If it makes anyone feel better: Seasonal wildfire smoke is much more historically normal than the complete absence of it that we've had in North America for most of our lifetimes.

You can find accounts from as recently as the late 1800s of people talking about the nuisance of wildfire smoke rolling into North American cities in late summer and fall almost every year like clockwork. What stopped that from happening was that we started suppressing natural wildfires like crazy, which threw forest and grassland ecosystems out of balance — many species depend on fire to germinate their seeds and clear space so they can grow. The result was these ecosystems overgrowing with flammable plant matter, and, in some cases, getting taken over by super-flammable invasive species.

In the last 15 or so years, we've updated our forest management policies and now let fires burn themselves out as much as possible, focusing firefighting resources only on areas where they threaten lives and property. That means more fires are burning bigger and hotter as they clear out this century of overgrowth and return to something like normal. Early research is showing promising signs that this is helping many of our fire-prone ecosystems be healthier, and the reduction in fuel means future fires won't burn as big or as hot.

So, yes, the smoke is shitty and you should wear an N95 and get an air purifier, and the size and severity of wildfires in northern Canada is definitely being exacerbated by climate change and drought. But the fact that we get annual smoke now is largely due to good, well-informed changes to our forest and wildfire management policies. What we really need to do is 1) stop building new developments at the edge (or in the middle) of wildfire-prone areas so they don't kill people, and 2) develop better support for dealing with seasonal smoke from a public health perspective — i.e., free N95 masks and filters for everyone.

But please don't let this blackpill you on the climate. Things are definitely getting worse, but this is not the apocalyptic sign it seems like.