Forest Fires Affect Montreal's Air Quality

Montreal had the worst air quality in the world in late June, sounding the alarm for climate catastrophe.

The cause of the alarming air quality is from forest fires raging in Quebec. Not only has Montreal's air quality faced the impacts from Quebec's forest fires, but so has Europe.

Five per cent of Canada's forested area has been burned in wild fires just this year, contributing to Canada's overall carbon emissions. Forests are carbon sinks which naturally store carbon. This means that carbon that's been stored in Quebec's forests for decades is now being remitted back into the atmosphere.

The City of Montreal made large climate promises in 2020, including committing to plant 500,000 trees, reduce carbon emissions by 55% by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2050.

Local 514 spoke with Professor of Building, Civil, and Environmental Engineering at Concordia University Hashem Akbari. 

"When there's a big fire going on, the amount of smoke and smog is huge," said Akbari. "There is no immediate solution available, typically fumes spread around world."

The city of Montreal told Local 514 that 135,613 trees have been planted between 2020 to 2022. This can capture some carbon, but it won't capture the amount of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere by Quebec's forest fires.

"It's a humble suggestion to people to promote tree planting, but make sure the entire cycle is being considered and not [just the] initial tree planting process," said Akbari.

Say the trees did make an impactful reduction in holding the carbon that Montreal emits. Even if it sequesters the carbon we pollute at a healthy rate, forest fires, exacerbated by man-made climate change, are emitting carbon dioxide levels at overwhelming rates.

Not all species of trees are the same. The carbon they’re able to store varies on several factors, including the tree species, its age, size, environmental conditions, and geographic location. 

Planting trees won't offset our emissions. We can continue to plant them, but Akbari says it has to be in combination with a reduction of emissions.

"If one would like to come to balance of stable CO2 in atmosphere, one has to come to a completely sustainable cycle. When you run out of land [to plant trees] you have reached your limits. The solution is to completely consume energy from 100% renewable sources, various renewable technologies, the potential of renewable technology is huge, but at its current rate of consumption of fuels, it will take significant amount of renewable to come to sustainable level," said Akbari.

Akbari says we need to be carbon neutral.

"When you buy our products, they [have a specific] amount of life cycle, we try to compensate by tree planting, [being] net zero, not everyone can, encourage those who can, not every company can do that bc we are going to have limitations."