Climate change has no borders.

Donald Trump called recent wildfire smoke the result of “willful negligence” on Canada’s part, stemming from improper forest management. He’s even threatened financial consequences for contaminating American air (1). Yes, smoke crosses borders… and so do the impacts of climate policy and climate change.

The reality is that fire seasons worldwide have become longer and more intense, with extreme wildfire activity more than doubling since the early 2000s (2,3). The most impacted areas are forests in the Western U.S., northern North America, and northern Russia (3). The cause? Climate change due to human activities, which increases ‘fire weather’ – warmer temperatures, increased lightning strikes, and dry,windy days (3,4,5,6).

Experts forecast that these conditions will worsen, with parts of Canada seeing up to 300% more ‘fire weather’ – potentially burning twice as much area per year by 2099 (4,7,8).

Investment in wildfire management is essential, but no amount of fire fighting changes the fact that longer and fiercer fire seasons are a climate issue – one that Canada can’t solve alone. Both the United States and Canada are among the top emitters of greenhouse gases (9). We KNOW that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels (10). The real ‘willful negligence’ is ignoring this fact and refusing to support climate policies and climate action. When countries don’t act on climate change – everyone suffers.