Forest Fires

The Forest Fires Return

Once again the forest fires have started raging across the remote parts of Canada. The smoke hit us hard here in the Toronto area today, yielding the worst pollution levels in a large city worldwide. The header image, visible if you look at this entry individually, is colour accurate, and I’ve intentionally surrounded it with white bands to contrast the difference. That was a nearby park moments ago, and note that the weather right now is “sunny”, with no clouds in the sky. This is all smog from the forest fires. The sun has disappeared in a diffuse, orange haze, reminiscent of Blade Runner 2049’s Las Vegas. The air stinks like burning tires, though the smell disappears once an N95 is equipped.

We don’t even have the worst of it. Duluth, Michigan was hitting 800 on the air quality index, which is horrendous. Here in the West of the GTA we’ve hovered around 185-200 since it rolled in. It could be much worse.

Still, I wore an N95 mask1 when walking to take that picture, earning some concerned looks by other pedestrians. There is zero upside to breathing PM2.5 pollution, and it isn’t something that makes you “stronger” or your lungs more robust.

The birds are quiet. There is a weird post-apocalyptic feeling to the whole thing. People take worried looks out their door and quickly retreat back to their sealed chamber. A scooter and skateboard day-camp at the park was hurriedly all piling back onto the buses, urged on by concerned-sounding counsellors.

This is bad. This is really bad. And it has happened multiple years in a row and seems to be just a new normal. It is quite literally killing people, as those with compromised lungs have a really terrible time with this level of pollution. And everyone else suffers damaged lungs from this exposure.

“Told you so” railing about pipelines or carbon is basically futile worthless words at this point. The world is firmly in tragedy of the commons territory2 and there is no sign of any real opportunity to turn it back.

Something must be done to respond to this new reality, and there needs to be plans on how we’re going to deal with this. Years and years of cutting of forest fire budgets – after multiple years of devastating fires, somehow the province actually cut the budget even more, which is insanity – and removing hundreds of fire lookout stations, and we’re in the situation we now enjoy. The climate is changing, and reducing our ability to respond made a bad problem into a disaster.

Further, it is only a little conspiratorial to note that it would be in some foreign interests for these fires to happen, and it is a trivial thought exercise to imagine how it would be achieved. Each time these fires kick off the US media goes on a tantrum about “Canadian smoke”, and the antagonism is growing. There is the very possible scenario that agitators are intentionally setting fires3, adding to the normal amount that nature kicks off yearly. It’s also a massive sink of resources. Such intentional acts are highly improbable, but not remotely impossible.

And honestly, I get if Americans are annoyed. I’m annoyed. Every impacted party deserves answers on what is going to be done to prevent this in the future.

We need some sort of large-scale strategy to combat this, and cannot simply accept this as a normal. Long range drone surveillance networks with hundreds to thousands of drones constantly scanning for fires, for instance, responding before the situation becomes uncontrollable. Massively expanding resources at the ready to deal with the fires. Cutting more fire breaks. And so on. There has to be a way out of this outside of having Superman turn back time.

Footnotes

  1. I purchased a number of boxes of masks last year when it became clear this wasn’t a one-off and instead was a new norm. ↩

  2. Meta is currently planning a billion dollar data centre in Alberta that is going to be 100% powered by natural gas. Zero renewables or sustainable options like nuclear, and it wasn’t even a concern or consideration for their “fuck the planet, bro” plans. Big oil and their bought politicians are how we got here, but the cold hard truth is that they could get away with it because very foolish people hijacked good causes for their own pet “right the wrongs of the past” projects, making it easy to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, annoyed at another group hijacking efforts like Kyoto to instead be a giant wealth redistribution scheme. It makes it easy to reduce public trust and turn them against efforts we should be behind. ↩

  3. Traditionally we’d look to Russia4 as the culprit, but in the world of 2026 it is entirely within the realm of the possible that America is a suspect, as that nation is now openly fomenting dissent in all Western nations (things like universal healthcare and functioning governments are annoying for America’s kleptocrats, explaining why that country is now more hostile to traditional allies than enemies). America spends most of its efforts trying to undermine Canada, Europe, South Korea, and so on – hey look, the demented diddler in a criminal administration posted yet another US flag over Canada meme – while its administration looks more like something you’d find in a failed post-Soviet state. So watch as American plutocrat-owned media makes a big deal about the fires, trying to move the needle towards “and this is why we’re righteous in invading and liberating with our heinously corrupt kleptocracy / idiocracy form of government”. ↩

  4. Every discussion about these fires features countless idiot-bots posting variations of “Hurrr, if we didn’t send money to Ukraine…” comments (“money sent to Ukraine” is magic money that apparently can be respent countless times, solving every problem or ill. Every single issue Canada has ever or will ever face apparently could be solved if we just didn’t help Ukraine defend against Russia aggression, which is obvious nonsense but it’s the bot go to). Trying to present forest fires as a consequence of helping victims of Russian imperialism/terrorism is completely on brand with the tankie brigade, and should put every suspicion on that nation and the actions of its actors in Canada. ↩