While New Yorkers have become inured to the pungent smell of cannabis smoke wafting through the streets, the Canadian wildfire smoke currently turning the sky orange is taking our tolerance to new levels.
By Wednesday we were registering the worse air pollution of any major city in the world and COVID mask maniacs were back in their element.
But don’t fall for the propaganda that climate change is to blame.
The situation in Canada is similar to that in Australia, where green ideology and chronic government underfunding mean that the forests currently ablaze have not been managed properly for years.
Instead of dead wood and undergrowth being removed regularly using low-intensity controlled or “prescribed” burns, forests have become overgrown tinderboxes. Fire trails that used to allow first responders easy access to the forest have closed over as vast tracts of land are locked away from humans. Logging and other commercial practices that used to self-interestedly tend to forest health have been phased out.
Back in 2016 when Parks Canada had planned just 12 prescribed burns for the year, Mark Heathcott, the agency’s retired fire management coordinator of 23 years, warned about the importance of the practice to prevent future wildfires.
In 2020, a paper in the journal Progress in Disaster Science warned: “Wildfire management agencies in Canada are at a tipping point. Presuppression and suppression costs are increasing but program budgets are not.”
Canadian indigenous groups also have complained that bureaucratic obstacles hinder their ability to perform the controlled burns they have used for centuries to reduce fuel load, flush out food and regenerate forests.
But in our enlightened era, pressure from green activists using illogical emotional arguments about wildlife habitats have caused governments to underfund and curtail the scientific use of prescribed burning to mitigate wildfire risk.
The ensuing incineration of forests and critters by super-hot runaway wildfires is infinitely worse for wildlife habitats.
But for climate alarmists, the assault on New Yorkers air quality is a positive outcome that they can spin to prove their case. They’re like the arsonist who sets fire to a building and then profits from the clean-up.
