Polluted air should light campaign fire

On my way into work this week, I did something I’ve never done before and never thought I’d do. I wore a mask standing outside on the GO Train platform and I took it off inside when I boarded the train.

A year ago, amid a pandemic, I did the same routine in reverse. Now thanks to the “dangerous particulates” in the air — the result of wildfires raging across the country — my crisis mentality has turned on its head. I can forget my troubles when I’m indoors in crowded company. That is until I step outside into the solitude of nature, a.k.a. the choking haze of climate change, and it all comes rushing back: the reality that we are screwed.

Which brings me, naturally, to the looming municipal byelection. During this current election cycle, candidates and pundits have discussed many issues at length from gridlock to crime to housing affordability to more recently, at the Zoomer Radio debate, the possibility that rowdy teenagers are impersonating young children in order to ride the TTC for free and set off fireworks.

What these candidates and pundits haven’t discussed in great detail, or hardly at all, is actual fires.

Canada is burning, and as a result, Toronto’s air quality took a massive hit, ranking this week among the worst in the world. Kids’ outdoor activities have been cancelled or limited as a result of smoky air that isn’t merely unpleasant to breath but hazardous to everyone’s health, particularly those with respiratory issues.

It is a useless exercise trying to determine if this specific wildfire season is the result of climate change. The truth is that climate change creates the conditions for more extreme weather. Last year, according to BBC climate reporter Georgina Rannard, scientists determined that high temperatures driven by climate change made drought in the Northern Hemisphere more likely. The harder hypothesis to prove, then, is that this series of devastating events is not linked to climate change.

Recently, Premier Doug Ford argued that invoking climate change in the discussion about Canada’s wildfires is “political.” I wish that were the case.

It’s odd isn’t it that Torontonians are being advised to stay inside their homes to avoid breathing in dangerous air and yet what is arguably the city’s and the world’s most pressing crisis has been a topic largely absent from the political campaign.

Granted, mayoral candidate Josh Matlow has a plan to boost Toronto’s net zero strategy. He says he will invest $200 million dollars into TransformTO annually via “a commercial parking lot levy.” This funding he claims, “will allow us to fully electrify the TTC fleet and retrofit existing buildings to be more energy efficient.”

Mitzie Hunter, meanwhile, has a plan to respond to extreme weather events via a “Residential Flood Protection Program,” as well as an “Extreme Heat Protection Program.”

But these plans are not the ones candidates are talking about on debate stages; these issues do not yet captivate voters or journalists in the same way endless talk about gridlock and empty bike lanes captivate us. Few of us are ready to alter our lifestyles in a meaningful way to face this problem and few of us are ready to elect a leader who makes climate change a front-of-mind issue.

My guess — or rather my hope — is that this week’s unsettling and frankly scary events change that.

There is no doubt that the doomsday reaction to the wildfire smoke in Toronto and New York City has a strong whiff of Eastern elitism to it. Westerners have been dealing with the fallout of wildfires for years and air pollution is a daily reality for city-dwellers all over the world, not a sign of the apocalypse. In other words, just because East Coast city slickers — myself included — breathe highly polluted wildfire air for the first time in our lives doesn’t mean wildfires are new events.

But if something brand new does emerge from this crisis let it be a shock to the systems of so many of us who viewed climate change as a far off, far away catastrophe. This week it’s right outside our doors — or inside the house if you made the mistake of cracking a window.