Don’t Blame Canada … Look In The Mirror, U.S.!

Posted on by under Environmental Issues, Global Issues, History, Political commentary, Social commentary

It’s funny, and not in a ‘ha ha’ sort of way, that the U.S. media barely even noted the Canadian wildfires that have been burning since late April, until last week, when the smoke from those fires crossed the border and began affecting the U.S.  Worse yet, though, is the fact that people are blaming Canada!  As if the Canadians started the fires, burned their own land and property, just to annoy the United States!  Did Mexico blame us the last several years when smoke from the West Coast wildfires surely traveled south to Mexico?  Sometimes, the U.S. can be a very arrogant nation.

Let’s look at some facts, shall we?  The wildfires started in the western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta and have spread to the eastern regions of Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario.  As of last Thursday, there were nearly 2,300 fires in nine of the country’s 13 provinces and territories that have destroyed approximately 9.4 million acres of forest and forced more than 100,000 people from their homes.  The province of Quebec has had 154 active wildfires, the most in the country.

So, what caused the fires?  The forest fires in Quebec were mainly caused by lightning, according to Reuters. Half of the wildfires in Canada are caused by lightning, and those fires are responsible for over 85% of wildfire destruction in the country.  The cause of wildfires in Alberta is still unknown, but fires in other parts of the country are believed to be caused by human activity, like discarding cigarettes from passing trains.  But those are only the immediate causes … there is a deeper, underlying cause.  Can you guess what it is?

An excerpt from Heated, an environmental newsletter to which I subscribe (and highly recommend) …

Canada is not truly responsible for this ongoing health crisis of wildfire smoke in the Eastern United States. That honor goes to climate polluters and climate obstructionists: those who have prevented action to slow climate change, despite knowing extreme weather events like these would become more frequent and deadly as a result.

It is a direct result of climate inaction that wildfire season is starting earlier, lasting longer, and burning more area. It is a direct result of climate inaction that hotter, drier weather and longer fire seasons have become more common.

Regarding these particular wildfires in Canada, it will take months for researchers to determine exactly how much climate change influenced them. But it’s safe to say these fires are exactly in line with climate scientists’ predictions of unprecedented events that would occur without action.

News outlet after news outlet has made it clear: the Canadian wildfires, and the resulting air pollution blanketing the U.S., are what climate change looks like. And while Canada is responsible for a good chunk of historical emissions that have caused the climate crisis, they share that responsibility with many other, much higher-polluting countries—including the United States.

The pollution blanketing the Eastern U.S. skies should thus not primarily serve as an opportunity to make jokey jabs at Canada. It should primarily serve as a solemn reminder that the consequences of global warming aren’t limited by geography.

In my view, the U.S. is far more to blame than Canada, as we continue to argue about climate change and policies that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.  When did you last hear someone say, “Sure, I’ll lower my thermostat and turn off half of my lights, walk to the mailbox instead of driving, cut back on meat consumption, reduce my use of plastics, compost my food garbage, recycle,  stay home instead of flying to Vegas for a vacation this year, and trade my gas-guzzling SUV for a more economical vehicle”?   Point made.

Americans can damn well stop complaining about the air quality and the smoke from the Canadian wildfires and stop blaming Canada, when we ourselves have contributed as much as Canada to the cause and spread of those fires.  The previous administration rolled back over 125 environmental regulations and pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords … some of that damage has yet to be repaired.  Even today, I hear politicians and candidates threatening to reverse environmental protections, as many of them are heavily indebted to the fossil fuel industry.  And remember … it won’t likely be long, probably a matter of a month or two, before we start seeing wildfires in California and elsewhere in the west.

Bottom line here is that this is only the beginning.  The scientists have warned us for years, and we failed to heed their warnings, and this is the price we pay.  Worse yet will be the price our children and grandchildren will pay.

 

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56 thoughts on “Don’t Blame Canada … Look In The Mirror, U.S.!”

  2. It has not escaped my notice that here in America wildfires instantly began plaguing our biggest Blue states immediately upon Trump’s election. Investigations into, for instance, the Paradise, California fire, show pictures of totally destroyed structures immediately beside trees which still had leaves on them.

    Let’s not completely discount the potential factor of experimental weaponry gone wrong.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. That’s a very good article. Sweden, my country of origin, takes care of the forests extremely well and has done so for more than a century. Yet in 2018 northern Sweden had a lot of forest fires (near the arctic). It was a record and a disaster. I was there. Of course some of them could be attributed to careless humans but the really underlying cause was the record temperatures, highest ever recorded (almost 200 years), and the extreme draught, also unusual for northern Sweden.

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Thank you for sharing!!. again, it is the people.. for those that are set in their ways they ignore any issues until it affects them directly, “out of sight, out of mind”, and quick to blame others rather than make changes themselves… 🙂
    Example; folks coming to USA trying to get away from the violence and corruption of central and south America.. where to they get the guns from, USA, who does drugs, etc. USA.. The USA is part of the problem but will not acknowledge it, blame someone else… 🙂
    When it comes to dealing with the climate, elements of today’s society has found a way of life that suits them and refuses to change or modify their thinking, how much support would one get to have the Daytona 500 or a Harley motorcycle with a electric engine… 🙂
    The leadership will only follow the will of their supporters, the people…example, while governor Christie supported a ban on assault weapons to gather any Democratic support, yesterday, by running for President as a Republican, in an effort to get votes, he stated in his town hall that he has “evolved” and no longer supports the ban,… 🙂

    Hope all is well in your part of the universe and until we meet again..
    May your troubles be less
    Your blessings be more
    And nothing but happiness
    Come through your door
    (Irish Saying)

    Like

  7. It’s, always, easier to, point fingers at someone else, than to, see our own faults, easier, to, note how awful someone is, treating another, but, when we act similarly, we become, self-righteous, and, come up with, a ton of, excuses. It’s, a hell of a lot easier, on our own, conscience…

    Liked by 3 people

      • Not only do we (still) hear about the fires in Canada but we hear about most newsworthy things that happen up there.

        Canada is our sister country. There’s a lot of people who live here who have dual citizenship & lots of people who live here have property in Canada. Up until the late 1970s, my mother’s family had a cottage on Long Beach. I loved going up there. Into the 80s, I spent most of my summers in Canada. I crossed the border almost every day, going back & forth to work. I love Canada.

        For what it’s worth, when I was a little girl, I wasn’t even aware that Canada was another country. I have relatives up there, too, in Hamilton & Kitchener, on both sides of the family.

        As far as I’m concerned, the National Emblem starts with “Oh Canada” & then proceeds into “The Star Spangled Banner”. But I suppose that’s a border thing.

        Liked by 3 people

        • I hear it is the same at our Swedish and Norwegian borders. People also ferry daily between Tallinn and Helsinki. I live in Turku/Åbo (it has always had two names both in Finnish and Swedish, as both languages are used and nobody can tell anymore wich name was first). It is a medieval town in western Finland and when I moved here my dad joked, that I had moved to the suburb of Stockholm, though the Baltic sea is in between the two, but in a lot of ways we are closer to Stockholm, than Helsinki here. My family hails from the border with Russia, but no similar connection extends over that border, even though it is merely a hundred years when we were part of the same country with them. The current border is even younger (from the aftermath of WWII), and from my ancestral estate you can see the fields and forests that used to belong to my family, now part of Russia.

          Liked by 2 people

        • I’m glad to hear that! The rest of this nation could take a lesson from Buffalo, from you. I’m so tired of the “nationalism” … we all exist on this planet together and what affects one, potentially affects us all, particularly such things as fires, floods, storms, melting ice caps, etc. Were it up to me, there would be no such thing as borders.

          Liked by 1 person

  9. Last week was an interesting one for us as those wildfire smoke also made it to our city. I thought our neighbour was BBQ-ing until I read the news. It was quite intense and two days kids were kept indoors all day during school.

    It certainly is a sign of more to come and I hope governments pay more attention to the changing environment and the need for more measures. For instance, our premiere in our province had slashed the emergency budget to fight forest forest by 67% and then this happened. People need to take the environmental crisis more seriously before it’s too late.

    Liked by 3 people

    • We had some haze and smokiness, but nothing compared to what you had, or to what NYC had. Here, they even closed some of the schools. I do hope they get the fires out soon before more homes and trees and wildlife are lost. Yes, people need to be taking climate change VERY seriously, but … they aren’t. Sigh.

      Liked by 1 person

  10. This might be a bit long.
    Were Americans paying attention to the wildfires in Australia the last few years? There have been huge wildfires in Australia in 3 of the last 4 years. Predictions for 2023 are forecasting widespread wildfires even larger than in those 3 years. As a side issue, there has also been a number of floods in other parts of Australia. Climate change is hitting them hard.
    If you weren’t paying attention to those fires, you probably weren’t paying attention to wildfires in Canada. I live in the middle of wildfire territory. In 2019 we had to evacuate when our town was threatened by the largest fire ever recorded here, over 750,000 hectares of old growth forest burned that year. We were out for 3 weeks. Fortunately for us the winds blew the fire around our town, not through it. Many people were not as lucky.
    Looking at the province of Alberta as a whole for 2023, we have already lost almost 1,500,000 hectares of forest and grasslands to wildfires. This is our greatest loss since people started keeping records. And we are only halfway through our fire season. If the 2nd half of the season is as bad, or worse, we will lose over 3,000,000 hectares of land, just in Alberta! Canada’s northern forests are one of the biggest oxygen-producing, carbon-eating areas in the world. If we lose these forests the world will suffer in ways no one ever dreamed of. Imagine Brazil cutting down its rainforest in one year. I doubt you can.
    But, Jill, you are wrong to suggest people throwing cigarette butts are responsible for a lot of fires started near train tracks. The main way trains cause fires is the sparking of the wheels on the rails, with the sparks flying out into dry grasses and other combustible material. Most passenger trains in Canada are now smoke-free, or at least that is what we are told.
    Yes, cigarette butts do cause wildfires, but more likely near highways. And fines for getting caught throwing a butt out the window can reach $50,000. That is a pretty hefty fine for having a cigarette.
    Anyway, I am glad you reblogged this post,, I was going to do that last week, but got sidetracked with a different idea, and then forgot about doing this one. Climate change is affecting every part of our globe, directly or indirectly, but unless everyone works together, we cannot stop it from destroying life as we know it. And, yes, the USofA is one of the worst polluters in the world. It would help us up here, and down under in Australia, if all you Americans would force your governments to start doing something meaningful to combat climate change. You aren’t the only ones, we Cansdians are resposible too, as are China, India, Europe and Russia. At least we up here are trying. We could sure use some help!

    Liked by 3 people

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