Bjorn Lomborg: We need better fire policy, not climate sermons

A firefighter from Alberta Wildfire douses controlled burns against wildfires near Saprae Creek south of Fort McMurray on April 24, 2025. Photo by Vincent McDermott/Fort McMurray Today/Postmedia Network

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What they do not need is the climate sermon that now follows every new wildfire. Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change. The U.K. and Spanish governments rushed out a joint statement declaring that “climate change was now a national security emergency” threatening our way of life. The verdict was in even while houses burned: only ending fossil fuels can put out the flames.

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Here is what makes this so exasperating: the planet is doing the opposite of burning. Satellite data show that as of August 12, the world’s burned area in 2026 was 42 per cent below the 2012-25 average for this point in the year — on track, in fact, to becoming the quietest global fire season in a century. On current trends, 2026 could end up burning less than 1.5 per cent of global land area. This would be well below the satellite record low in 2022 of 2.2 per cent and likely lower than in any year since 1900

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Climate change is a global issue. It should be assessed using global data. Pointing to horrific fires in one corner of one continent while ignoring a planet that is burning less than normally is the very definition of cherry picking: keep the observations that fit the story, throw away the rest.

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Imagine the reverse. If global burned area were running 42 per cent above average, would anyone accept “but the Baltics are quiet this year” as a rebuttal? Of course not. Yet that is precisely the logic now deployed in the other direction: the planet is burning at a below-average rate but we’re focusing on the hotspots — which are undeniable and tragic but also, for this year, atypical.

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The climate lobby has seized on one data quirk: The satellite fire surveillance data for “Europe” include the whole of Russia — Siberia and all — so a quiet Russian year can flatten the continental numbers. But if you strip Russia out entirely, Europe without Russia had by August 12 only burned two-thirds of its 2012-25 average so far this year. Ten of the past 14 years saw more fire by mid-August. Yes, France’s season is record-bad and Spain’s is also severe. But two countries having a dreadful summer do not constitute a continental inferno, let alone a planetary one. Europe as a whole is having a below-average fire year.

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The same pattern holds everywhere you look. Earlier this summer, Canada’s export of smoke to the skies over New York generated the usual apocalyptic headlines, not to mention new tariff threats from Donald Trump. Yet Canada is having a below-average fire year, as is the United States. Both North America and South America as a whole are at all-time satellite lows. Africa, the most burned continent, is also at an all-time low, 44 per cent below normal. Oceania (which is mostly Australia) is 15 per cent below its usual burned area, and Asia has burned at near- record lows this year. Every continent is either below normal, far below normal or setting records for how little is burning.