During the July 2026 forest fire conflagration Marco Navarro-Genie observed on his Substack that Ottawa had declared a climate emergency in 2021 and promised new Canadian-made water bombers, which five years later still do not exist. So we can credit the federal government for not adding to Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by commissioning new fire fighting aircraft whose construction and operation would emit CO2. Which is also a convenient omission when Ontario’s blowhard-in-chief declared a war on fire and smoke or whatever it was, announcing that “the province will spend whatever is needed to deal with the forest fires… Our government will not spare a single penny”. But they might spare many pennies: Ford’s regime has actually been skimping on firefighting. The Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs retorted that the province had budgeted $135 million last year, actually spend $271 million, and promptly budgeted just $150 million again this year. That press release seems to have disappeared; in Canada one does not speak truth to power. But the numbers are correct.

With respect to wildfires the Angus Reid Institute, “Canada’s Non-Profit Foundation Committed to Independent Research” (which is at once vague and self-important as independent research is, credibly or not, a selling point for a great many such organizations) noted a paradoxical Canadian poll finding:

“Wildfire fears burn hot, even as belief in human-caused climate change continues to decline/ That said, three-quarters say climate change is contributing to worsening fires”.

The week our smoke went south Trump got into the act, ranting on his social media platform that:

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable! I will call the Prime Minister during the day to find out what they are going to do about it.”

Of course he didn’t blame climate change, and it’s always hard to know what to make of someone who uses a lovely archaism like “therein” but inexplicably capitalizes words in midsentence. But as David Blackmon adds, legacy media couldn’t resist reducing matters to a knee-jerk narrative, starting by recounting Trump’s accusation then trotting out: “a handful of academics who attribute the smoke drifting into the U.S. primarily to climate change making fuels drier and fires more severe. This framing is predictable, selective, and incomplete.”

And what would we do without the scientists who say? Blackmon does his readers the courtesy of reviewing data showing declining global wildfire rates and referring to published evidence of the fire deficit across North America:

“Nature is partially reverting toward historical regimes, compounded by decades of stupid policies driven by alarmism which mandate reduced mechanical thinning and prescribed burning.”

Which, to be fair, was what Trump was complaining about, but the complaint applies equally to US forest management too.

The thing we still can’t understand is everyone acting as if smoke from fires were some new and hideous development. In fact if there were more fires in the past, as most evidence seems to suggest, then there must have been more smoke. People just didn’t look at it and go “What can it be?”

As for the overall climate yelling thing, Blackmon wraps up with:

“Meteorologist Chris Martz has highlighted these patterns with data: global burn area at multi-decadal lows in recent years-to-date in some periods, no statistically significant global drought expansion since reliable satellite records began, and U.S. heatwave frequency actually lower in long-term comparisons when properly defined.”

Undeterred, Reuters “Sustainable Switch” finds drought and chokes on it:

“Heatwaves, wildfires and dried-up waterways share the focus in today’s newsletter as France, Spain and Italy continue to battle blazes, while reservoirs and rivers become parched and arid from the Danube and Rhine to Peru and Arizona due to rising temperatures.”

It’s always something. Just not something new.