Air quality in the Midwestern city of Detroit is currently the worst in the world, Swiss air quality tracker IQAir said, followed by Minneapolis, Chicago and Toronto.
Republican lawmakers in the state of Michigan have penned an open letter, external to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney asking for better management of the country’s wildfires, expressing frustration for a third year in a row.
“A year has passed, the season has come around again, and nothing has changed except that our patience has run out,” said the letter, signed by four state House representatives .
Pete Hoekstra, the US ambassador to Canada, struck a more diplomatic tone in a statement on Wednesday commending wildfire fighting efforts from both countries.
Wildfires are a part of the natural life cycle of Canada’s vast boreal forest, but they have become more frequent since 2015, said Laura Chasmer, a professor of geography and the environment at the University of Western Ontario.
“This is associated with some of the extreme climate warming that we’ve been seeing, and the atmospheric drying of the surface,” she said.
