This opinion was written by Gillian Steward and was published in the Toronto Star on June 13, 2023.

GILLIAN STEWARD IS A CALGARYBASED WRITER AND FREELANCE CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST FOR THE STAR. FOLLOW HER ON TWITTER: @GILLIANSTEWARD

What will it take for conservative politicians and big oil bosses to actually acknowledge that the wildfires ravaging our forests are fanned by the carbon emissions that have torqued up the world’s climate?

Even as big cities choke on wildfire smoke — Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, New York — it doesn’t seem to register. And neither do the raging fires themselves which this year have already burned off approximately 4.8 million hectares of Canadian forests. Some people have lost their homes, thousands have been evacuated. And fire season is far from over.

In his deeply researched and compelling book “Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast,” Vancouver based journalist and author John Vaillant makes it clear that these are no ordinary forest fires. They are hotter, faster and longer lasting. They start in the spring, even in normally cool northern parts of the country, because global warming has left forests tinder dry and ready to catch fire whether it be by lightning or a discarded cigarette.

Vaillant focuses on the monster fire that destroyed most of Fort McMurray — Alberta’s oil sands hub — in May 2016.

“Entire neighbourhoods burned to their foundations beneath a towering pyrocumulus cloud typically found over erupting volcanoes. So huge and energetic was this fire driven weather system that it generated hurricane force winds and lightning that ignited still more fires many miles away. Nearly 100,000 people were forced to flee in what remains the largest, most rapid single-day evacuation in the history of modern fire,” Vaillant writes.

In Alberta this year, we’ve already lost almost 1.5 million hectares of forest, mostly in the central and northern parts of the province. That’s a record. As I write, Calgary is enveloped in the smell and haze of smoke.

And yet, just last week, as people in Eastern Canada and the U.S. were tasting and inhaling forest fire smoke from Quebec, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith put on her conspiracy hat and said most of the fires in Alberta were started by arsonists. She is bringing in investigators from outside the province to find the culprits.

She also dismissed the significance of the wildfires when she said, “Alberta has always had forest fires.” The phrases “climate change or “global warming” did not cross her lips as she underwent tough questioning on an Edmonton radio talk show.

It reminded me of the day former premier Jason Kenney was set to announce the repeal of Alberta’s carbon tax (approved by the former NDP government) at an Edmonton gas station. But the city was enveloped in so much forest fire smoke the event had to be called off.

Kenney didn’t mention global warming that day either. Maybe he couldn’t see the big picture because the smoke got in his eyes. More likely he refused to see the big picture.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of using the wildfires as a distraction from his other controversies. And yet, the Conservative party has yet to tell us how it would slow the carbon emissions that cause global warming.

The fossil fuel industry refuses to acknowledge the big picture as well. Even though Fort McMurray, the hub of Alberta’s mammoth oil sands operations, was consumed by a raging wildfire, it continues to downplay the effects of global warming caused by the burning of the oil it produces.

Our way of life is still too dependent on oil and natural gas for the petroleum industry to be ramped down overnight. But for these politicians and captains of the oil industry even the word “transition” has become toxic, never mind actually planning for it.

Already this year wild fires have destroyed more forests in Canada than ever before. But that doesn’t mean next year will be better. It likely won’t, nor the year after. If ever there was a time for all political parties and fossil fuel companies to work together to confront this threat to our forests and our overall well-being, this is it.