US and Canada fight over who’s to blame for wildfires

This summer, as deadly fires emerged in Manitoba in Canada, Republican MPs in the nearby US states wrote letters that want Canada to be held responsible for the smoke dragged to the south.

Calvin Callahan, a Republican State Representative from Wisconsin, said in a letter in early August, “Our sky is drowning with the smoke of forest fire that we have not started and we cannot control.” He wrote.

Callahan, Iowa, Minnesota and Northern Dakota deputies, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Canada’s Canada’s Forest Fire Management called for an official complaint.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew quickly condemned the movement, accusing the deputies of throwing a lumber of timber ve and playing “political games”.

By August, the fires roasted more than two million acres in Manitoba, forced thousands of people to evacuate, and two people killed-a married couple, who said that the fabrics were stuck by the flames that moved quickly around their family homes.

As September approaches, the data shows that 2025 is on the way to being the second worst forest fire season of Canada.

A PUBLISHED STUDY At Nature Journal in September Canada’s smoke from forest fires revealed that it has a comprehensive, fatal consequences. 4,100 AKUT in the USA, including smoke associated with smoke and more than 22,000 early deaths in Europe, the country’s worst record of the region in which the 2023 forest fires are estimated to cause more than 87,500 acute and premature deaths worldwide.

Wildfire smoke contains a kind of air pollution – PM2.5, known to trigger inflammation in the body. It may exacerbate conditions such as asthma and heart disease and damage neural connections in the brain for some reason.

Michael Brauer, a professor at the University of British Columbia, is Michael Brauer, who wrote the work together. The findings showed that forest fire smoke should be considered as a serious health problem that resembles breast cancer or prostate cancer.

For some American deputies, the accusation falls to Canada.

In August, Callahan wrote, “Canada’s inability to contain big forest fires,” he wrote.

Complaints raise the following question: Canada may be doing more to prevent forest fires – and the fumes through extension?

Climate and fire brigade experts in both countries said that the response to the BBC was largely no.

“As a global society, we will have this problem until we deal with human climate change as a global society,” Mike Flannigan, an emergency management and fire brigade at the University of Thompson Rivers at British Columbia, said. He said.

Metriks show that Canada’s forest fires, which is a natural part of the large Boreal forest, have worsening in recent years. The fire season now starts earlier, then ends, and on average burns more soil. 2023 fire, 15 million hectares (37 million acres) (37 million acres), a larger area than the UK, burned 8.7 million hectares (21.5 million acres) so far.

According to the Canada Inter Asgency Forest Fire Center, more than 500 fire in Manitoba, according to the Canada Inter Asgency Forest Fire Center.

Roughly of the forest fires of Canada, half of the forest fires are fired through lightning, the rest stems from the human activity and shows the data obtained from the National Forestry database. Experts warn that warmer temperatures make the land more dry and more susceptible to ignition.

Forest fires are not only worsening in Canada. The US has seen some of the most harmful flames, including 2023 Hawaii fires and Palisades fire in Los Angeles history, which have killed at least 102 people.

Both countries struggled to keep up with the sources of firefighters. According to the US Forest Service, Canadian water bombardment planes were deployed in California this year, and more than 600 US firefighters went north to help Canada.

In Canada, tense sources – and worsening fires – called for a national fire extinguishing service. Wildfire Emergency Intervention is currently handled separately by each of the provinces and regions.

“The system we’re working 40 years ago. Today is? Not much,” Flannigan said.

Others propose controlled burns, an application used in Australia and by domestic communities, but these fires will still produce smoke. Some advocate to invest in new technology that can help better clean the flammable material or detect forest fires faster in forests and towns.

Some of this work continues. In August, Canada promised more than $ 47 million for research projects that would help community better prepare and reduce forest fires.

Nevertheless, experts such as Jen Beverly, a wild fire professor from the University of Alberta, warn Canada that there is little to do to prevent fires completely.

“These are high -intensity fire ecosystems in Canada, which is different from fires in Australia or the United States.” “We have very difficult fires to manage under extreme conditions and we see more of them because of climate change.”

Prof Beverly, with a warmer climate, said that pollution should be considered. He said the US is the second worst carbon emitter behind China. “I mean, we must blame them for the problem,” he said.

In recent months, the Trump administration has also withdrew the environmental policies designed to reduce emissions and withdrew the US from Paris climate agreements.

Sheila Olmstead, a Professor of Environmental Policy University of Cornell, said that Canada and the US had a history of cooperation on pollution and climate, including an air quality agreement signed by the two in 1991 to address acid rain.

“It was a very clear framework to address the problem, and it seems incomplete here,” Olmusead said to Olmstead. He said that both countries would benefit from working together on forest fires instead of accusation.

As for the EPA complaint, it is not clear what the agency can do to resolve US deputies’ concerns. In a statement to the BBC, EPA said that it “examined and will respond through appropriate channels.”

Prof Brauer said that the data in his study showed that in Canada – usually fires in remote areas, although fires can reach far beyond their effects.

He told the BBC that it required to re -frame how the results of climate change were understood.

“The effects of a warmer climate are localized and there are winners and losers.” He said. “But this is an illustration in which some of these effects are globalized.”

He argued that US deputies’ complaints were “unfortunate distraction”, and instead should learn that the focus will cooperate and “how to live with smoke”.

“These things are not going, Prof Prof Brauer said, if there is a desire to adapt, there are ways to prevent future deaths.