INDIANAPOLIS — The Great Midwest — from Chicago, Detroit and south to Indianapolis and Evansville — has been shrouded in smoke generated by some 835 Canadian wildfires along with 150 in the United States, including 15 in Michigan.
Get used to it, good Hoosier folk. What was once an occasional wind-born particulate invasion is now becoming an annual occurrence.
“These wildfires are decimating American and Canadian boreal forests, the latter of which holds 12% of the world’s land-based carbon reserves,” according to the Audubon Society.
Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis said the phenomenon of winds pushing smoke down to the United States has been linked to rapid Arctic warming.
“Big waves in the jet stream tend to hang around a long time, and so the weather that they create is going to be very persistent,” Francis told The Boston Globe. “If you are in the part of the wave in the jet stream that creates heat and drought, then you can expect it to last a long time and raise the risk of wildfire.”
According to National Geographic, 2024 “was the hottest year on record and the first year Earth’s temperature surpassed 1.5°C (2.7°F). The past 10 years have been the 10 hottest years on record, and a reconstruction of Earth’s average temperature over the past 485 million years showed that when the planet warms, catastrophic weather and mass extinctions follow. At no point in the period of Earth’s history examined ... have temperatures warmed as quickly as they’re warming now.”
The hazy skies and wheeze-inducing air caught the attention of President Donald J. Trump last week, and he borrowed a 1999 trope from the animated film “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” urging us to “blame Canada.”
“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” Trump posted July 17 on Truth Social. “The cost is incalculable! This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.”
Trump added he would call Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney “to find out what they are going to do about it.”
Asked about Republican criticism, Carney told reporters July 16, “We’re emphasizing investment in clean energy, but in the U.S., there are modes of production which are working against clean energy. And Canada is pursuing their efforts on the world scale, whereas the United States are reducing their footprint worldwide.”
Trump has ordered the reopening of seven U.S. coal-fired power plants, including two in Indiana. He suspended U.S. support for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the United States joined in 1992, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produces the world’s premier climate reports, according to NBC News.
In a post on X, the White House said the organizations “no longer serve American interests.”
Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement in 2025, annulled all federal greenhouse gas emission standards for cars and trucks model years 2012-2027 and reversed the Biden administration’s $7,500 tax break for electric vehicles, prompting U.S. automakers to scale back or scrap tens of billions of dollars of investment in shifting away from the internal combustion engine.
According to the EPA in 2016, “Indiana’s climate is changing. Most of the state has warmed about one degree (F) in the last century. … Our climate is changing because the earth is warming. People have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the air by 40% since the late 1700s. The surface of the ocean has also warmed about one degree during the last 80 years.”
Is climate change creating conditions for North American wildfires?
“Most researchers say yes,” according to Science.com’s HowStuffWorks. “Warmer temperatures, earlier snowmelt and more frequent drought create longer periods when forests are dry enough to burn. Those conditions increase both the likelihood of ignition and the speed at which fires spread.
“The 2023 season became Canada’s worst on record, setting a new record for total area burned. One recent analysis estimated those fires released roughly four times as much carbon as global aviation emitted during 2022, illustrating how severe wildfire seasons can also accelerate climate change.”
The New York Times reported July 18, “Most wildfires in Canada are impossible to fight. Most wildfires in Canada spread in such remote, vast areas that they cannot be fought effectively — and are often left to burn.”
Mike Flannigan, an expert on fire management at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, said the areas burned by forest fires have nearly quadrupled since the 1970s.
“It’s largely, not solely, due to human-caused climate change,” Flannigan told The Times. “Warmer weather means longer fire seasons. In Canada, our fire seasons used to be fairly short, but they’re getting much longer. The warmer we get, the more lightning we see.”
And the more wildfires that ignite across North America, the more smoky days Indiana and much of the United States are likely to experience in the coming years.
Brian A. Howey is an opinion columnist for State Affairs Indiana and the founder of Howey Politics Indiana. His writing offers analysis and opinion shaped by decades of experience covering Indiana politics. Email him at howey@stateaffairs.com.
