This new normal of near-constant wildfire smoke annoys me as much as the next person. But it serves as a reminder that we share one fragile atmosphere that we’re collectively screwing up. Fruitless to waste all this energy pointing fingers like children when we should be joining hands to fix this. It’s like nature’s warning signal.
Whether it be wildfire smoke, a global pandemic, or heat waves, nature know no geopolitical borders. So maybe instead of squabbling over whose smoke is whose, we could acknowledge that we’re all in this smoldering mess together. We only have one planet to live on, and we only have one atmosphere to breathe from.
(just food for thought)
More nuanced rules would be good in some ways, but I think more nuanced rules would require a larger government and more expensive services to oversee, or even to make such rules. I would be in support of trying that, as I think the long term benefits will exist, but many are not as there is an increase in short term pain because we’d have to pay long before we’d see a benefit, and people would have to keep voting to be in pain before results are realized. Hard to sell.