Ohio US Sen. Bernie Moreno blows hot air over Canada wildfire smoke

When the super wealthy crave next-level prestige and power as elected royalty in Washington, they are already accustomed to being the center of attention. But being a VIP lawmaker on Capitol Hill lets them be stars on the national stage.

It’s heady stuff, even for zillionaires. Some promptly grab the spotlight to steal the show — or at least make news and TV appearances on the regular.

Generating sensational headlines for pure clickbait — in lieu of conducting serious policymaking for constituents — is the stand-alone goal. Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, a former luxury car dealer, is good at it.

He sells sensation over thoughtful governance like a pro. The Westlake Republican has made dozens of appearances on Fox News and triggered a bunch of media coverage as a MAGA performer, bless his heart. 

Last week Moreno stewed as toxic smoke from climate-driven Canadian wildfires enveloped Cleveland and other Ohio communities.

It was bad. Would the senator address the gravity of the event soberly or warn of worse to come if man-made global warming continued to accelerate and intensify air-choking fires at home and up north?

Would Moreno point to the real time risks of highly hazardous wildfire smoke as proof of a planet heating up and suggest urgent course correction — that doesn’t include pumping massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?

Not this guy. Moreno saw smoky exposure to terrible air quality in the Great Lakes, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states as an opportunity to exploit for personal gain and went full-on tinfoil. 

He assigned villainy to the powerful winds pushing wildfire smoke from Canada into the U.S. and polluting the air for millions in a thick, acrid haze.

He charged Canada’s “failed leadership” with perpetrating an “atrocity” on the U.S. and said Canadian officials should be punished for not properly maintaining their vast, highly combustible boreal forest (that covers about 1.3 billion acres and stretches from Yukon and the Alaskan border to Newfoundland and Labrador in the east).

The sheer magnitude of the forest, its remoteness and hard-to-get-to wilderness areas (often only accessible by air), the acute limits on firefighting efforts, were all lost on Moreno. 

So, too, was the whole cause and effect part of the impossible-to-put-out wildfires actively burning across Canada.

Moreno simply ignored what has driven the frequency and severity of Canadian wildfire seasons; higher temperatures brought on by the rate of global warming nearly doubling in the last decade.

Hotter, drier conditions prime the landscape to burn. A lightening strike in a parched forest can ignite a massive burn. That’s what happened in about 71% of the burned area in Canada between 1990-2023.

Bottom line? Climate change has increased heat and drought and made wildfires more numerous and severe in dry forests north and south of the border.

At this writing there are over 900 active wildfires in Canada and just under 500 in the U.S. But the summer is yet young and smoke-filled cities are on track to become the new norm as long as fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — remain the biggest contributors to global warming.

But the spotlight-loving Moreno was clearly not interested in doing a deep dive on the problem last week to assess the best solution.

He wanted to get political mileage out of a “wildfire pollution emergency” by bashing Canada (and scoring points with the felon-in-chief he flatters).

Moreno immediately blamed our longest and closest ally for allowing plumes of smoke to blow into the U.S. — as if Canada controlled the wind. “We will not tolerate this incompetence,” huffed the MAGA cowboy. 

Moreno milked his moment in the haze by introducing a performative, if not passable, Senate bill to impose sanctions on Canada over wildfire smoke affecting U.S. air quality.

“Canada’s government failed to invest in wildfire prevention methods, including forest thinning, fuel reduction, prescribed burns and stronger enforcement against arson,” said the statement from his office — without evidence or understanding about boreal forests.

Moreno’s measure would also sanction Canadian officials found “responsible” for the fires, revoke their visas, block their assets, and formally express Congress’ opinion that the Canadian ambassador is a “persona non grata” until the wildfire smoke is gone.

Trump piled on Moreno’s rhetoric with his brand of hysteria.

“The United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air” and “we are holding Canada responsible,” he bleated and threatened to levy additional tariffs for the air invasion.

Other Republicans took the same tack as Moreno. The House Republican Conference chair accused Canada of doing nothing to keep the wildfire smoke over there. “Stop exporting your smoke into out skies. Enough is enough!”

The fire-breathing partisans, who deny the reality of climate change and aggressively promote more fossil fuel pollution over renewable, clean energy alternatives, removed all doubt about their willful indifference to the facts or shameless intent to leverage a serious public health issue for political points.

Forget the scary trajectory we’re on with wild weather extremes every other week from supercharged storms and record flooding to scorching heat and forest infernos.

It’s so much easier to lob attention-getting salvos for click bait, right?

Worked for Moreno.

He made state and national news with his insane rip on Canada blowing smoke and appeared on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News. But he didn’t come close to clearing the air. 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.