Wildfire is not just a public health and safety issue – it is fast becoming a national security threat that is overwhelming emergency response, destabilizing provinces, and affecting their GDPs. Here, in Canada’s own “Black Summer,” we are battling a new kind of domestic terror. Like gun violence in the United States, its causes and sources are well understood, and its damage – so frightening and disruptive in the moment – lingers on for years in ways that can break lives and bank accounts.
How is it then that the fossil fuel industry – the planet’s biggest contributor of carbon emissions – along with the banks that finance it, and the governments that subsidize it, gets a pass, not just from responsibility, but even from accountability to the laws of chemistry and physics? Has Mr. Sawan looked at a thermometer lately? Has he seen the fires burning in B.C., Alberta, and now, Louisiana, where so many petroleum workers live?