Above photo by Matt Palmer
In mid-July, Michiganders and millions of other Americans grappled with suffocating wildfire smoke, again, for the third year in a row. Our summers in northern Michigan are so short and so precious; losing days to smoke leaves people feeling a wide range of emotions: sadness, anger, hopelessness, and general heartbreak. All of these emotions and more are warranted; it’s hard not to feel doom and gloom when you choke on the air outside and everything is obscured by orange haze.
What isn’t warranted are the short-sighted and ill-informed attacks that some of our state leaders are sending towards Canada. The wildfires aren’t from lack of forest management on Canada’s part but from the impacts of global warming. If we truly want to protect and help Michiganders from these smoke days, we need to be clear and honest about the problem if we hope to address it.
Yes, wildfires are a natural occurrence but a warmer climate is making these fires burn earlier and later in the year and burn with more intensity. Yale Climate Connections explains, “As the climate warms, fire danger increases, mostly because the atmosphere gets “thirstier” – more water vapor can evaporate into warmer air. This results in more water vapor evaporating from plants, which dries them out and creates an increased risk of large and intense fires that can generate huge smoke plumes.”
We need our leaders in Michigan to be honest so we can spend our limited resources on solutions that will actually work. We started taking air pollution seriously in the late ‘60s and passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, dramatically improving the air quality for Americans across the country. While global warming is a global problem, we have proven that taking pollution seriously can create real, positive change. That means we have to take the climate crisis seriously and work to transition our economy to a clean energy economy to stop the combustion of fossil fuels, which is heating our planet and fueling these fires.
We now need a comprehensive plan and dedicated resources to deal with smoke days on the local and state levels.
While we are already locked into smoky summers for the foreseeable future as our planet has already warmed roughly 1.1 degrees C (2.32 degrees F), we can avoid even worse fires by cutting our carbon emissions now. Every fraction of a degree matters. Because these massive fires aren’t going away anytime soon, we must prepare our residents for this new reality. Our state has plans and resources for snow days and tornadoes, extreme cold and extreme heat events, droughts and floods. We now need a comprehensive plan and dedicated resources to deal with smoke days on the local and state level.
This means having comprehensive policies to protect our citizens for when the smoke returns – the EPA calls these smoke-ready communities. Taking proactive steps to have people, resources, and communications set up to deal with smoke events can help our most vulnerable citizens, protect our workers, and keep our economy and communities thriving. Not doing so has costly consequences. The wildfire smoke from the week of July 15th is now estimated to have cost Michigan communities $6.69 billion in lost revenue as “many organizations canceled events or shut down because of the smoke.” Not taking this problem seriously would be a costly mistake for all Michigan residents in summers to come.
The wildfire smoke from the week of July 15th is now estimated to have cost Michigan communities $6.69 billion in lost revenue
We can and need to take a comprehensive and collective approach with these fires because while they are in Canada (and Minnesota) right now, Michigan can soon have our own wildfire problem and be looking for help. Damages from the 2025 ice storm and the floods this year have left our forests severely damaged with debris drying out and waiting for a spark. We are likely to soon face a Super El Niño that will bring even warmer and drier weather, and in turn, create conditions for more intense wildfires. What do we hope our neighbors will do then? Point blame? Or do what Michiganders do best – acknowledge the problem and work together to reduce our carbon emissions and prepare our communities for the impacts we will continue to face from a warming climate.
Nicholas Jansen is Groundwork’s Rural Clean Energy Specialist.
nicholas.jansen@groundworkcenter.org
