“I never remembered this happening,” President Donald Trump said Monday, referring to the stinging wildfire smoke that blew over from Canada into the northern United States. “Over the last four or five years, you saw it starting to take place.”
Unfortunately, as I write in Slate, this was not a belated epiphany from Trump about the realities of climate change. Instead, it was part of the GOP’s justification for amping up its trade war with Canada, threatening everything from extra tariffs to all-out sanctions as punishment for our northern neighbor’s supposed failure to clear flammable debris from its woodland floors.
They’re incorrect about the cause of the fires, which are primarily raging in Ontario’s boreal forest—an undeveloped stretch of lush greenery that bursts into flame more frequently thanks to searing temperatures fueled by climate change. And the Republicans’ misguided approach is already ensuring that future smog drifts will be worse: Part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to reduce Ottawa’s reliance on an increasingly unreliable United States is to build out more fossil-fuel pipelines, locking in emissions for decades to come in a bid for “energy sovereignty.”
Instead of taking a moment to reflect and engage in necessary cooperation, Trump’s “solution” is to subjugate North America to inevitable soot clouds every summer. You can read more in my piece for Slate.
—Nitish Pahwa
