this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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It would probably be good if the governments of North America could come together and discuss how to more responsibly and sustainably manage their forests. Beyond increasing temperatures caused by climate change, the recent intensity of summer fires on this continent are also driven by the fact that we no longer do controlled burns of forest lands evolved to regularly burn, leading to accumulated dry underbrush. We treat our managed forests like farms, monocropping species onto dry hills that are better adapted for wetter, more diverse ravines. We woefully underfund the departments tasked with doing these things. As bad as climate change is, these summer fires could be way more mild if only we could hold our governing bodies to be more responsible. But I guess that's where the climate change ultimately came from, too.
We got more than a million square miles of forest in Canada. We'd have to employ a significant portion of the population to do the things oil companies keep claiming we're supposed to be doing. We've never had to do these things before.
We have been measuring how dry the forests are for a long time now. We know why the forests are burning. They're dried out because of climate change. We know climate change is caused by global warming. We know global warming is caused be increased carbon dioxide in the air. We know burning fossil fuels puts more carbon dioxide into the air. All of these things have been measured, we know the cause.
If the oil companies think paying people to rake the forests, clear the brush or whatever will help, then maybe they should pay people to do these things?
There is some truth in what you are saying, which makes for the best misinformation.
Canada's fires are largely in unmanaged areas in wild forests not tree farms, suppression was never happening, the increase in fires is due to hotter weather (the north experiences higher increases than global average).
Forest management is more of a contributor in the US (but climate there too).
BTW prescribed burns do happen but they are heavily regulated, not a tonne of them. There were a bunch of deaths a while ago, which increased regs, rightly or wrongly.