Fiorina blames environmentalists for California drought

Carly Fiorina is blaming liberal environmentalists for what she calls a “man-made” drought in California.

“It is a man-made disaster,” Fiorina, who is “seriously considering” a run for president in 2016, told the Blaze Radio on Monday.


“California is a classic case of liberals being willing to sacrifice other people’s lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology. It’s a tragedy.”

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO, a Republican, ran for a California Senate seat in 2010 against incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer and lost. Now, the state is facing a devastating drought in its fourth year. On Wednesday, California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order to restrict water usage. The directive orders California’s State Water Resources Control Board — which supplies 90 percent of Californians with water, according to The New York Times — to reduce its supply by 25 percent.

Republicans have blamed California’s protections for endangered species for the drought. In December, the House passed a bill to pump water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Southern California, a move that environmentalists said would harm endangered fish species. The Obama administration threatened to veto the bill.

“That’s the tragedy of California, because of liberal environmentalists’ insistence — despite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California’s population has doubled,” Fiorina said.

“There is a man-made lack of water in California — and Washington manages the water for the farmers,” she added.

When asked about the drought on Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the Obama administration does not have any policy changes to share, and he listed steps that President Barack Obama has taken to offer relief to the state, such as sending $60 million to California food banks and $15 million for farmers and ranchers.

“We’re going to continue to be in touch with California,” Earnest said at the daily press briefing.

Fiorina describes Obama’s assistance to Californians a little differently.

“President Obama goes out to California a little over a year ago, calls it a tragedy of global warming and hands out money to a food bank,” she said. “This is all about politics and policy, and it is liberal environmentalists who have brought us this tragedy.”