For successive years, the Great White North has, with regularity, cast vast clouds of woodsmoke across the northeastern United States. I’ve lived in New England for 35 years, and in the northeast my entire life. We never had this. It is new, as in recent, and it reeks, smokes, and stinks of incompetence.
Forest fires in Canada are causing significant air quality issues across a dozen US states or more, every damn year. And before the proglodytes start their rant about global warming, every year the Canadian Mounted Police arrest a handful of arsonists. [Related: Where There’s Smoke There’s Canada Which Is Officially a Public Health Menace to Granite Staters]
Eco-Arson has resulted in considerable damage in the US, Australia, the Amazon, Canada, Italy, Sicily, and now Greece, where at least 20 people have died.
Maybe they need to borrow Smokey Bear and up the penalties?
I bring it up because I haven’t noticed any issues where I live, and to be honest, I can’t recall it being a problem over the recent span of years. I read about it in the area and across the northeast, but a reader just sent me a massive rant about this and what she’s seeing in her corner of the state we share.
As far back as my memory goes, I’ve never seen or heard of these wildfires in Canada that envelop us in NH with this thick smoke, this has gone on though for about the past 5 years or so. It’s a recent development as far as I can tell, from observation. I thought it was an isolated incident, but now it’s year after year I’ve noticed.
I can tell ya this: this pisses me off a lot.
When our bodies are being harmed from Canada’s negligence, year after year, yes I have a problem with this.
She’s seeing elderly folks having respiratory distress at the grocery store, and a lot of people wearing masks to try to limit exposure to Canadian smoke.
I watched an elderly lady become quite overcome with shortness of breath as she tried to get her cart. I helped her out with the carts, I offered to call an ambulance but she declined and began digging out an inhaler from her large Victoria’s Secret tote bag- which I couldn’t help noticing –being so pink and so sparkly with rhinestones.
She was having an awful time with the bad air.
Canada, as it turns out, is not having more fires, but the number of burn acres per year has begun to increase (2023 setting records). The next two graphs paint that picture.
The current map of fires appears to be a chaotic mess for Canadians, with only a few fires anywhere near the northeastern US (but plenty close to the Pacific Northwest) and Minnesota, Michigan, and so on.
Only one of the fires near the Great Lakes is out of control. The others are under control or being contained. Does that mean the smoke is coming from the mass of out-of-control fires in the middle of the country, and what are pissed off no-air-quality Canadians doing about it?
There is a lawmaker in Michigan who is fed up with this nonsense, and the reader wondered if anyone in Concord, New Hampshire, was there yet.
A prominent Michigan Lawmaker has called out Canada and I’d like to know who has done what here in NH to deal with what I see as a threat to my good health, this time it’s a real one and yet I see nothing being done about it- short of some warnings on WMUR.
You might expect the enviros who blame global warming for any “wildfires” to be ranting about the air quality – and maybe they are, but that’s a two-edged climate cult sword. Blue states like Vermont ignore wood-burning emissions on the premise that they are renewables despite their biomass energy plants being the state’s biggest emitters.
- Wood burning releases carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs).
- Particulate matter released during wood combustion can lead to reduced air quality, respiratory problems, and increased risk of respiratory infections and lung cancer.
- Transitioning to renewable energy sources and implementing energy efficiency measures can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from wood burning.
- Inhaling high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from wood burning and other sources can contribute to respiratory issues and the formation of smog.
If it’s bad for us to breathe it in when it comes from Canada…just sayin’.
What to do?
Not much we can do. Maybe Mr. Trump will jack up their tariffs until they figure it out, but what’s to figure out? If, as the reader suggests, many of these fires begin deep in the woods where there are no logging trails, maybe they need to consider more logging? That increase in supply could lower prices, and the US could volunteer to buy more cheap lumber (low or no tariff). That’d be very MAGA – lumber prices have sucked for years.
While they are cutting roads that firefighters could use, they can manage the woods as well, clean out deadwood and such, the sort of things California won’t do, that cost them property and lives every year. And there would be plenty of waste wood to make pellets for domestic stoves and feed for those renewable biomass plants and their woodsmoke emissions, which suddenly don’t count.
A win for everyone, especially if Canada puts an end to its recent practice of trying to smoke out the top half of the content every year.
