Toronto claimed the crown for having the worst air quality on the planet this week, beating the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Devastating wildfires in northwestern Ontario are creating eerie orange skies in parts of Canada and the United States, igniting a firestorm of apocalyptic memes across social media. Unsurprisingly, many climate alarmists are attributing the natural disaster to global warming rather than poor forest management.
Climate Change Causes Wildfires?
Krystal Ball, the left-leaning host of Breaking Points, perhaps participated in engagement farming, writing in a July 16 post on X, “The people who profited off of climate denial are traitors to humanity and all of creation.” The Boston Globe warned that smoky skies could become a “part of summertime in New England.” Syracuse.com uttered the same prognostication, but for Upstate New York.
While the cause of these wildfires has yet to be conclusively determined, there are several reasons why millions of people are living under ominous-looking skies. Poor forest management is often a contributing factor, as officials refuse to clear dead wood.
Dead wood plays a significant role in intensifying forest fires: Large fallen logs add substantial fuel, allowing flames to grow, while smaller branches, twigs, and dry leaves ignite quickly and help spread fire across the forest floor. Once burning, these ground‑level logs can smolder for long periods, producing hotter, more destructive fires that damage soil and harm surrounding trees.
On rare occasions, arsonists start these fires. A couple of years ago, a Quebec man was found guilty of starting a series of fires that forced hundreds of people to flee their homes. Sometimes, careless campers also create these catastrophes. In other instances, it’s because governments fail to conduct controlled burns.
President Donald Trump made a worthwhile point in November 2018. “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” he wrote on Twitter, now X. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests.”
Facts Don’t Care About Narratives
A common narrative from climate pearl-clutchers is that wildfires are getting worse and becoming more ubiquitous. Alarmists typically apply the same argument to hurricanes.
However, since 2002, the total area burned by wildfires each year (croplands, forests, savannas, grasslands, and shrublands) has been steadily declining, according to 2026 data from the Global Wildfire Information Systems. Going back a century, using global historical reconstruction, the volume of burned areas is far lower today. Even CO2 emissions emanating from wildfires have been on a downward trajectory.
Bjorn Lomberg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus and author of False Alarm, wrote in a March 2025 op-ed for the Financial Post:
“First, most studies projecting an increase in wildfires ignore adaptation. In fact, humans don’t like fire and make great efforts to reduce it, which is why since 1900 humanity has seen less burned area, not more. The data from last century involve historical reconstruction but since 1997, NASA satellites have tracked all significant fires. The record shows a dramatic fall in global burned area.”
Indeed, there have been spikes along the way, but the trend is your friend, and this development shows improving environmental conditions – or at least better adaptation.
Additionally, in the first half of 2026, the world has burned at record-low levels. Every continent is below the 2012–2025 average. Europe? Down 67%. The Americas? Down 48%. Africa? Down 43%. This would extend last year’s numbers, which registered the second-lowest burn rate since 2001.
Polls, at least in the Great White North, suggest that a majority of people believe climate change is causing wildfires and that these events are occurring more frequently. But why is everyone so certain? It is perhaps the “CNN Effect,” the idea that everyone has a camera that records footage, which is then easily uploaded to YouTube or X and spread worldwide.
“The flood of disaster porn is terrifying our kids and skewing our perception, and that can only lead to bad climate policy,” Lomberg wrote.
Just Asking Questions, Ma’am
Even if these climate alarmists were correct, why hasn’t all the money spent on stopping climate change prevented something like wildfires?
Canada has an industrial carbon tax (it also had a consumer carbon tax until late last year). Has the levy shielded the world from Mother Nature?
Since Greta Thunberg bobby-soxxers attribute everything to global warming – hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, and even snowstorms – why hasn’t the trillion dollars here and the trillion dollars there prevented the Earth from doing what it has done for 4.5 billion years?
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