The traffic was bumper to bumper as I drove downtown from my home on the Northwest Side yesterday. Reaching my destination took nearly an hour longer than I had anticipated. I’m not sure what produced the traffic but I can’t help but believe that the heavy haze was a contributing factor.
The haze is being attributed to an unwanted immigrant—smoke from Canadian wildfires. Here’s a map of the wildfires:
These are becoming a recurrent problem.
The wildfires in Canada in 2023 were unprecedented. However, 2025 was the second-highest season on record and 2026 is beginning to look as though it will be yet another major year for forest fires in Ontario.
The media accounts routinely attribute the fires to climate change and it would be excessive to claim that human-produced climate change plays no role in them. They are a complex, multi-factorial problem whose causes include drought, changes in forestry practices, and human action. It is estimated that as much as 90% of forest fires in human-inhabited areas can be attributed to human action. Canada harvests considerably less lumber than it did 20 years ago and denser forests and increased fires go hand-in-hand.
My point in this is that you deal with the problems you encounter rather than the problems that fit the narratives you prefer. Canada may need to revert to the more aggressive forestry practices it employed years ago if the country’s reduction in human-induced emissions are to have meaning.
I had heard you can’t see the Ferris wheel on Navy Pier from Michigan Ave. Is that really true?
“Canada may need to revert to the more aggressive forestry practices it employed years ago”
I’m not sure how that is to be done. Lumber production in Ontario has fallen 40% over the past 25 years. The key consumers (US / Canadian single family housing) went through a bubble, or in the case of paper and newsprint — are in terminal decline.
There is no economic use for the wood.
Canadian sources seem to think production largely varies with demand. There is some sentiment that tariffs have affected the most recent numbers. In my area you could smell the woodsmoke.
Steve
The demand story is a structural one that’s been going for decades — the biggest decline (which was never reversed) coincided with the popping of the housing bubble.
Tariffs is a strawman — the simplest contradiction is the first bad wildfire season to hit the midwest / northeast was 2023, two years before tariffs occured. Nevermind it takes a decade or two or more to grow the amount of trees involved in these wildfires.