One of the things people are noticing each summer is the amount of hazy days that affect our local area.

On a regular basis haze from Canadian wildfires clouds our sky. Sometimes it’s almost like smoke. We often notice it in communities, but there have been other days where it becomes obvious if you take a drive in the country.

They’ve been accompanied by air quality alerts that advise people with respiratory conditions to use caution when they’re outside.

We never had that kind of thing when I was growing up. We thought smog was associated with Los Angeles, and that it was caused more by coastal geography than pollution from automobiles.

We thought industrial emissions were mainly a problem for larger cities. Rural Minnesota almost always seemed to have clean air. Clearly something has changed. It’s not just the haze. We also have to consider all the wildfires in western states, the floods in many locations, the heat waves, and the high number of storms especially in the South.

It only seems to make national news when something disastrous happens. There’s talk about a tie-in to climate change, and then the talk dies down. It usually comes back within several weeks when there’s something else that captures headlines.

I’m surprised there haven’t been more science and health writers chronicling the haze and smoke. If they’ve been doing it frequently, I’m surprised their work hasn’t gotten more publicity. It’s probably the biggest public health issue since COVID, in terms of the number of people whose health could be impacted. Just from casual conversations, I’ve heard from at least a dozen people who feel they’ve been affected by the hazy conditions. These are people who don’t normally complain about health issues. Most of what they’ve said involves respiratory effects or allergies. It’s not surprising. We don’t know why the weather conditions are changing. The extent of our knowledge is that we’ve recorded warmer temperatures and set more heat records than in the recent past. No reasonable person believes that climate change is a hoax. Even well-informed skeptics agree that the Earth has gotten warmer. The only question is whether it might be part of long range natural cycles, where we’re entering a period of greater instability like what happened in cold and warm cycles throughout history.

It’s possible that skeptics are right about that. It’s also very possible that human beings have contributed to the problem with 19th century industrialization followed by 20th century mass consumption of fossil fuel and industrial emissions. We know that those factors haven’t helped the situation. If we don’t know how much they’ve impacted it, the only sensible thing to do is to change our behavior, to become more sustainable in our daily lives and our economic activities. Sustainability is often misunderstood. It’s been associated with back to the land commune-style living. There’s nothing wrong with someone choosing such a way of life, but sustainability is broader in scope. It includes average people with average jobs and standard houses.

Those who conserve resources actively recycle. They water lawns and gardens only when it becomes necessary. They repurpose old clothing, furniture, and appliances; or use them gently; before placing them in landfills.

No one should be opposed to sustainability if it’s placed into that context. We need a lifestyle that will preserve resources for future generations. If we fail to do that, we won’t sustain the human race. Earth could become uninhabitable within a century under a use it up and throw it away mentaility. I hope it doesn’t someday become like science fiction, where humans have to embark on a quest to find a different world, a place in outer space to colonize. Even if that’s possible, we shouldn’t look toward other places in the universe to sustain ourselves. It makes more sense to preserve the world we have.

It’s something we can do now in 2023. Some if it comes down to global steps like climate change treaties. In other ways it’s an individual process involving choices that each of us makes every day.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor