LARIMER COUNTY, Colo. — Colorado's Cameron Peak and Calwood fires show that climate change poses an "imminent, existential threat to our way of life," Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said in a statement Monday as the blazes continued to grow over the Front Range.
The statement was the first time a major party presidential candidate has name-checked the Cameron Peak fire, which has ballooned to over 203,000 acres since it ignited in August and is now the largest fire in state history. The Calwood Fire in Boulder County started on Saturday and rapidly grew to nearly 9,000 acres, triggering evacuations for thousands of Jamestown and Boulder County residents.
In his statement, Biden said he and his wife, Jill Biden, "are keeping Coloradans in our thoughts" and thanked first responders for their work to move the fires toward containment.
"We stand with families in Colorado who have had their lives upended from the damage and the need to evacuate, exacerbating the already challenging situation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic," Biden said.
Biden added that the science is definitive on climate change. The impacts of climate change, including rising temperatures and earlier snow melt, lead to drier vegetation and soils that combine with hot weather to create larger, faster-spreading wildfires than historically seen in the West.
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