Canadian Wildfires Cast a Dark Pall of Smoke Over the East Coast

Before getting started here, I have an announcement to make. After much consideration and introspection, I have decided to come out to you all that I am in the process of transitioning.

No, no, no! Not that kind of transitioning.

 As my wife and I head into retirement, we are in the process of transitioning to being California  residents. We felt we needed to do our part in some small way to reverse the ongoing trend of California hemorrhaging residents to other states. About a dozen years ago, we purchased a home in Oceanside with the intention of one day relocating there full time. In recent years, we have been traveling with the seasons from our home in New Jersey to spend more and more time on the west coast—especially during the autumn and winter months.

While I am a life-long Jersey boy, my wife grew up in California—in Chatsworth to be specific and is a proud alumna of UCLA (Go Bruins!). We met in New Jersey and decided to live and raise a family here with the promise of one day enjoying our golden years in the Golden State.

Just this past week I had a chance to sample what life is often like in California as the smoke from several Canadian wildfires wafted down from the Great White North and blanketed much of the northeast in a pall of sooty, smoky, and ultimately hazardous air. Out came the masks again, outdoor activities were officially cancelled, and government agencies strongly advised to remain indoors. Major League Baseball games at Yankee Stadium and Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park were even called off.  

While I had heretofore never experienced the orangish haze that brought along with it itchy eyes and a burning throat, my wife hardly blinked an eye as wildfires and concomitant darkened unhealthy air are all but a regular occurrences for California veterans. And while the Air Quality Index (AQI) measured cities like New York well over 500 and in the Hazardous spectrum—multiple times higher than daily dirty air leaders in China and India—AQI levels from previous California mega-blazes have at times exceeded what the east coast just endured.

Am I looking forward to revisiting the smoky air during my upcoming years on the west coast?  No more that I look forward to the ground occasionally moving underfoot or being taxed into oblivion by Sacramento politicians. These are the hazards I have willingly signed up for in exchange for much of the beauty that California has to offer—not the least of which is my loving wife of 35 years.

One additional thing that we should all come to expect is the all-but-reflexive inclination for America’s Left to blame incidents like the recent Canadian wildfires on Global Warming or Climate Change. It didn’t take long for many mainstream media outlets to point an accusing finger not at Mother Nature, but rather at humankind for causing the climatic circumstances necessary for a wildfire. 

And of course, walking in lockstep with the mainstream media are the usual cadre of Leftist politicians screaming “Climate change!” before any reasonable facts are in.

White House Spokesperson Karin Jean-Pierre proclaimed:

“Wildfires in Canada are another alarming example of the global climate crisis.”

Everyone’s favorite bloviator on Capitol Hill, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) declared in a Twitter post:

“Between NYC in wildfire smoke and this in PR, it bears repeating how unprepared we are for the climate crisis.”

“We must adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. ASAP to prepare for what’s to come and catch up to what is already here. #GreenNewDeal”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said:

“These Canadian wildfires are truly unprecedented, and we cannot ignore that climate change continues to make these disasters worse. Warmer temperatures and severe droughts mean forests burn faster, burn hotter, and burn bigger.”

Unprecedented? Hardly.

Worldwide wildfires, including those in California and the recent ones in Canada have been around, well, forever—or in Leftist Triggering terms–since God created the Heavens and the Earth. A simple internet search would tell you as much. A Wikipedia posting shows a list of Canadian fires—many of them wildfires– in (relatively) recently recorded history going back to 1825.  These fires have destroyed millions of square miles, er, hectares of land for our neighbors to the north. Which ones were due to Climate Change and which ones were due to other causes? Would any have been less severe had it not been for Climate change? Would any have happened at all if it was not for Climate Change?

The Canadian National Fire Database (CNFDB) lists the number of yearly hectares burned in wildfires over the last 40 years. The numbers are all over the place. Some stretches of years show rather minimal damage and then in other years the numbers spike. One would think that if something other than the normal and unpredictable variations of Mother Nature such as man-made Climate Change was at play in causing Canadian wildfires, those numbers would be steadily progressing upward. They aren’t.

Even if it turns out that this season’s wildfires in Canada are the worst in their history, can one year definitively convey the absolute cause as Climate Change—man-made or otherwise?

And even if we were to cede that it is in fact Climate Change as the root cause of the 2023 Canadian wildfires, what of it? As I have pointed out before in a California Globe article, the measures Leftists prescribe to combat the phenomenon such as AOC’s Green New Deal, or the 1997 Kyoto Protocol have precisely zero chance of affecting global temperatures in any appreciable way especially when the world’s greatest polluters in China and India are essentially exempt from their provisions. Ultimately these measures would do nothing more than hamstring American Industry, cost Americans jobs, cripple our economy and send Trillions (yes TRILLION$) of our dollars to other so-called developing nations. 

The Climate Change Crisis, (nee Global Warming) has always been about money—a lot of it—and a transfer of wealth and economic power elsewhere.

 For the mainstream media, Leftist politicians, and their minions to immediately and reflexively turn the 2023 Canadian Wildfires into a Climate Change crusade well before the last flame has been extinguished is at the very least disingenuous. More aptly, it is reckless. But we have grown accustomed to this strategy and can all but predict it. Their motivations are as transparent as New Jersey’s crisp clean air now that the smoke from the north has moved on.