Last week, I looked outside and the sky did not look normal.
Across New Jersey and New York, the air became hazy and the sun appeared orange. Schools canceled outdoor activities, people wore masks outside, and air-quality warnings appeared on our phones.
The fires causing it were not in New Jersey. They were hundreds of miles away in Canada.
Smoke from enormous Canadian wildfires had traveled south across the border, creating some of the worst air quality our region had experienced in years.
It was one of the first times climate change felt less like something I was reading about and more like something I could see outside my own window.
Why Canada Is Burning
Wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems, and climate change does not start every fire.
But hotter temperatures and dry conditions can make vegetation easier to burn and create conditions where fires spread more quickly.
Canada experienced unusually warm and dry conditions leading into its 2023 wildfire season. By June, millions of acres had already burned.
Once those fires began, weather patterns carried their smoke south into the United States.
Climate Change Does Not Respect Borders
The smoke was a reminder that environmental problems do not stay where they begin.
A fire in Quebec can affect the air people breathe in New Jersey. Pollution released in one country contributes to warming everywhere. A climate disaster does not stop because it reaches a state or national border.
That makes climate change especially difficult to solve. Individual governments can create their own environmental policies, but the atmosphere is shared by everyone.
More Than a Distant Problem
Before this week, Canadian wildfires sounded far away to me.
Then I could smell the smoke.
Climate change is often discussed through projections about 2050 or 2100. Those numbers are important, but they can also make the problem feel distant.
An orange sky does the opposite.
It shows how quickly something happening hundreds of miles away can become part of everyday life here.
And it makes one thing very clear: there really is no such thing as someone else’s climate problem.
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