A new report from the University of Chicago finds that climate-driven wildfires are reversing decades of work aimed at improving air quality standards in the U.S. and Canada.

Chicago

A recent report from the University of Chicago reveals that climate-driven wildfires are reversing decades of progress in air quality improvements in the United States and Canada. The Annual Air Quality Life Index, which analyzed pollution data from 2023, found a 1.5% global increase in air pollution compared to the previous year, with the most significant rises observed in North America.

The report attributes the worsening air quality to record-breaking wildfires, particularly in Canada, which saw its poorest air quality since 1998. While environmental regulations have historically kept pollution levels low, the resurgence of wildfire-related pollution underscores the ongoing impact of fossil fuel use and highlights the need for further action to reduce reliance on these energy sources.

Climate-driven wildfires reversing clean air progress in North America

A new report finds that climate-driven wildfires are reversing decades of work aimed at improving air quality standards, particularly in the United States and Canada. The Annual Air Quality Life Index, released by the University of Chicago last week, collected pollution data from 2023 and compared it to previous years. So it found that globally, air pollution rose 1.5% between 2022 and 2023. The highest pollution increases were recorded in the U.S. and Canada. Record-breaking wildfires has led Canada to see its worst air quality since researchers began recording back in 1998. Michael Greenstone joins me now with more on this. He's an author of that report and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. Good to see you, Michael. Hi. Nice to see you. Happy Labor Day. Yeah. Happy Labor Day to you as well. You've described this air pollution from the Canadian wildfires as, quote, the ghost of fossil fuels past. What does that mean? So over the last several decades, the U.S. and Canada and Europe and several other places have made enormous progress on reducing air pollution that comes from industrial activity and driving and things like that. But what we weren't keeping our eye on the ball with was that we weren't catching the CO2 that is associated with using those fossil coal, oil, and natural gas fossil fuels. And that was accumulating in the atmosphere. And that's not news to anybody. But what we weren't paying attention to is that that has started to increase the incidence and severity of wildfires. And so these fossil fuels from long ago and from today are now causing wildfires that are bringing back air pollution that we thought we had largely defeated, at least in the United States and Canada and a couple other countries. Yeah. This makes a lot of sense. I remember covering Canadian wildfires several years ago and spending a couple of days or a couple of weeks there. It really takes your breath away. I just wonder, for people who live in those areas, should we be concerned about breathing potentially polluted air? I mean, what are the health risks here? Yeah. So, absolutely. It doesn't take, you know, you don't have to be a medical doctor to know that breathing that air is not good for you. I think it is still the case that averaged over an entire year, pollution levels remain pretty low in the United States and Canada. And that's thanks to the very successful environmental regulations that we've had going back to the 1970s. But what the report highlights is this reawakening of air pollution from this kind of unintended part of using the fossil fuels. And we don't really know the magnitude or the extent of where that's going to go. But it highlights that it wasn't, it's not enough to just stop the fossil fuels, the air pollution being released at the point that the fossil fuels are used. But really, you have to move away from using fossil fuels, at least the goal is not to breathe polluted air. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Michael Greenstone. Thank you. Thank you.

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