been bought for $1 billion by Big Oil. Just a payoff to kill the IRA and the Green New Deal. We know what will happen. More fires, more climate disasters, more death. The LA fires are preview of coming atrocities.
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) January 11, 2025
The compounding crisis in Los Angeles can be traced back to the incompetence of local leaders and DEI-crazed officials who made the fires more deadly by failing to refill dried-up fire hydrants, repair out-of-commission reservoirs, and prevent dry vegetation from building up on poorly maintained land.
Before the fatal fires broke out, California Gov. Gavin Newsom cut the state's budget for fire prevention by more than $100 million. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who was schmoozing in Ghana at an embassy cocktail reception while her city burned, despite knowing the intensifying weather forecasts days before she absconded, had slashed the city's fire department funding by nearly $18 million.
According to Newsweek, Newsom signed off on the multi-million dollar budget cut in June, taking away critical funds from seven state "wildfire and forest resilience" programs:
An additional $4 million was removed from a forest legacy program aimed at encouraging good management practices from landowners whilst $28 million was slashed from funds provided to multiple state conservancies to increase wildfire resilience.
Another $8 million was taken from monitoring and research spending, which had largely been given to CAL FIRE and California universities, whilst $3 million was removed from funding for an interagency forest data hub. A home hardening pilot scheme designed to make homes more resilient to wildfires had its funding cut by $12 million.
Under Bass, the city of Los Angeles instead allocated thousands of tax dollars toward progressive programming, including a "Midnight Stroll Transgender Cafe," the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, and "Social Justice Art-Worker Investments."
Consequently, the region's underfunded forest management efforts could not keep up with semi-arid areas turning into tinderboxes waiting to be ignited either by a lightning strike or a power line, possibly even arson.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Fire Department reportedly has only performed a handful of prescribed burns in recent years to clear excess accelerants. Prescribed burns, or controlled fires, are a proactive approach to reducing wildfire risks by methodically eliminating excess vegetation, a.k.a. "fuel," under carefully monitored conditions. However, despite their proven efficacy, prescribed burns are woefully underused in Los Angeles County and much of California.
"As of 2019, Los Angeles County had not conducted a prescribed burn in more than a decade, largely due to legal and bureaucratic obstacles," Chuck Devore, a former California lawmaker reported for The Federalist this week. "California's all-powerful administrative state is akin to a once-sleek ship gradually being covered with so many barnacles that it can now barely move."