Talking About A World on Fire
Last week, well over 100 million people across the United States and Canada were forced to breathe dangerously unhealthy air, as smoke from hundreds of wildfires in Canada blanketed much of North America.
Climate change has made wildfires both more frequent and more severe, and they’re expected to continue to intensify as the world hurtles into ever-warmer global temperatures. A 2023 United Nations report projects a 14 percent global increase in the number of extreme fires within this decade, doubling by the end of the century.
Entire states like Minnesota and Wisconsin experienced their worst air quality in recorded history, as did several major cities including Chicago, Milwaukee, Columbus, and Detroit. Twenty million people in the New York City metropolitan area suffered their second-worst smoke event, a record broken only by June 2023’s Canadian wildfire smoke.
