Nearly 2,000 miles west of the Cleveland auditorium where President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden sparred in their first televised debate Tuesday night, fires have scorched a record 2.5 million acres and incinerated entire towns and there are still several months left in the fire season.

The president shrugged off a question about what should be done about it.

Thats burning down because of lack of management, he said, echoing past arguments that raking leaves and other forest management tasks were all that is needed to combat wildfires that in the past decade have burned more than twice as many acres per year on average than in the 1990s.

Pressed on whether he understands the role that human-caused emissions are playing in heating the planet, causing prolonged droughts and extending a fire season that has already doubled in length since the 1970s, Trump extolled the need for immaculate air and immaculate water.

You know, were planting a billion trees, Trump said.

That there was any climate question at all was a surprise from Fox News moderator Chris Wallace, and it offered one of the clearest contrasts in a 90-minute verbal cacophony of disinformation, petty jabs and schoolyard squabbling.