Air and water
Much of the country has been suffering from the smoke of wildfires raging in Canada. Detroit, along with Chicago, New York, Toronto and other Great Lakes cities, is recording some of the worst air pollution in the world, with an Air Quality Index hitting 800.
Thousands of Detroiters are staying home. Health officials advise keeping windows and doors closed, in spite of the heat. City centers are distributing masks for those who must go outside, and life has slowed down in the face of unbearable heat and smoke. A stalled warm air mass lingers over the city, offering little relief.
By mid-week more than 135 separate fires were burning across Ontario, forcing evacuations, especially among the First Nations communities in the Northwestern areas.
This is the worst wildfire summer in Canda since 2023 when Detroit endured days of smoky skies. This won’t be the last. Our future holds more of these experiences.
The last three years have been among the 10 worst on record in Canada for wildfires. Researchers point to “accelerating climate change, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, makes wildfires bigger, hotter and more destructive — and Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average, according to a 2019 Canadian government report. Canada's area burned in wildfires has quadrupled since the 1970s.”
The destruction of these forests is a catastrophe. Canada holds “the largest remaining intact forest on Earth, even larger than the Amazon rainforest. With about 1.4 million square miles of forest land, Canada is the third-most forested country in the world, trailing only Russia and Brazil.
Canada's forest is 15 times the surface area of all of the Great Lakes combined.”
These complex ecosystems, critical for the health of our fragile planet, are suffering from the twin burdens of climate change and industrialized urban life. The effects of their burning reaches far beyond producing hazardous air.
Their loss is a reminder of how interconnected we are, how foolish the notion of borders is in a complex, interconnected world. And they are a warning of the impact so many of our choices have on life and the possibilities of our survival.
That is why the decision on July 15, 2026, by Gov. Whitmer and Michigan environmental regulators to approve the permits allowing the Enbridge Great Lakes Tunnel Project to move ahead is so dangerous. Enbridge is a Canadian oil and gas corporation that has operated a pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac for nearly 75 years. That pipeline is notoriously unsafe and has been the subject of intense organizing to “shut it down.” Governor Whitmer pledged to do so in her campaign for office. The pipeline moves 23 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids per day through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The tunnel project, in part a corporate response to the fears of a massive oil spill, is planned to create an underground passage 250 feet below the lakebed where Lakes Michigan and Huron connect. A disruption there would affect the entire Great Lakes region and the waters that give us life.
Indigenous peoples who protect the Great Lakes have been in the leadership of resistance to Line 5 and to the tunnel project.
"Today’s decision by the state of Michigan is incredibly disheartening and fails tribal communities and all those that value our Great Lakes," Sault Tribe Chairman Austin Lowes stated.
"Since time immemorial, the Straits of Mackinac have been sacred to tribal nations across the region. The Sault Tribe, along with our partners, is deeply disappointed by EGLE and DNR’s decisions to approve permits for Enbridge. The Straits and all the Great Lakes deserve the highest level of protection from the state of Michigan. The decision to allow Enbridge to industrialize this sacred place demonstrates a disregard for our environment, our treaty rights, and tribal sovereignty."
Every breath reminds us of our responsibilities to the air and waters upon which all life depends. Those who see these sacred life forms as nothing more than a source of profit endanger us all.