My wife and I moved from Colorado to Ontario a year or so ago. One of the (many) reasons we had discussed was to get away from the smoke from fires. My wife is very sensitive to it. This week has really proven to us that there is no “escaping” climate change. It was foolish for us to have placed any credence into the misconception that the colder, wetter climate of Ontario makes us any less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It was even more ironic that of all the weeks my wife could have chosen to travel to Ottawa for a conference, she chose the week that Ottawa was particularly affected by the smoke.

I really hope that this week’s fires are a wakeup call to people living on the eastern side of North America. When we originally moved to Colorado, it was striking to me how much more climate conscious people were there than places we had lived before to the east. But that’s just how it is. You get battered by these fires or floods or hurricanes or whatever over and over and over again and it begins to force everyone in an area to wake up to what’s happening. Nobody can hide from it anymore. I just hope that it starts to sink in deeper into the psyches of those who can make real change happen.