Canada Wildfires Heat Up Climate Change Pressure on Trudeau
The toxic smoke clouding North America isn’t just driving home climate impacts. It’s also shining a spotlight on the political barriers to shifting Canada’s economy away from producing fossil fuels.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a news conference on Friday, June 2, 2023. Major wildfires burning across the country could set a record for area burned this year.
Photographer: Cole Burston/BloombergCanada’s enormous wildfires and the acrid haze they’ve spread across North America have widened a schism in the country’s politics.
While politicians in Alberta and Saskatchewan — Canada’s oil-producing heartland — and Conservatives in Ottawa can no longer deny climate change, they continue to stand in the way of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambitions. That could leave one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers without a credible pathway to reduce carbon emissions at the same time that the impacts of climate change send its forests up in smoke.