{"id":73145,"date":"2025-08-16T03:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T03:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/73145\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T03:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T03:15:07","slug":"as-canada-wildfires-choke-us-with-smoke-republicans-demand-action-but-not-on-climate-change-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/73145\/","title":{"rendered":"As Canada wildfires choke US with smoke, Republicans demand action. But not on climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sternly worded statements and letters are filled with indignation and outrage: Republican U.S. lawmakers say Canada has done too little to contain wildfires and smoke that have fouled the air<\/a> in several states this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of enjoying family vacations at Michigan\u2019s beautiful lakes and campgrounds, for the third summer in a row, Michiganders are forced to breathe hazardous air as a result of Canada\u2019s failure to prevent and control wildfires,\u201d read a statement last week from the state\u2019s GOP congressional delegation, echoing similar missives from Republicans in Iowa, New York, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve demanded more forest thinning, prescribed burns and other measures to prevent fires from starting. They’ve warned the smoke is hurting relations between the countries and suggested the U.S. could make it an issue in tariff talks.<\/p>\n

But what they haven’t done is acknowledge the role of climate change \u2014 a glaring and shortsighted omission, according to climate scientists. It also ignores the outsized U.S. contribution to heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels like coal and gas that cause more intense heat waves and droughts, which in turn set the stage<\/a> for more destructive wildfires, scientists say.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything, Canada should be blaming the U.S. for their increased fires,\u201d said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Canadian government announced<\/a> almost $46 million in funding for wildfire prevention and risk assessment research projects. But Corey Hogan, parliamentary secretary to the federal energy and natural resources minister, said international cooperation is needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no people that want to do more about wildfires than Canadians,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cBut I think this also underlines the international challenges that are brought on by climate change … we need to globally tackle this problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The country has \u201cbeen fighting wildfires in this country at unprecedented rates since 2023<\/a>,\u201d when Canada saw its largest wildfire on record, said Ken McMullen, president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs. This year\u2019s first fire started in April, one of the earliest on record, and 2025 is now the second-worst year.<\/p>\n

As of Thursday, more than 700 wildfires were burning across the country, two-thirds of them out of control, with more than 28,000 square miles (72,520 square kilometers) burned in 4,400 wildfires so far this year, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.<\/a> That’s almost five times the surface area that’s burned so far in the U.S. this year. Most wildfires are started by people, sometimes on purpose but mostly by mistake, though McMullen said lightning is the culprit in many of Canada’s fires, especially in remote areas.<\/p>\n

McMullen said he has no interest in debating the role of climate change, but data show that something has changed. Sloughs and basins have dried up and water that once lapped at people\u2019s back doors in Canada\u2019s lake communities now is often hundreds of feet away.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can make up their own mind as to why that is,\u201d he said. \u201cBut something clearly has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax \u2014 a belief echoed by many in the GOP \u2014 and his administration has worked to dismantle and defund federal climate science and data collection, with little to no pushback from Republicans in Congress.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s proposed to revoke<\/a> the scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare \u2014 the central basis for U.S. climate change action. He’s declared a national energy emergency<\/a> to expedite fossil fuel development, canceled grants<\/a> for renewable energy projects and ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement<\/a>, aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press reached out to more than half a dozen Republicans who criticized Canada but none returned phone calls or emails.<\/p>\n

Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine said the wildfires are jeopardizing health and air quality in her state, too, but faulted Republicans for failing to meet the crisis head on \u2014 beginning by acknowledging climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than accept this reality and work together to find proactive, common-sense solutions for preventing and mitigating these fires, Republicans are burying their heads in the sand,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin Rep. Gwen Moore, a Democrat, criticized her Republican colleagues\u2019 letter to Canada\u2019s U.S. ambassador, saying those \u201cwho are in denial about climate change shouldn\u2019t be writing letters prescribing people\u2019s actions to try to contain it.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMullen, the Canadian wildfire expert, said battling the fires isn\u2019t as simple as many seem to believe.<\/p>\n

The country and its territories are vast and fires are often in remote areas where the best \u2014 and sometimes only \u2014 course of action if there are no residents or structures is to let them burn or \u201cit is going to just create another situation for us to deal with in a year or two or 10 or 20 years from now,\u201d McMullen said.<\/p>\n

Prescribed burns to clear underbrush and other ignition sources are used in some areas, but aren\u2019t practical or possible in some forests and prairies that are burning, experts said.<\/p>\n

McMullen has advocated for a Canadian forest fire coordination agency to help deploy firefighters and equipment where they’re needed.<\/p>\n

But as for stopping worsening fires, \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s much they can do,\u201d said University of Michigan climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck. He noted that hotter temperatures are melting permafrost in northern Canada, which dries out and makes the vast boreal forests far more likely to burn.<\/p>\n

Instead, the two countries should collaborate on climate change solutions “because our smoke is their smoke, their smoke is ours,\u201d Overpeck said. \u201cAs long as this trend of warming and drying continues, we\u2019re going to get a worsening problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news is … we know what the cause is … we can stop it from getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sternly worded statements and letters are filled with indignation and outrage: Republican U.S. lawmakers say Canada has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[45193,1331,49,48,2847,6093,13722,9890,295,11922,6804,2841,84,714,66,2845,6090,883],"class_list":{"0":"post-73145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-45193","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-climate-and-environment","13":"tag-climate-change","14":"tag-climate-science","15":"tag-energy-industry","16":"tag-environment","17":"tag-fires","18":"tag-forests","19":"tag-general-news","20":"tag-health","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-science","23":"tag-u-s-news","24":"tag-wildfires","25":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}