- I am a great environmentalist!
President Donald Trump surprised many with his statement in Florida last week.
He put the epithet on himself after extending a ban on oil drilling off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
But Trump has repeatedly questioned climate change, calling the greenhouse effect "a hoax, invented by the Chinese."
In 2017, he withdrew the United States from the global climate agreement signed in Paris in 2015, and he has also torn up most of the environmental laws and regulations established by Representative Barack Obama.
Back to agreement?
Now - with the presidential election 50 days away - Trump is talking about himself as an environmentalist and traveling to hard-hit California.
In Florida, he claimed, without proof, that the environment will suffer "permanent damage" if Democrat Joe Biden is elected president, notes The New York Times.
Few independent assessors agree.
Joe Biden's energy and climate plan is the most offensive that a presidential candidate has produced, according to the news site Axio's panel.
The former vice president has promised to return his homeland to the Paris Agreement on day one, if he is allowed to move into the White House, and he has listed the climate issue as one of the major crises facing the United States.
"Poor forest management"
Until now, the dominant issues have instead been the virus pandemic and the nationwide protests against racism.
Trump has barely mentioned California, and when he has done so, he has repeated his arguments from previous years - that the fires are mostly due to poor management of forests and land.
However, researchers agree that the greenhouse effect contributes to the fires spreading so widely.
On Monday, President Trump will meet with rescue service leaders in California.
According to SVT's US correspondent Stefan Åsberg, the visit is mainly because the president wants to show that he cares.
- There are an enormous number of Americans who are affected by the fires in one way or another, says Åsberg.