Whispers in the Wildfire: Who Gets to Breathe?

The room was hot—not with weather, but with warning. Scientists, doctors, and Indigenous elders gathered beneath high conference ceilings in Alberta, not to draft yet another paper, but to say something no one else dared: the climate isn’t just killing the planet—it’s killing us. And we still don’t believe it.

What happens when the evidence is inhaled but not seen? When your asthma spikes but the weather report only tells you it’s sunny with a haze of denial? We’ve been taught to look at climate change like a glacier melting somewhere far off, a tragedy too slow to touch us. But it’s not slow anymore. And it’s not far. The wildfire smoke drifting across provinces, the unbearable summer heat that pushes ERs into triage mode—this is the new fever. The body has become climate’s diary, and it’s writing in red ink.

The Diagnosis We Don’t Want

A nurse in Yellowknife said it plainly: “We’re treating symptoms, but nobody’s talking about the cause.” The cause, of course, is climate neglect masquerading as policy. But there’s something deeper, almost sinister, in how we’ve emotionally dissociated from the crisis. Health is intimate. It bleeds into every part of our lives. Yet the climate conversation still feels sterile, mechanical—devoid of the raw human impact.

At the Alberta Summit, the message was clear. Climate and health are not two lanes—they are the same road. But you wouldn’t know it from the way governments keep treating them like parallel tracks. Why? Perhaps because when you say “climate,” people think of trees and carbon. Say “health,” and they start seeing themselves.

Air You Can’t Afford

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: not everyone gets to breathe the same air. Not metaphorically—literally. Indigenous communities across Canada, already burdened by colonization’s residue, are now frontline witnesses to a second wave of destruction. The land they once used to heal is scorched, the water undrinkable, the air bitter with smoke. These are not ecological tragedies. These are public health crises—quiet, deadly, and entirely preventable.

If health had been at the heart of climate action from the beginning, would we be here? Would our hospitals be scrambling for disaster protocols during summer months that feel apocalyptic? Would our kids be learning indoors for weeks because the outside air has become a toxic fog? These aren’t hypothetical futures. They’re headlines waiting to repeat.

But then again, maybe that’s the problem. We’ve mistaken headlines for progress, and symptoms for stories.

The fire doesn’t just burn forests. It burns illusions. That we can solve this crisis in pieces. That the body will forgive the air. That we have time.

The question isn’t what climate change is doing to the Earth. The question is what it’s already done to you.