Smell that, Canada? That’s your future burning.
Climate change will hammer Canada. We’ve earned it.
The blaze which scorched the town of Lytton BC off of the map was just the beginning for intense wildfires that have now led the province to declare an official state of emergency. More than three hundred conflagrations are raging as communities are evacuated. More than a thousand kilometres away, I can smell the smoke. Indigenous communities in Manitoba and Northern Ontario are also being driven from their homes by raging wildfires. Ontario’s Doug Ford cut provincial wildfire response spending by 70% in his first budget, so he’s doubtless reluctant to consider a similar declaration, lest he be reminded of it. Not just him, of course. Naturally Alberta’s Jason Kenney cut firefighting budgets, too. After all, when all of the experts are telling us to expect more wildfires, you really need to hamstring the people trying to protect us from them, right? Air quality warnings for smoke are blanketing cities across the nation. Smoke in Toronto is thick enough to redden the sun.
Think hard about your next lungful. How does it taste? That’s the first whiff of Canada’s future going up in smoke. It’s like second hand smoke, except that it’s the natural end product of our national refusal to take climate change seriously for decades, so it’s dishonest to blame…
