Climate change

The heavy smoke that made breathing a chore for many in northern St. Louis County this past week is just the latest reminder that our future is clouded by the changing climate.
We know that our climate is warming – the data on that could not be clearer. The ten hottest years globally in human history have all occurred within the past ten years, a streak that no one can legitimately dismiss as coincidence. We know, as well, that the frequency and intensity of drought is increasing as a result. Add in extreme temperatures, like we experienced last week with our unprecedented early May heat wave, and you have all the makings of the conditions we recently experienced in our region with the Brimson Complex fires.
We’ve been here before, with increasing frequency. The biggest wildfires in Minnesota in the last century, including Pagami Creek, Ham Lake, Cavity Lake, Greenwood, and now the Brimson Complex fires, have all occurred since 2006. That’s not a coincidence.
And if it isn’t smoke from fires down the road, it’s coming from Canada or the western U.S., which means our air quality on any given summer day depends mostly on the direction of the upper winds.
All around the world, forests are burning like never before in human history. A recent study in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, suggests that the increasing prevalence of wildfire smoke is beginning to erode the progress we’ve made on air quality in the U.S. since the enactment of the Clean Air Act. This is just one of the many costs of our failure to address the threat posed by climate change.
And yet, our current political leaders aren’t just ignoring the problem – they’re actively and intentionally making it worse. At a time when climate change is increasing the incidence of extreme fire as well as the frequency and severity of storms and flooding events, we have an administration that is actively working to not just de-emphasize these threats, but to actually prohibit studies and even policy-level discussions on ways to address the impacts of climate change.
Federal websites have been scrubbed of information related to the changing climate. Research on the subject has been canceled and existing studies have been stuffed down the Trump administration’s memory hole. In the case of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers had to sue the Trump administration to get them to agree to restore basic climate-related information, which farmers said they rely on for their decision-making on what and when to plant.
As we noted here last week, the administration has canceled the Energy Star program, which saved U.S. consumers billions of dollars annually and promoted industry innovation in energy efficiency. There is no downside to helping consumers make good choices. Intentionally gutting sound public policy is akin to vandalism, and it’s become a hallmark of the current White House.
An administration that claims it wants to Make America Healthy Again has a strange way of showing it. At a time when wind and solar are now the cheapest and cleanest ways to generate electricity, we have an administration that is actively promoting the greater use of coal, even though the negative health effects of coal burning are well documented.
The health effects of wildfire smoke are equally well understood. As we report this week (see page 4B), wildfire smoke produces a nasty mix of gases, but state health officials are most concerned about the prevalence of fine particulates in wildfire smoke. These fine particulates have “the ability to deeply penetrate lung tissue and even affect the heart and circulatory system,” according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Children, older adults, the poor, and those suffering from respiratory or circulatory diseases are most at risk from the effects of wildfire smoke.
We all know the way to address this problem. We have to drastically reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which contribute directly to the global warming that has fueled our climate chaos and contributed to the increasing incidence of wildfire. We have to encourage political leaders who ignore the problem and directly challenge those who deny the reality of the climate chaos their destructive policies will foster. If we want to avoid a future of darkened skies and frequent outbreaks of suffocating smoke, we need to act now. The survival of the world we’ve known depends on it.