2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Oliver Willis)
A proposal by Donald Trump for California to use Canadian water sources like a “very large faucet” is being mocked by experts on engineering and politics in Canada. On Friday, at a press conference in Los Angeles, Trump was asked what he plans to do to assist Californians facing danger from wildfires. Trump blamed water shortages in southern California on environmental protections to save the delta smelt fish, but this is a claim he has made for years that is not supported by scientific data.
He then proceeded to offer a questionable solution. x YouTube Video Trump: So you have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north, with the snow caps and Canada, and—all pouring down, and they have a—essentially—a very large faucet, and you turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it, it’s massive. It’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you.
And you turn that, and all of that water goes into the—aimlessly into the Pacific. And if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here, and right into Los Angeles. Tricia Stadnyk, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Calgary, was skeptical of Trump’s idea in an interview with Canadian news outlet CTV.
x YouTube Video “To me, it's an uninformed opinion,” Stadnyk said. “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 explained to CTV that Trump was referencing the Columbia River, which traces its source to the Columbia Lake in Canada.
But the river flows into the United States from Canada through Oregon, not California. Stadnyk said that the U.S could not dictate how much water went to each country and doing so would have catastrophic outcomes for the environment: “We can't just be taking water and diverting it and sending it somewhere else.
” CTV also spoke to University of Calgary professor of political science Lisa Young 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 said. In 2020 when he was president, Trump threatened to withhold federal funds to assist California as it dealt with the fallout of wildfires.
“You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests,” Trump said , directing his comments 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 faucet commentary echoes other off-kilter remarks Trump has made during the presidential campaign, like praising fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, discussing sharks while speaking about electric batteries, and talking about wind turbines killing birds .
Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has called for drought resistance measures to assist California. Touting the infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden, Harris said in a 2023 visit to her home state that the administration would invest in projects to capture and store water to build up resilience and adaptation. Harris was endorsed in July by the environmental group Food & Water Action, 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 said in its statement. Sign the petition: Hold Big Fossil Fuel accountable for lying about climate change.
