Blowback
In 2021, Lytton, British Columbia, reached 49.6°C — hotter than Las Vegas — and then burned almost entirely to the ground.
Five years later, smoke from Canada’s increasingly ferocious wildfire seasons was drifting south across the border, fouling American cities and threatening the World Cup. The response from Washington? Blame Canada — and threaten to make Canadians pay for the smoke.
There is just one awkward problem with that logic: since the Industrial Revolution, no country has put more carbon into the atmosphere than the United States.
Blowback is about climate change, borders, American power and the peculiar belief that consequences are things that happen somewhere else. Carbon, unfortunately, doesn’t recognize customs booths. Neither does smoke.
As I write in the piece: you can put a wall on a river. You can put a fence across a desert. You cannot tariff the sky.
Read “Blowback” at CounterPunch.
