As Canada wildfires choke US with smoke, Republicans demand action. But not on climate change

The sternly worded statements and letters are filled with indignation and outrage: Republican U.S. lawmakers say Canada has done too little to contain wildfires and smoke that have fouled the air in several states this summer.

“Instead of enjoying family vacations at Michigan’s beautiful lakes and campgrounds, for the third summer in a row, Michiganders are forced to breathe hazardous air as a result of Canada’s failure to prevent and control wildfires,” read a statement last week from the state’s GOP congressional delegation, echoing similar missives from Republicans in Iowa, New York, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

They’ve demanded more forest thinning, prescribed burns and other measures to prevent fires from starting. They've warned the smoke is hurting relations between the countries and suggested the U.S. could make it an issue in tariff talks.

But what they haven't done is acknowledge the role of climate change — a glaring and shortsighted omission, according to climate scientists. It also ignores the outsized U.S. contribution to heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels like coal and gas that cause more intense heat waves and droughts, which in turn set the stage for more destructive wildfires, scientists say.

“If anything, Canada should be blaming the U.S. for their increased fires,” said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

On Tuesday, the Canadian government announced almost $46 million in funding for wildfire prevention and risk assessment research projects. But Corey Hogan, parliamentary secretary to the federal energy and natural resources minister, said international cooperation is needed.

“There’s no people that want to do more about wildfires than Canadians,” Hogan said. “But I think this also underlines the international challenges that are brought on by climate change ... we need to globally tackle this problem.”

The country has “been fighting wildfires in this country at unprecedented rates since 2023,” when Canada saw its largest wildfire on record, said Ken McMullen, president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs. This year’s first fire started in April, one of the earliest on record, and 2025 is now the second-worst year.

As of Thursday, more than 700 wildfires were burning across the country, two-thirds of them out of control, with more than 28,000 square miles (72,520 square kilometers) burned in 4,400 wildfires so far this year, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. That's almost five times the surface area that's burned so far in the U.S. this year. Most wildfires are started by people, sometimes on purpose but mostly by mistake, though McMullen said lightning is the culprit in many of Canada's fires, especially in remote areas.

McMullen said he has no interest in debating the role of climate change, but data show that something has changed. Sloughs and basins have dried up and water that once lapped at people’s back doors in Canada’s lake communities now is often hundreds of feet away.

“People can make up their own mind as to why that is,” he said. “But something clearly has changed.”

Denying climate change

President Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax — a belief echoed by many in the GOP — and his administration has worked to dismantle and defund federal climate science and data collection, with little to no pushback from Republicans in Congress.

He’s proposed to revoke the scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare — the central basis for U.S. climate change action. He's declared a national energy emergency to expedite fossil fuel development, canceled grants for renewable energy projects and ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels.

Minnesota state Rep. Elliott Engen, a Republican, said he believes in climate change, but now is not the time to discuss it “because we have folks with asthma who aren’t able to go outside the entirety of the summer.”

“That's not an immediate fix for my constituents; that sounds like a blame game without a solution being presented,” said Engen, among a group of GOP lawmakers who asked the International Joint Commission to review Canada’s wildfire management practices.

Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine said the wildfires are jeopardizing health and air quality in her state, too, but faulted Republicans for failing to meet the crisis head on by acting on climate change.

“Rather than accept this reality and work together to find proactive, common-sense solutions for preventing and mitigating these fires, Republicans are burying their heads in the sand,” she said.

Wisconsin Rep. Gwen Moore, a Democrat, criticized her Republican colleagues’ letter to Canada’s U.S. ambassador, saying those “who are in denial about climate change shouldn’t be writing letters prescribing people’s actions to try to contain it.”

Difficult solutions

McMullen, the Canadian wildfire expert, said battling the fires isn’t as simple as many seem to believe.

The country and its territories are vast and fires are often in remote areas where the best — and sometimes only — course of action if there are no residents or structures is to let them burn or “it is going to just create another situation for us to deal with in a year or two or 10 or 20 years from now,” McMullen said.

Prescribed burns to clear underbrush and other ignition sources are used in some areas, but aren’t practical or possible in some forests and prairies that are burning, experts said.

McMullen has advocated for a Canadian forest fire coordination agency to help deploy firefighters and equipment where they're needed.

But as for stopping worsening fires, “I don’t think there’s much they can do,” said University of Michigan climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck. He noted that hotter temperatures are melting permafrost in northern Canada, which dries out and makes the vast boreal forests far more likely to burn.

Instead, the two countries should collaborate on climate change solutions "because our smoke is their smoke, their smoke is ours,” Overpeck said. “As long as this trend of warming and drying continues, we’re going to get a worsening problem.

“The good news is ... we know what the cause is ... we can stop it from getting worse.”

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