Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
A burning issue
Across North America and beyond, climate change is making wildfires and smoke worse and worse, write SETH BORENSTEIN and MELINA WALLING
Smoke from a wildfire in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington State rises in the background in this view Hood River, Ore, Sunday, July 2, 2023

IT WAS a smell that invoked a memory. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago. It was smoke from wildfires, the odour of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world.

Kuchlbauer had flashbacks to the surprise of soot coating her car three years ago when she was a recent college graduate in San Diego. 

Bomba had deja vu from San Francisco, where the air was so thick with smoke people had to mask up. They figured they left wildfire worries behind in California, but a Canada that’s burning from sea to warming sea brought one of the more visceral effects of climate change home to places that once seemed immune.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks in front of a live map of smoke movement during a press conference updating media on ongoing forest fires in Ontario, in Toronto [Pic: Cole Burston/The Canadian Press via AP]
Climate Crisis / 30 July 2026
30 July 2026

As Ontario burns, campaigners are demanding action – not more pipelines, says DAVE McKEE

A pharmacy sign shows in Bordeaux, southwestern France, June 23, 2026
Climate / 30 June 2026
30 June 2026

Extreme heat is now one of the defining public health challenges of a warming world, explains Prof IAN WILLIAMS