Leaders keep shelving the work of forest management. Why bother when you can just point at the sky, set a 2050 net-zero target, and look like a moral hero without lifting a chainsaw?

By Andrew Roman, Special to Financial Post

“Every summer Canadians watch the same terrifying scenes unfold. Flames race through forests. Families are evacuated with only what they can carry. Firefighters battle blazes that seem almost impossible to control. Smoke from Canadian fires turns skies orange and disrupts life in the U.S., hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away. Governments declare emergencies, as British Columbia has this year, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing fast-moving flames.”

Retired litigation lawyer Andrew Roman isn’t buying the script. If climate change is raising the risk, that makes prevention MORE urgent—not less, he argues. Clear the deadwood. Run controlled burns. Build real firebreaks around towns. Spend the millions now so we don’t torch billions later in destroyed homes and endless evacuations. Instead? Leaders keep shelving the work of actual forest management, using the “global situation” to avoid responsibility for local failures. Accepting climate change as the primary cause effectively exempts leaders from government’s basic duty, which Roman reminds us is to maintain the physical landscape to protect life and property.

Read Andrew Roman’s opinion piece for the Financial Post at the publisher’s website here.

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