Smoke, Fire, and Who Actually Owns This Problem
The haze that’s been sitting over half the country this week isn’t an accident, and it isn’t Canada’s fault for neglecting yard work.
Nearly 900 wildfires are burning across Canada right now and have already scorched roughly 11,000 square miles—an area slightly bigger than Massachusetts. The smoke has pushed air quality into “unhealthy” or “hazardous” territory across more than 20 U.S. states, from the Midwest to Washington, D.C., putting something like 100+ million Americans under air quality alerts.
With such an extreme weather event, there are a few things worth being clear-eyed about: