California firefighter Michael Clark — a.k.a. @WildlandMike — has gone above and beyond his day job over the past few months. For his 50,000 followers on TikTok, Clark is a constant source of good looks, deadpan humor, and informative debunking of common misconceptions and myths surrounding wildfires.
“To me, it doesn’t make any sense to not at least try to do something good for the world,” Clark tells Rolling Stone when speaking about his motivation for the videos. “Try to reduce emissions, try to make the air cleaner…just sitting there and saying, ‘No, climate change isn’t real, everything is good’ — you’re not hurting anyone by trying to produce better factories.”
Clark took the time to aim his fact-checking skills at President Donald Trump himself, who has made several dubious statements about the effects of climate change on wildfires. In particular, Clark slammed Trump’s stance on waiting for climate change to simply go away and for rising air temperatures to subside on their own.
“You ever go for a drive in the middle of the desert and your ‘Check Engine’ light comes on, and you’re miles from civilization or a gas station, and you keep telling yourself, ‘There’s going to be one right around the corner’?” Clark said. “Because you didn’t want to prepare?”