Carly Fiorina’s false narrative about California’s drought preparedness was not taken kindly by Gov. Jerry Brown. She blamed liberal politicians for not building the infrastructure necessary to mitigate droughts, but Brown begged to differ.
On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Chuck Todd asked the GOP hopeful about climate change making the drought worse. Fiorina's answer was accusatory.
“You know what has also made it worse? Politicians,” she said. “Liberal politicians who stood up for 40 years as the population of California doubled and said you cannot build a new reservoir and you cannot build a new water conveyance system. And so for 40 years, 70 percent of the rainfall washed out to sea. That’s pretty dumb when you know you are going to have droughts every single year or every three years."
Chuck Todd then told her that he posed the question, and Fiorina’s accusation, to California's governor. It turned out Brown would have none of her clumsy deflection.
“I have never heard of such utter ignorance," he said. “Building a dam won’t do a damn thing about fires, or climate change, or the absence of moisture in the ground, and vegetation in California. So I think these people, if they want to run for president, better do kind of eighth grade science before they make any more utterances.”
Fiorina was taken aback. She bristled at what she claimed were insults, but she made no sense. Hadn't she just called California liberals dumb? She continued with silly comments about firefighters and more water, as if what is being dropped on fires today is sand. The disingenuousness of her words is more galling given her party’s resistance to any tax for any cause, as well as their new aversion to any infrastructure spending. She should recall that President Ronald Reagan played a role in drying up the funds that would otherwise be used to build dams.
What Jerry Brown did is important. One must not allow today’s lies to become tomorrow’s false truths. In this case it is not about dams. It is about conservation. It is about efficient use of a scarce resource. It is about climate change.
