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Canadian government has cut funding and forest management services, which leads to these fires, which the government blames on global warming and climate change

Canadian government has cut funding and forest management services, which leads to these fires, which the government blames on global warming and climate change. But the government has stopped managing the forests, and is not putting forth the required effort to deal with the fires or the root issues. Unfortunately this is a problem that the government appears reluctant to deal with because it feeds their ideological agenda of climate change. Unfortunately as a Canadian, I can't trust the Canadian government as they maintain they are leaders in this sector, yet failing (on purpose imo) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/world/canada/canada-firefighting-capacity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/world/canada/canada-firef...

Retric 3y ago
That’s not really what’s going on, people always complain about the budget but the variability is vastly more than explained by budgets alone. In Alberta 30% more acres burned in 1983 than 2023, while 2020 was one of the lowest years on record. Wildfires are just highly variable, and 2023 was ideal conditions for them while 2020 wasn’t.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  > while 2020 was one of the lowest years on record Kind of an interesting data point given that wildfires are often unintentionally started by humans and 2020 was the bulk of the lockdown from COVID.
  - respondo2134 3y ago
    Except that 1. the vast majority of forest fires in Canada are started by lightning strikes. 2. Canada did not have strict lock-down rules like much of the world; going off in the woods was one of the things you could definitey do
    - thesz 3y ago
      I remember (from videos of VivaFrei, a Canadian citizen) that it was prohibited to walk outside area of few blocks away from your home address. And there were curfews. If so, going off in the woods was one of the things you could definitey not do.
      - goosedragons 3y ago
        There was only curfews in Quebec. Really early on when things were more unknown some places put more restrictions on things like going to parks but that lifted pretty fast.
        thesz 3y ago
        "Lifted pretty fast" is a vague statement. When where these restrictions lifted? Before or after wildfires season?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - gmfawcett 3y ago
        I was there, and I definitely could do those things.
    - Steven420 3y ago
      Actually most are caused by human activity
    - 1over137 3y ago
      > Canada did not have strict lock-down rules like much of the world Canada is big. The covid rules were by province. Quebec in the east had lockdowns, but the fires discussed in the article are in the west.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Highly variable but the trend is increasing. And fires are becoming more costly, evacuations more frequent. More people are living, retiring, in remote places.
owisd 3y ago
Canada is the fourth largest oil producer in the world, if they have an ideological agenda against climate change they’re going about it all wrong.
- AdrianB1 3y ago
  You can say the same about Norway, that went full speed for electric cars but still extract and sell a lot of oil.
- bostonwalker 3y ago
  This is currently our biggest unsolved political issue IMO. Without a focus on the supply side, all of our current consumption-focused climate change policies (carbon tax on consumption, electric vehicle mandates, most recently infrastructure issues etc.) effectively amount to weak virtue signaling that has mostly succeeded in dividing voters and provinces against each other, when we should instead be tackling the 500 lb gorilla in the room (Alberta’s oil sands). Hence the well-deserved Greta Thunberg snark towards Trudeau a while back. How do we do that? Some think we should just leave the oil in the ground. Others think we should avoid building further export infrastructure (i.e. pipelines). These options strike me as politically unpalatable, and even our current government stepped in at one point a few years ago to bail out the troubled Trans Mountain pipeline. One option I am strongly in favour of is nuclearizing the oil sands. AFAIK right now the process for extracting crude from the oil sands is very energy-intensive and is currently powered by nat gas since the producers have it on hand. There was a proposal a while back to power this process by nuclear energy, which failed because: a) nuclear energy was scary, and b) crude prices took off and reduced the economic incentive for cost savings. I imagine that the nuclear option could be resurrected now alongside government investment in LNG infra as well as a supply-side carbon tax to provide extra incentive to push producers on board. Since we’re not going to leave the oil in the ground anyway, this would allow us to extract it in the cleanest possible way, while actually creating jobs and making our energy exports more competitive overall. Now, if only Canada could elect a visionary government that actually cared about climate change and not just about virtual signaling…
  - acdha 3y ago
hatenberg 3y ago
You do understand that it's dry as fuck after snowpack is at a record low the last 3 years.
mildchalupa 3y ago
Sustainable forrest management requires frequent controlled burns to manage underbrush. Around Michigan this can be a yearly occurrence.
throwup238 3y ago
You’re thinking of the forest in British Columbia that don’t sit on meters of peatland. This is peat burning deep underground. There is nothing forest management can do to stop that because it’s not a forest problem, it’s a dried out peat problem.
littlestymaar 3y ago
> because it feeds their ideological agenda of climate change. If Alberta, and Canada in general, has any ideological agenda about climate change, it's about making it worse faster, given that they are one of the biggest producer of oil, and the worse kind possible…
sandworm101 3y ago
Canada's forests are just too vast for active management. At best, forests that threaten structures might be managed at the edges. But for climate change location doesn't matter. All the big fires in the north, started by lightning in areas far from roads, cannot be prevented through raking out the underbrush. There aren't enough rakes in the world.
someonehere 3y ago
California is doing the same thing too. Take the poor forest management and add trees being killed by a foreign beetle to the mix, and you have powder keg every summer waiting to go off.
- Hammershaft 3y ago
  The reason pine beetle infestations have exploded is because Canadian winters are no longer reliably cold enough to kill them off.
idiotsecant 3y ago
Exactly what 'management' do you mean? I ask because this is a frequent astroturf point timber companies use to claim that they need to have larger, cheaper timber leases. The forests were fine for a very, very, very long time before timber companies were around to help 'manage' them. Many species require forest fire as part of a larger biological cycle. Forest fires are OK. Let them burn. The problem is that we're trying to insert our human stuff into the forests, at which point all of a sudden they are something that requires 'managing'.
- davidbanham 3y ago
  I mean, depends on how you define OK. On a geological timescale, sure they’ll be just fine. On a timescale measured in decades to centuries, not necessarily. Fire is definitely part of many ecosystems. Fire every ten years in a sclerophyll forest? Great! Fire in a rainforest during a bad drought? It’s gone now. Might come back after the next ice age. Also, “forest” environments that have been clear felled and replaced with a monocrop at some point basically have to be managed thereafter. Any properly bad fire through there will leave the ground essentially sterile. Seed bank destroyed. Still black years later. Their natural resilience is gone and it’s our responsibility to manage the fire ecology while they rehabilitate in the same way we need to manage the flora back to something healthier. And then of course, anywhere we’ve built human stuff on the interface. We either defend it or we resign ourselves to the people who live there being homeless after the next fire. Leaving aside whether that’s right or wrong, it’s a very different social pact than the one we’ve operated under so far. Any change to that is going to be generational rather than short term.

Retric 3y ago

That’s not really what’s going on, people always complain about the budget but the variability is vastly more than explained by budgets alone. In Alberta 30% more acres burned in 1983 than 2023, while 2020 was one of the lowest years on record. Wildfires are just highly variable, and 2023 was ideal conditions for them while 2020 wasn’t.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
> while 2020 was one of the lowest years on record Kind of an interesting data point given that wildfires are often unintentionally started by humans and 2020 was the bulk of the lockdown from COVID.
- respondo2134 3y ago
  Except that 1. the vast majority of forest fires in Canada are started by lightning strikes. 2. Canada did not have strict lock-down rules like much of the world; going off in the woods was one of the things you could definitey do
  - thesz 3y ago
    I remember (from videos of VivaFrei, a Canadian citizen) that it was prohibited to walk outside area of few blocks away from your home address. And there were curfews. If so, going off in the woods was one of the things you could definitey not do.
    - goosedragons 3y ago
      There was only curfews in Quebec. Really early on when things were more unknown some places put more restrictions on things like going to parks but that lifted pretty fast.
      - thesz 3y ago
        "Lifted pretty fast" is a vague statement. When where these restrictions lifted? Before or after wildfires season?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - gmfawcett 3y ago
      I was there, and I definitely could do those things.
  - Steven420 3y ago
    Actually most are caused by human activity
  - 1over137 3y ago
    > Canada did not have strict lock-down rules like much of the world Canada is big. The covid rules were by province. Quebec in the east had lockdowns, but the fires discussed in the article are in the west.
sandworm101 3y ago
Highly variable but the trend is increasing. And fires are becoming more costly, evacuations more frequent. More people are living, retiring, in remote places.

owisd 3y ago

Canada is the fourth largest oil producer in the world, if they have an ideological agenda against climate change they’re going about it all wrong.

AdrianB1 3y ago
You can say the same about Norway, that went full speed for electric cars but still extract and sell a lot of oil.
bostonwalker 3y ago
This is currently our biggest unsolved political issue IMO. Without a focus on the supply side, all of our current consumption-focused climate change policies (carbon tax on consumption, electric vehicle mandates, most recently infrastructure issues etc.) effectively amount to weak virtue signaling that has mostly succeeded in dividing voters and provinces against each other, when we should instead be tackling the 500 lb gorilla in the room (Alberta’s oil sands). Hence the well-deserved Greta Thunberg snark towards Trudeau a while back. How do we do that? Some think we should just leave the oil in the ground. Others think we should avoid building further export infrastructure (i.e. pipelines). These options strike me as politically unpalatable, and even our current government stepped in at one point a few years ago to bail out the troubled Trans Mountain pipeline. One option I am strongly in favour of is nuclearizing the oil sands. AFAIK right now the process for extracting crude from the oil sands is very energy-intensive and is currently powered by nat gas since the producers have it on hand. There was a proposal a while back to power this process by nuclear energy, which failed because: a) nuclear energy was scary, and b) crude prices took off and reduced the economic incentive for cost savings. I imagine that the nuclear option could be resurrected now alongside government investment in LNG infra as well as a supply-side carbon tax to provide extra incentive to push producers on board. Since we’re not going to leave the oil in the ground anyway, this would allow us to extract it in the cleanest possible way, while actually creating jobs and making our energy exports more competitive overall. Now, if only Canada could elect a visionary government that actually cared about climate change and not just about virtual signaling…
- acdha 3y ago

hatenberg 3y ago

You do understand that it's dry as fuck after snowpack is at a record low the last 3 years.

mildchalupa 3y ago

Sustainable forrest management requires frequent controlled burns to manage underbrush. Around Michigan this can be a yearly occurrence.

throwup238 3y ago

You’re thinking of the forest in British Columbia that don’t sit on meters of peatland. This is peat burning deep underground. There is nothing forest management can do to stop that because it’s not a forest problem, it’s a dried out peat problem.

littlestymaar 3y ago

> because it feeds their ideological agenda of climate change. If Alberta, and Canada in general, has any ideological agenda about climate change, it's about making it worse faster, given that they are one of the biggest producer of oil, and the worse kind possible…

sandworm101 3y ago

Canada's forests are just too vast for active management. At best, forests that threaten structures might be managed at the edges. But for climate change location doesn't matter. All the big fires in the north, started by lightning in areas far from roads, cannot be prevented through raking out the underbrush. There aren't enough rakes in the world.

someonehere 3y ago

California is doing the same thing too. Take the poor forest management and add trees being killed by a foreign beetle to the mix, and you have powder keg every summer waiting to go off.

Hammershaft 3y ago
The reason pine beetle infestations have exploded is because Canadian winters are no longer reliably cold enough to kill them off.

idiotsecant 3y ago

Exactly what 'management' do you mean? I ask because this is a frequent astroturf point timber companies use to claim that they need to have larger, cheaper timber leases. The forests were fine for a very, very, very long time before timber companies were around to help 'manage' them. Many species require forest fire as part of a larger biological cycle. Forest fires are OK. Let them burn. The problem is that we're trying to insert our human stuff into the forests, at which point all of a sudden they are something that requires 'managing'.

davidbanham 3y ago
I mean, depends on how you define OK. On a geological timescale, sure they’ll be just fine. On a timescale measured in decades to centuries, not necessarily. Fire is definitely part of many ecosystems. Fire every ten years in a sclerophyll forest? Great! Fire in a rainforest during a bad drought? It’s gone now. Might come back after the next ice age. Also, “forest” environments that have been clear felled and replaced with a monocrop at some point basically have to be managed thereafter. Any properly bad fire through there will leave the ground essentially sterile. Seed bank destroyed. Still black years later. Their natural resilience is gone and it’s our responsibility to manage the fire ecology while they rehabilitate in the same way we need to manage the flora back to something healthier. And then of course, anywhere we’ve built human stuff on the interface. We either defend it or we resign ourselves to the people who live there being homeless after the next fire. Leaving aside whether that’s right or wrong, it’s a very different social pact than the one we’ve operated under so far. Any change to that is going to be generational rather than short term.