The Canadian Smoke Problem

A practical common-sense solution.

It’s time we got serious about this Canadian smoke problem. Every summer it gets worse, to the point where in recent weeks the air quality over a large area of the United States has been almost as unhealthy as it was in the Barry family living room on any given Saturday night in the 1950s, when my parents hosted cocktail parties during which every single adult was always smoking at least one cigarette. (Some of them were smoking two cigarettes, having lost track after their fourth martini.)

Let me begin by stressing that I don’t hold Canada personally responsible for the smoke. Granted, Canada has been responsible for some deeply troubling things, such as the 1974 song “(You’re) Having My Baby,” which was written by Paul Anka — a known Canadian — and which features these lyrics:

The need inside you, I see it showin’

Whoa the seed inside ya baby do ya feel it growin’?

That is considered by most music experts to be the second-worst song couplet written in the entire Seventies, exceeded in badness only by the 1972 Mac Davis hit “Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me,” in which Mac croons these words:

Girl you’re a hot-blooded woman child

And it’s warm where you’re touchin’ me

To be fair to Canada: The Seventies produced a LOT of sappy ballads. Musically, that decade was a big letdown after the radical social awakening of the Sixties, when a bold revolutionary generation of musicians broke free from the stodgy shackles of bourgeoise white-bread conformism and challenged the Establishment with a defiant, raw and sometimes shocking new sound, as epitomized by this edgy 1968 performance (Content warning):

They don’t make music like that any more. They’re not allowed to: Too many people were going blind from looking at the pants.

But I digress. My point, as you may recall, is that — Paul Anka not withstanding — I don’t hold Canada personally responsible for all the smoke blowing down here from up there. No, the blame for that must be placed squarely on the same phenomenon that is also causing virtually every other major problem humanity is dealing with these days, including droughts, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, blizzards, El Niño (Spanish for “The Nino”), tornados, earthquakes, inflation, the housing shortage, influencers, TV-lawyer ads, two-factor authentication and explosive diarrhea. I am referring, of course, to Global Climate Change™.

Specifically what’s happening with the Canadian smoke is, rising global temperatures have caused Canada to become so hot in the summer that members of the moose population are bursting into flames, a phenomenon known to moose scientists as “spontaneous human combustion,” as captured in this dramatic unedited wildlife video:

Source: Animal Planet

The flaming Canadian moose are igniting the trees, thus causing huge smoky forest fires, which Canada lacks the resources to extinguish because there are only like 125 people total in the whole country.

That means it’s up to us down here in the USA to do something about the smoke problem. Fortunately I have a solution, which I believe is both practical and feasible, as illustrated in this rendering:

That’s right: I’m proposing that we put a line of giant electric fans across the Midwest and use them to blow the Canadian smoke back into Canada, where it belongs. The beauty of this plan is, it uses proven technology that is available right now. We already know how to make freestanding electric fans; we just need to make them approximately four miles tall. This is what we should be doing instead of building all these huge AI data centers, which are a massive waste of resources. We don’t need more AI! We clearly don’t even need the AI we already have, seeing as how we’re using it to make exploding-moose videos.

Assuming the giant-fan concept solves the Canadian-smoke problem — and I am not aware of any published scientific studies suggesting that it wouldn’t — we may be able to use the same approach to tackle the larger problem of Global Climate Change itself. That’s right: I’m talking about using existing technology to cool down the entire planet. I envision something like this:

I’m not saying this is a 100 percent finalized plan. There are some technical wrinkles that would need to be ironed out, such as: Where would we plug the fan in? Also, what speed setting should we use? I’m thinking we should start with “medium,” because if we set it too high we could potentially blow all traces of human civilization completely off the planet into outer space, which might not be such a bad thing would be tragic.

So, yes, there are risks. But we’re facing an existential crisis; this is not the time to get all nitpicky about a plan just because it might wipe out our entire species. No, this is a time for us to act boldly, in the spirit of the inspirational anthem “My Way,” by the famous Canadian Paul Anka, who wrote:

Yes there were times, I’m sure you knew

When I bit off more than I could chew

But through it all, when there was doubt

I ate it up and spit it out

That’s right: He ate it up, and then he spit it out. For that was his way.

And now the end is near, of this Substack anyway. It’s time to hear from you paying subscribers, to whom I say, in all sincerity: You’re a hot-blooded group of payin’ subscribers, and it’s warm where you’re commentin’. Today we have four scientific polls. Also at the end we have an update on the baby woodpeckers.

BABY WOODPECKERS UPDATE

I asked Kelly Grinter, who runs the Marathon Wild Bird Center, if the baby woodpeckers have been released, and this was her reply:

Yes, they were released! They were self-feeding and independent. I was so proud of them. Thought for sure they would hang around, having been hand raised since blind, but they did not. We cannot thank you enough for the mention in your stories. We received over $800 in donations from it!

So thanks to those of you who donated, from me and Michelle, and of course Louie the Log.

If you’re new to this Substack and would like to know the baby woodpeckers’ backstory, it’s here.